Disseminating Biomedical Research: Predatory Journals and Practices

Predatory journals are journals that do not adhere to best editorial and publication practices. They often provide false or misleading information. Similarly, predatory journals have a long history of sending often aggressive and indiscriminate invitations to submit articles to them. Finally, these journals lack transparency regarding their operations. There are a large number of predatory journals that include hundreds of thousands of articles, including millions of participants who have participated in clinical research and thousands of animals included in preclinical research. The quality of reporting of these articles is disturbingly low. Unfortunately, these articles have been included in systematic reviews, meta-analyses and health policy documents. The extent to which the inclusion of these articles influence clinical practice guidelines and health policy is unknown. It is unlikely to be a zero influence. Similarly, these articles have managed to leak into what is considered trusted resources, such as PubMed. To combat the proliferation of predatory publishers and journals requires collaborative efforts on the part of many groups. Researchers need more education and resources about predatory journals. They need to be cautioned about responding to the aggressive and unsolicited E-mails they receive from these journals. Funders need to be more explicit about not allowing the use of article processing fees for publishing in predatory journals. Universities, other research organizations, and their respective libraries need to enhance their outreach concerning the problems of predatory journals and publishers. Similarly, there needs to be stronger guards against using publications from predatory journals in hiring, promotion and tenure portfolios. Finally, the research ecosystem should move away from conceptualizing whether journals are predatory or not, to a more nuanced view whereby journals and publishers are judged on their practices-high risk to lower risk.