ITMO Authors

How to avoid falling for the bait of an unfair journal?

2025-01-13 14:53
Today, scientists have to build their careers under the conditions that could be laconically described as “publish or perish”. Producing some meaningful results once or providing one major study in several years does not appear to be enough anymore. Citation rates are calculated annually, so the process of writing scientific papers turns into a publication race.
«The unpublished result is the absence of this result» (c)

P. L. Kapitsa

In view of the urgent need to show some results, an offer from some journals of providing an instant publication for a moderate fee looks promising. However, do not rush to agree. This can greatly harm your future career.

“Trash” and “predatory” journals: where is the danger?

The terms “trash/junk” and “predatory” are often used together as related to journals, so some people perceive them as synonyms. In fact, these are two different types to be distinguished.
A "junk" journal is a journal from a “no name” publisher. They are also referred to as"pseudo-scientific". In the age of the Internet, anyone can become the editor of their own journal, create a website and accept articles for submission from the similarly dubious "pseudo-scientists".
The goal of the publishers of a “junk” journal is not necessarily to make profit. Sometimes it is an attempt to “fit in” with the scientific community, to make pseudoscientific texts look like authoritative research.
A journal may not immediately become unconscientious. For some time, it may have worked in a "scientific mode" and even have been indexed in Web of Science/Scopus. In the eyes of some inexperienced scientists, this fact may appear an ultimate sign of quality. Then the journal begins to massively collect articles for publication for profit, parasitizing on the authority of Web of Science/Scopus. Thus, the platforms stop Indexing, however, the publisher does not report this, relying on the fact that potential authors will not check this information. Such a journal becomes "predatory" .
To appear more authoritative, a journal may indicate the presence on eLIBRARY, Google Scholar and other open access platforms as a sign of its scholarly quality, referring to the above as to “indexing”.
It can be difficult to draw the line between a “junk” and a “predatory” journal. We propose to define it as follows: “junk” journals first and foremost deceive their readers. In the eyes of serious scientists, they simply do not exist. “Predatory” journals, on the other hand, aim to deceive the scientific community, so the fact of an article published there will be a blow to the author’s reputation.

What kind of “bait” do “predators” use?

The fraudulent strategy of “predatory” journals can be different:
  • pseudoscientific material published in the public domain;
  • journals which do not exist or use clone web-sites and disappear after payment;
  • services offered for writing, translating and editing articles.

Check-list for referring a journal as unconscientious

  • publishes articles in two or more scientific fields that are not related to each other either thematically or methodologically;
  • the title does not refer to a specific topic and/or does not correspond to either the topic of the published materials or the author's original community
Examples:
  1. European Journal of Scientific Research is based in Pakistan or publishes mainly articles by Indian and Chinese authors.
  2. Mediterranean Journal of Social Sciences publishes articles on electronics and physics.
  • abnormally high number of articles has been published in the previous year;
  • the articles published do not indicate the authors' affiliation or contact information;
  • no information is provided about the review of articles or else the publication period indicated does not look feasible for high-quality review (2-3 weeks or less);
  • the journal declares "popular science", "scientific and practical", "analytical", or a similar academic field ;
  • the information provided about indexing in Web of Science and Scopus databases is false;
  • abstracts, keywords, or the information about authors are not publicly available on the website;
  • the journal suggests sending reviews together with the manuscripts;
  • no information is provided about the publisher, the editorial board, or else the editorial board includes fewer than five people, the editors' affiliation is not indicated;
  • the journal actively recruits scientists to become members of the editorial board via spam mailings;
  • the journal is not indexed in the Russian Science Citation Index (for Russian-language journals), in Web of Science or Scopus (for others), does not have any scientometric indicators (CiteScore, JIF, SNIP);
  • the journal has a high level of self-citation, and/or is repeatedly cited by the same journals/from the same country;
  • many articles have been published without citations;
  • the journal does not have an ISSN.
Journals