When peril responds to plague: predatory journal engagement with COVID-19

Abstract

PurposeThe academic community has warned that predatory journals may attempt to capitalize on the confusion caused by the COVID-19 pandemic to further publish low quality academic work, eroding the credibility of scholarly publishing.Design/methodology/approachThis article first chronicles the risks of predatory publishing, especially related to misinformation surrounding health research. Next, the author offers an empirical investigation of how predatory publishing has engaged with COVID-19, with an emphasis on journals related to virology, immunology and epidemiology as identified through Cabells' Predatory Reports, through a content analysis of publishers' websites and a comparison to a sample from DOAJ.FindingsThe empirical findings show that there were 162 titles related to these critical areas from journals listed on Cabells with a range of infractions, but most were defunct and only 39 had published on the pandemic. Compared to a DOAJ comparison group, the predatory journal websites were less likely to mention slowdowns to the peer review process related to the pandemic. Furthermore, another 284 predatory journals with COVID-19 engagement were uncovered from the initial exploration. These uncovered journals mostly centered on medical or biological science fields, while 42 titles came from other broader fields in social science, other STEM or humanities.Originality/valueThis study does not prove that predatory publications have released misinformation pertaining to COVID-19, but rather it exemplifies the potential within a complex academic publishing space. As these outlets have proven to be vectors of misleading science, libraries and the broader educational community need to stay vigilant as information intermediaries of online research.

Scientific literacy and preferred resources used by Latin American medical students during the COVID-19 pandemic: A multinational survey

“…13 As expected, predatory journals have exploited the uncertainty and prolonged reviewing and editing processes by multiple scholarly journals due to the pandemic to increase their profits. [26][27][28] A previous study conducted in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and New Zealand also revealed a poor understanding of medical students regarding predatory journals. 29 The main limitation to our study is the imbalanced sample, which resulted in multiple countries having few participants.…”

Guest editorial: COVID-19 Pandemic and Health Informatics Part 2

“…In addition, Feng et al (2021a) also showed that open-access articles related to COVID-19 have significantly higher citation frequency and use frequency than non-open-access articles. However, Allen (2021) also pointed out that predatory journals might attempt to leverage the confusion caused by COVID-19 to publish low-quality academic work. As for other recent bibliometric and literature reviews, we have recently arranged a special selection in our recent issue (Chiu and Ho, 2021).…”

A Synthesis of the Formats for Correcting Erroneous and Fraudulent Academic Literature, and Associated Challenges

“…Inconsistent standards between editors and journals may become pronounced because certain publishers and publishing models have objectives that might not favor the integrity of the academic literature, but rather the business model of commercial and profit-based publishers (Roberts et al 2020 ), which might favor opacity at the expense of transparency (Mirowski 2018 ). Thus, in order to increase published volumes, subscriptions or open access (OA) article processing charges (APCs), standards of entry of literature into a journal might be lowered, making it “easier” to publish, but doing so can also engender an indistinguishable mix of exploitative and predatory publishing practices (Teixeira da Silva et al 2019 ; Allen 2021 ). The editorial barrier of entry into a journal, which is usually in the form of a desk rejection (Dwivedi et al 2022 ), may be excessively lenient or strict, or it may be unfair or based on non-academic reasons (Teixeira da Silva et al 2018 ).…”