Retraction Note to: Predatory publishing in Scopus: evidence on cross-country differences

Abstract

The Editor-in-Chief has retracted this article (Macháček & Srholec, 2021) because some of the findings are unreliable. Post-publication peer review indicated the article includes statements about authors from some geographic regions which are unjustified in the generality of the conclusions. Findings are based on a regression analysis; however, this analysis did not include a control group. The regression analysis is, therefore, not complete and the results are unreliable.Results and findings are based on a so-called blacklist and are not supplemented by any results obtained using a positive control group. In this context, the Scopus database cannot be considered a control group, since it is a comprehensive bibliographic database. Similarly, the analysis was restricted to publications in four languages (English, Spanish, French, and Arabic). The results of the regression analysis are inconclusive for publications in languages not included in the analysis. The authors have been offered the opportunity to submit a new reworked manuscript for peer review. Vít Macháček and Martin Srholec disagree with this retraction.

Authors publishing repeatedly in predatory journals: An analysis of Scopus articles

“…Due to the complexity of identifying predatory journals, we use the intersection of three different lists (two watch lists and one safe list). More specifically, we start with the 324 predatory journals in Scopus identified by Macháček & Srholec using Beall's list (Macháček & Srholec, 2019, 2021). The article by Macháček and Srholec (2021) has been retracted after submission of this paper but the reasons for retraction do not involve the identification of the set of journals in Scopus and consequently, does not affect this study.…”

A psychological perspective towards understanding the objective and subjective gray zones in predatory publishing

“…The extreme risk and danger to academic research is when the claim that the blacklisted entity-established according to blacklist criteria "a", and thus labeled as "predatory"-is extended to a whitelisted entity-established according to whitelist criteria "b", and thus labeled as "safe"-in order to ridicule or otherwise reduce the academic or scholarly validity of the whitelisted entity. An example of this risk lies in the now-retracted Macháček and Srholec (2021) paper, as argued through the prism of "national propensities" (Mills and Bell 2021).…”

“…This is what happened when a pseud-1 3 onymous (fake) "author", Truth (2012) made unsupported claims about specific cultures and even groups of academics of specific religious affiliations (e.g., Muslims), to classify their publishing behavior or choice of publishing venue as "predatory". Almost a decade later, the same attitude and risk continues to be propagated, as a modified philosophy, "national propensities" (Macháček and Srholec 2021), although that paper has now been retracted. This allows academics to reflect more carefully on applying a biased perceptive position (e.g., classes ii or iii in Fig.…”

Journal lists in social sciences and the spectrum of quality standards

“…Overlap between lists, or lack thereof, may also be indicative of the grey zone between legitimate and questionable journals, in two different ways. First, there is substantial overlap between lists of questionable journals and sources like Scopus or WoS's Emerging Sources Citation Index (e.g., Macháček & Srholec, 2021). This apparent paradox may be due to differences in criteria: while the former focus more on editorial practices, the latter mostly focus on formal criteria (e.g., availability of abstract and affiliation data) and on the reception of research (e.g., citations).…”