Untrustworthy Publishing Practices and How to Identify Them

Electronic publishing and open access to research results offer many new opportunities (increased visibility, easier access), but the process of publishing scientific works can also lead to pitfalls associated with poor publishing practices. Such practices are not limited to the publication of scientific works—they also appear in the form of fake scientific conferences, misleading or fake metrics, and similar activities.

The most common poor practice is that a problematic publisher or individual journal lacks a proper peer review system. These are referred to as so-called predatory journals. APCs for publishing in such journals are usually very low, and the journals often cite false or misleading metrics regarding their impact.

More complex poor practices occur in cases where a peer review system is in place but is not organised in accordance with quality standards in scholarly publishing. Such practices have become increasingly common in recent years and have a significant impact on the ways scientific articles are published.

Occasionally, so-called hijacked or plagiarised scientific journals also appear. These are fake journals in which a fraudulent publisher assumes the identity of an already established journal and promises publication in exchange for an APC payment, but the content is usually never published.

CRITERIA FOR IDENTIFYING UNTRUSTWORTHY PUBLISHING PRACTICES

1. Check the personnel managing the publishers or journals, especially editorial board members and editors:

• the same person frequently appears as editor across multiple journals and is also listed as the owner of the publishing house;
• editorial boards are identical or very similar across journals from the same publisher;
• editorial boards are often not listed at all;
• information about editorial board members is incomplete (e.g. no institutional affiliation is provided);
• editors and editorial board members have no research credentials in the relevant field;
• editorial boards have too few members (e.g. only 2 or 3), and names are often fabricated;
• there is often no information about the country of origin of editors, which is especially problematic if the journal claims to have an international scope;
• editorial boards frequently consist only of men.

• there is a clear lack of operational transparency (unclear information about the publisher’s address, phone details, etc.);
• systems for the permanent identification of publications and digital objects, and for managing online links (ISSN, DOI, URN, etc.), are not in place;
• the licensing policy is vague and contains contradictory clauses; licensing agreements do not follow established open access publishing standards;
• previously published works are frequently retracted from the journal, often without formal explanation; any corrections or clarifications are rarely published, and works are often not marked with publication status indicators (e.g. the Crossmark badge);
• publisher websites include web links to reputable scientific conferences and scholarly associations with which they have no affiliation or membership, falsely boosting their credibility;
• journal titles are not indexed in well-known and trusted scientific periodicals databases (e.g. Ulrichsweb, DOAJ, etc.);
• information on APC pricing is incomplete and includes extensive fine print;
• publishers require both the payment of APCs and the transfer of economic copyright to the publisher; in some cases, publishers demand copyright transfer at submission instead of upon acceptance, contrary to standard practice;
• website content is often not indexed by search engines (e.g. the article cannot be found via Google or similar tools);
• documents are frequently protected in a way that prevents plagiarism analysis (e.g. PDF “copy proofs”).

• the journal’s title does not align with its mission or the scientific field it covers, or it covers an overly broad scope in order to attract as many authors as possible (e.g. Journal of Education);
• publishers often use terms like “Network,” “Center,” “Association,” or “Institute” in the names of their publishing houses or journals;
• the journal title combines two or more terms that do not belong to the same disciplinary context;
• the journal title misleadingly suggests a different geographical origin;
• the publisher provides misleading information about impact factors and journal indexing in recognised citation indexes. This includes so-called fake impact factors, such as Universal Impact Factor (UIF), Global Impact Factor (GIF), and Citefactor, which are not valid;
• the publisher falsely claims that its journals are indexed in international bibliographic databases;
• the publisher sends review requests to individuals unqualified for peer review, often via unsolicited bulk email;
• the publisher asks authors to suggest potential reviewers and uses those suggestions without verifying their academic credibility or checking for conflicts of interest;
• the publisher does not provide mechanisms for preventing or detecting plagiarism, self-plagiarism, image manipulation, etc.

4. Bibliometric Analyses:

• bibliometric isolation, meaning frequent citation from smaller scientific journals not indexed in citation databases, or frequent citation from the same environment in which the journal is based (e.g. from the same country, or from journals of the same publisher);
• frequent occurrence of reciprocal or circular citation patterns, known as citation cartels;
• self-citation at the journal level. If the journal is indexed in recognised citation databases (e.g. JCR Impact Factor, SJR, SNIP), there may be unusually rapid increases in these impact metrics;
• a high number of artificially inserted citations that are not thematically relevant.

• re-publication of content that has already been published in other journals;
• use of self-praising terminology (e.g. claiming to be a leading publisher in the field);
• manipulation of postal addresses, often using a free email provider as the official contact (e.g. gmail.com or yahoo.com);
• publishers do not provide or require professional editing or proofreading of publications; caution is also advised if they do not use plagiarism detection tools;
• author guidelines are inconsistent.

TOOLS FOR VERIFYING THE CREDIBILITY OF SCIENTIFIC JOURNALS AND PUBLISHERS

To verify the credibility of scientific journals and publishers, you can use tools such as: