With highly strict standards of publication set by SCI journals (Elsevier, Springer, Nature, Wiley, etc.), the acceptance rate of manuscripts is just 15%. This puts a lot of stress on young researchers in academia. Failure to publish papers in these noted journals spells a doom on their career in research and academia.
Thus, it is a classic case of where supply (manuscripts) exceeds the demand (acceptance rate by publishers). The number of people graduating from most colleges in the USA with terminal degrees (PhD) far exceeds the availability of research jobs in academia.
To cash on this opportunity, today there are many “predatory” journals that will publish any manuscript for a royalty. These predatory journals have total disregard for the authenticity of the research study and would even publish a completely plagiarized paper. This trend is often witnessed in community colleges as they do not receive sizable federal grants for the advancement of their career in scientific research. Most predatory journals would charge about some hundreds of dollars for publication under the garb of the word “Open Access” or “Hybrid publishing.”
How do academics from less known community colleges fall prey to these journals? Well, most of these predatory journals have names that have strong resemblance to that of famous journals. They quite often provide bulk discounts for publication of many manuscripts and also invite these academics for workshops and seminars. We found that despite knowing the poor credentials of these journals, researchers oblige to have a symbiotic relationship with these predatory journals. Scientific credibility is not just lost but wrong science is also promoted by these predatory journals, which means our future generations would have to suffer due to these unlawful practices in academia and research.
According to the latest sting operations carried out by a scribe of Nature publisher, the number of predatory journals now stands at 10,000. This implies that there are as many predatory journals as legitimate ones. For example, consider the legitimate journal publisher by Springer “The Journal of Economics and Finance.” The predatory journal by an independent publisher is named similarly as “The Journal of Finance and Economics.”
Predatory journals have minimum cost of publication and earn good revenue. They do not have peer reviewer and editorial team. Most journals only publish papers online, with some of them having a “print on demand” model as well. One of the tricks that these journals do is by having names resembling standard journals of SCI. Moreover, they also claim to have been indexed by Google scholar while sending direct marketing emails to academicians all over the world. It is important to note that “Google scholar” is a search engine, so being indexed by Google does not mean Google has authenticated the credentials of the predatory journal. This is something most academics are not wary of, unless they have a solid background in computer science.
One of the detrimental results of the naivety of researchers is the proliferation of bad science. To make matters worst, these publishers also include the name of researcher in the list of presenters/speakers at a conference for a hefty fee. The academic may OR may not attend the conference, but the conference can be certainly enlisted in the academic resume of the researcher. Most of the so-called conferences are published at respectable venues of universities and hotels. In reality, these conferences are held in dingy hotels undergoing renovation, with more than 50% academics giving it a miss.
Do predatory journals have a detrimental effect on the career of researchers? Nope. A recent survey and analysis done by a leading researcher at his university threw open a can of worms: ten faculty members had got promoted this year and nine of these academics had published papers in both SCI (legitimate) journals as well as predatory journals. In fact, many of them had published at least four papers in predatory journals, which explains why these predatory journals are making good money despite being completely shady and unethical in their practices.
Conclusion:
Academics are promoted when their resume is loaded with a long list of publications. The list of published papers may be long, but the authenticity of journals is never verified. In totality, academics are now relieved that they do not have to stress on publishing in legitimate journals having strict standards. Bad science is being promoted by academia with the help of predatory journals, and there needs to be a regulatory authority to stop this menace in research industry.