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

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3. 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

4. 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.

5. 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

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

7. 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

8. 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%

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

10. 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!!)

11. Percentages of low Quality Journals are comparable
FACTS ABOUT QUALITY
Not all subscription journals are in Scopus or WoS: only ,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

12. Questionable Publishing in Perspective
*** Walt Crawford
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.

13. 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

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

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

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

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

18. Blacklists are not the solution

19. 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)

20. How do we keep DOAJ clean?

21. 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

22. 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...

23. 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

24. 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

25. 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

26. Warning Signs for Questionable Journals
Inappropriate marketing practices
Spam s
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

27. 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

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

29. 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

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

31. In this talk I will focus on open access journals

32. 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)

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

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

35. Thank you for your attention! tom@doaj.org

36. DOAJ depends entirely on donations