HOW CAN WE IDENTIFY QUESTIONABLE JOURNALS? ASSAF WEBINAR MARCH 2, 2018 TOM@DOAJ.ORG EDITOR-IN-CHIEF DOAJ

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Presentation overview What is questionable / predatory publishing? Is there a problem with scientific publishing quality? Is the problem uniquely for Open Access? What is the extent of the problem? Open Access journals are no worse than subscription journals! What does DOAJ do to exclude questionable publishers? What can authors do to avoid bad publishers? In this talk I will focus on open access journals

Definition Definition of predatory: Inclined or intended to injure or exploit others for personal gain or profit (Merriam-Webster) A predatory publisher can then be described as a publisher who intends to injure or exploit others for personal gain or profit.

DOAJ definition Questionable publishers are publishers who are not living up to reasonable standards in terms of content, services, transparency and business behaviour. Two kinds: many would actually like to do a decent job, but lack the knowledge – many are just exploiting and cheating

Is there a problem? In this talk I will focus on open access journals

Is there a problem? with business systems? with scientific quality? is the problem Open Access specific? In this talk I will focus on open access journals

Consider this: “Does exploiting the divide between libraries (that typically pay for subscriptions) and scholars (who typically use the subscriptions) in order to make extraordinary high profits constitute predatory conduct?” or this: “Does continuing to raise prices at several times the rate of inflation, even as those increases cause direct injury to libraries by robbing them of budget flexibility or even make it impossible for them to continue to provide resources – does that constitute predatory publishing?” Quotes from Walt Crawford! The big five publishers have profit margins above 35%

What about The Sting? October 2013 February 2014 Retraction watch Lars Bjørnshauge

The real numbers about questionable publishing NOT ONLY IN OPEN ACCESS JOURNALS NOT AS HIGH IN OA AS OFTEN REPORTED According to a study* by Walt Crawford the number of open access questionable publishers in 2014 was about 3275, publishing about 121,000 articles and not 420,000 (Shen and Björk ** reported 8000 journals and 420,000 articles!!)

Percentages of low Quality Journals are comparable FACTS ABOUT QUALITY Not all subscription journals are in Scopus or WoS: only 20-30,000 of 100,000 (data Ulrich’s Web) Not all open access journals are in DOAJ : only 11,000 of 30,000 *** CONCLUSION Percentages of low Quality Journals are comparable *** Walt Crawford http://citesandinsights.info/civ17i1.pdf

Questionable Publishing in Perspective *** Walt Crawford http://citesandinsights.info/civ17i1.pdf Questionable Publishing in Perspective Proportion of low quality journals is comparable between open access and subscription publishing... … but it looks much worse because Open Access journals are more visible.

The Drivers Why are researchers publishing in questionable journals at all? Ignorance – lack of attention to the faith of the paper Aggressive marketing cheats researchers Publish or Perish – get something on my C.V. – subito! – pays off! Research Assessment – decision makers counting beans! Exclusion from highly reputed journals from (mostly) the Northern hemisphere Researchers from the Global South are particularly vulnerable International j of

Global Bias In this talk I will focus on open access journals

Main Results country of publishers Questionable journals (country) 38.7% -Asia (27.1% from India) 26.8% -Impossible to determine

Questionable journals (authors) 60.3% - Asia (34.7% from India) 16.4% - Africa from Shen & Björk)

Blacklists? | Or | Quality Indexing? The Solution? Blacklists? | Or | Quality Indexing?

Blacklists are not the solution

Quality indexing by indexing services DOAJ DIRECTORY OF OPEN ACCESS JOURNALS OPEN ACCESS JOURNALS ONLY, NO RANKING, other languages equal to English SCOPUS OPEN ACCESS & SUBSCRIPTION JOURNALS , RANKING, geographical bias (English) WEB OF SCIENCE NATIONAL LISTS OPEN ACCESS & SUBSCRIPTION JOURNALS, RANKING (often based on Scopus, WoS)

How do we keep DOAJ clean?

DOAJ CRITERIA 1. Peer review process 2. Governing body 3. Editorial team/contact 4. Author fees 5. Copyright 6. Identification of and dealing with allegations of research misconduct 7. Ownership and management 8. Web site 9. Name of journal 10. Conflicts of interest 11. Access 12. Revenue sources 13. Advertising 14. Publishing schedule 15. Archiving 16. Direct marketing

The DOAJ core team Managing Director Operations Manager Project and Communications Manager Editor-in-Chief Senior Managing Editor 6 Managing Editors We are based in Sweden, United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Italy, Spain, India, Algeria & Denmark And...

Local Expertise 50+ Voluntary Editors/Associate Editors working unpaid a few hours/week – distributed in editorial groups managing 20+ languages GLOBAL AMBASSADOR PROGRAMME 20 Ambassadors recruited to Promote DOAJ Handle applications of journals to be listed in DOAJ Promote best publishing practice and Help identifying and spotting questionable and unethical publishers Ambassadors are based in China, India, Russia, Egypt, Ethiopia, Burkina Faso, Algeria, South Africa and Mexico, Indonesia & Korea – covering Asia, Middle East, Africa and Latin America

Three-tier evaluation process Managing Editor Associate Editors: review applications, communicate with publishers, recommend inclusion/rejection Editors: allocate applications to Associate Editors, check their reviews, recommend inclusion/rejection Managing Editors: allocate applications to Editors, oversee reviews & decide on inclusion/rejection

How DOAJ detects questionable journals Low publishing quality Journal name, website, fees, peer review, publisher, ownership, volume of articles, advertisements, prominent soliciting for editors Low scientific quality focus, format, self-citations, plagiarism Malpractice false claims, hidden costs, spamming authors, wrong information

Warning Signs for Questionable Journals Inappropriate marketing practices Spam emails Journal titles with “International”, “American” or "European” Very broad scope, multidisciplinary Fake impact factors Advertise very quick publishing Advertise a relative low publication fee No or little quality control of articles Low-standard peer review process or even don’t have peer review at all

All DOAJ editors are aware of the signs Dedicated team investigating suspicious cases 2 Managing editors dedicated to this task Thorough and detailed procedures standard approaches, comparisons, documentation Measures for keeping bad journals out no reapplications from proven questionable publishers for longer time periods

Low Quality Journals Sometimes it is difficult to distinguish questionable journals from just low quality journals

DOAJ Policy Publishers deemed questionable will not be able to re-apply for listing for up to three years Low quality journals will be rejected but are able to re- apply after 6 months An appeal procedure is in place Transparency: We have a publicly available list of journals added and removed

How authors can avoid Questionable Journals In this talk I will focus on open access journals

In this talk I will focus on open access journals

DOAJ STATISTICS (Jan 2018) Number of Journals in DOAJ: 10,996 Number of Articles linked in DOAJ: 2,858,729 Number of Countries: 123 Rejection Rate: 47% Number of Publishers (Journals) inadmissible for 1 year or more: 316 (3123) Number of new Applications /Month: >400 Number of Website Visitors / Month: 1 Million DOAJ STATISTICS (Jan 2018)

DOAJ STATISTICS (Jan 2018) Journals indexed in DOAJ per country Sessions per country

Thanks to: All the Library Consortia, Universities and Publishers and our Sponsors for the financial support to DOAJ!

Thank you for your attention! tom@doaj.org

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