frontiers in oncology predatory

(2019): predatory journals and publishers are entities that prioritize self-interest at the expense of scholarship and are characterized by false or misleading information, deviation from best editorial and publication practices, a lack of transparency, and/or the use of aggressive and indiscriminate solicitation practices. 10 Point checklist to identify predatory publishers. On the Cost of Journal Use in the Digital Era, Demarcating Spectrums of Predatory Publishing: Economic and Institutional Sources of Academic Legitimacy, Journal of Association for Information Science and Technology, A Study of Open Access Journals Using Article Processing Charges, Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, Understanding Quality in Research: Avoiding Predatory Journals, Excessively Long Editorial Decisions and Excessiveley Long Publication Times by Journals: Causes, Risks, Consequences, and Proposed Solutions, Predatory Journals Authors and Readers Beware, Researchers May Be Part of the Problem in Predatory Publishing, The Influence of Editorial Decisions and the Academic Network on Self-Citations and Journal Impact Factors, Journal of the Association for Information Science and Thechnology. However, the reality is that this process is by no means simple, as Aromataris and Stern (2020) accurately indicated, particularly because predatory publishers have continued to evolve their undesirable art form into sophisticated operations that appear to be, at face value, legitimate to the point where certain journals and publishers may blatantly exploit gray strategies given that downmarket niches can be lucrative (Siler 2020). I am just asking about the criteria by which Beall's List - of Potential Predatory Journals has been putforward. Division of Medical Oncology, Department of Medicine, School of Medicine, University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus. Elsevier provided a framework to assess time from submission to first decision in relative terms (Table 5). 2018). The increase in APCs was qualified as hyperinflation by Khoo (2019) and was not exclusive to MDPI, as in his study, which covered 319 journals of the four-largest APC-funded open-access publishersHindawi, Frontiers, MDPI, and BioMed Central Ltd. (BMC)between 2012 and 2018, he found overall APC rises in all of them ranging between 17% and 220% and, likewise, observed a rise in the number of articles per journal. The COPE definition of predatory journals is no different in essence to the definition of Grudniewicz et al. ghttps://www.elsevier.com/physical-sciences-and-engineering/engineering/journals/fast-publication-in-process-and-industrial-engineering. Likewise, Cabells blacklist and whitelist, now referred to as predatory journals and analytics https://blog.cabells.com/2020/06/08/announcement/, listed more than 12,000 predatory journals in October 2019 (https://blog.cabells.com/2019/10/02/the-journal-blacklist-surpasses-the-12000-journals-listed-mark/). All Frontiers journals are published under a Creative Commons Attribution License. because it is used as a proxy for both quality and integrity. Furthermore, no less importantly, the analysis showed that a large number of the citations that they receive are from other MDPI-journals. analysed 93 checklists in a systematic review of checklists for identifying predatory journals from biomedical fields. They are, in all, a threat to society as a whole, because whenever the articles that they publish are indexed in selective databases, which is the case of PubMed, the items achieve global exposure and are interpreted by readers, including patients, as trustworthy (Manca et al. Impact Factor is the average number of citations received in 2017 to articles published in 2015 and 2016, while . 2020; Siler 2020). 's (2019) definition. are all necessary, although not sufficient conditions for proper identification of a predatory journal. The physicist Ahmed Hindawi and his wife, the mathematician Nagwa Abdel-Mottaleb, started their publishing house in their home country Egypt in 1997; 10 years later they converted Hindawi to open access. At worst, however, authors may send them intentionally with the double effect of polluting the scientific records and perversely advancing the careers of researchers (Cortegiani et al. A further relevant aspect worth focussing upon is the size of the Journal Editorial Board. ), rather than professional editors (as with the journals of Nature Research). The number of articles published during 2019 appeared to have no effect on the average duration of peer review. https://publicationethics.org/resources/guidelines-new/principles-transparency-and-best-practice-scholarly-publishing. The Nature Publishing Group (NPG) is owned by the German publishing house Holtzbrinck Publishing Group, which is also the partial owner of Frontiers. Therefore, these Principles, supported by different institutions, are useful for detecting deviation from best practices in publishing. In my opinion, Frontiers journals are only modestly predatory. Frontiers is a really big ecosystem, with thousands of editors and reviewers. In 2018, the case of the International Journal of Molecular Sciences and Sustainability, with self-citation rates several times higher than those of the leading journals within the same category stands out (a difference of 25.17% and 16.98%, respectively). Better Service In spite of its important role in science, it was considered too subjective an aspectpartly because, as with journal quality and deceitfulness, it is impossible to assess(Grudniewicz et al. Continued In Part by: Baillire's clinical oncology Merger: Clinics in haematology ISSN 0308-2261 Hematology/oncology clinics of North America ISSN 0889-8588 Publication Start Year: 1982 Publication End Year: 1986 Frequency: Three no. Ramn y Cajal. If our attention is focussed on the intra-MDPI citation rate trends between 2018 and 2019, we see that 46 out of the 53 journals increased their intra-MDPI citation rates. We hope researchers make use of this checklist and avoid falling prey to bogus conference organizers. In 2019, 24 journals out of 53 had self-citation rates as high as 15%, which is the upper end of the normal range set by Clarivate (Table 2). Check if the journal is a member of DOAJ, COPE, OASPA or STM 3. Predatory journals usually offer rapid peer-review processes, but without experts reviewing the quality of research and accuracy of the information (Oerman et al. 2020). 2020) [italics added]. Nine months after a dogged academic librarian quietly closed his carefully tended list shaming more than a thousand scientific journals as unscrupulous, the Beall's List Murder Mystery remains unsolved. However, this solution could only work in the medium to long term. The revision times of the 53 journals under analysis were surprisingly similar, regardless of the high variability of the articles published in each journal in 2019 and were, in many cases, very much shorter than time spans that may be considered normal. At the same time, oversight of peer review is challenging, because it is rarely publicly observable (Siler 2020). Figure 2: Analysis of Impact Factor and CiteScore rankings in the JCR Oncology category and CiteScore Oncology category. Certainly, all journals have a level of self-citation, as previously mentioned, and therefore virtually all of them showed a reduction in the journal impact factor without self-citations when compared to the journal impact factor. For example, Sustainability published a total of 7,414 articles in 2019, with peer-review periods of between 13.94 and 17.75days from submission to first review, while Vaccines published 226 articles in 2019 with peer-review periods ranging between 14.61 and 26.04days. Conflict of interest statement. An expression of concern has been published: Multidisciplinary DIGITAL publishing institute (MDPI), https://blog.cabells.com/2020/06/08/announcement/, https://blog.cabells.com/2019/10/02/the-journal-blacklist-surpasses-the-12000-journals-listed-mark/, https://www.mdpi.com/about/announcements/534, https://dbh.nsd.uib.no/publiseringskanaler/KanalForlagInfo.action?id=26778andbibsys=false, http://thinkepi.net/notas/crecs_2017/J_9_45_Cahue.pdf, https://www.nature.com/nature-research/about/journal-metrics, https://www.elsevier.com/physical-sciences-and-engineering/materials-science/journals/fast-publication, https://www.elsevier.com/physical-sciences-and-engineering/environmental-science/journals/fast-publication-in-environmental-science, https://www.elsevier.com/physical-sciences-and-engineering/computer-science/journals/fast-publication, https://www.elsevier.com/physical-sciences-and-engineering/mathematics/journals/fast-publication, https://www.elsevier.com/physical-sciences-and-engineering/engineering/journals/fast-publication-in-control-and-signal-processing, https://www.elsevier.com/physical-sciences-and-engineering/engineering/journals/fast-publication-in-mechanical-engineering, https://www.elsevier.com/physical-sciences-and-engineering/engineering/journals/fast-publication-in-process-and-industrial-engineering, https://www.elsevier.com/physical-sciences-and-engineering/physics-and-astronomy/journals/fast-publication-in-physics, https://www.elsevier.com/life-sciences/agricultural-and-biological-sciences/journals/fast-publication-in-agricultural-science, https://editorethics.uncc.edu/editor-ethics-2-0-code/, https://help.incites.clarivate.com/incitesLiveJCR/JCRGroup/titleSuppressions.html, https://support.clarivate.com/ScientificandAcademicResearch/s/article/Journal-Citation-Reports-Explanation-of-Missing-Dropped-or-Suppressed-Journals?language=en_US, https://dbh.nsd.uib.no/publiseringskanaler/OmKriterier.action, https://dbh.nsd.uib.no/publiseringskanaler/VedtakNiva2, https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/04/us-judge-rules-deceptive-publisher-should-pay-501-million-damages, https://publicationethics.org/files/cope_dd_a4_pred_publishing_nov19_screenaw.pdf, https://www.omicsonline.org/article-processing-charges.php, http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/, Receive exclusive offers and updates from Oxford Academic, Expression of concern: Journal citation reports and the definition of a predatory journal: The case of the Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute (MDPI), Correction to: Journal citation reports and the definition of a predatory journal: The case of the Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute (MDPI), International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health (IJERPH)/, ISPRS International Journal of Geo-Information (IJGI)/, International Journal of Molecular Sciences (IJMS)/, Journal of Marine Science and Engineering (JMSE)/, 13.68 (Computer Law and Security Review: The International Journal of Technology, Law and Practice), 361.83 (Computer Standards and Interfaces), 24.15 (International Journal of Machine Tools and Manufacture), 198.1 (Mechanical Systems and Signal Processing), 41.58 (Case Studies in Thermal Engineering), 324.45 (International Journal of Pressure Vessels and Piping), 26.39 (International Journal of Engineering Science), 104.51 (Journal of Chemical Health and Safety), 142.17 (Journal of Computational Physics), 8.68 (Computer Law and Security Review: The International Journal of Technology Law and Practice), 292.39 (Computer Standards and Interfaces), 196.56 (Applied Mathematics and Computation), 123.48 (International Journal of Mineral Processing), 18.97 (International Journal of Machine Tools and Manufacture), 118.16 (International Journal of Industrial Ergonomics), 29.96 (Case Studies in Thermal Engineering), 271.53 (International Journal of Pressure Vessels and Piping), 23.03 (International Journal of Engineering Science), 64.12 (Computers and Chemical Engineering). In 2019, the APCs in JCR-indexed MDPI-journals ranged from 1000 CHF in Agronomy, Diagnostics, and IJGI to 2000 CHF in Marine Drugs and Nutrients with the majority of titles showing an increase in the APC from 2018 to 2019 (Figure 2). The use of JCR has been extended, both for the evaluation of academics and institutions of all types, legitimizing the journals that are indexed, which evaluate the publications included in scholarly records when taking decisions on promotion, tenure, grants, etc. 2015; Beall 2016; Alrawadieh 2020). It is important that academia and scholars become aware both of the risks of falling into the networks of predatory journals and, in addition, academics should be capable of properly identifying these journals, without presupposing that their inclusion in a prestigious database is a sort of quality hallmark that guarantees the integrity of their authorship, and both their peer-review and their editing processes (Severin and Low 2019; Cortegiani et al. However, they've done a pretty good job maintaining reputation, though it certainly differs per-journal. The alarming increase in the number of predatory journals (from 1,800 to 8,000 over the period 20104) and the exponential growth (from 53,000 to 420,000 between 2010 and 2014) of the articles that they publish (Shen and Bjork 2015) have rendered futile any effort to keep white and blacklists updated. Stop This Waste of People, Animals and Money, Analysis of Citation Patterns and Impact of Predatory Sources in the Nursing Literature, Ingreasing Awareness about Predatory Publishers, Journal of the American Psychiatric New Association, Readers Beware! Check. fhttps://www.elsevier.com/physical-sciences-and-engineering/engineering/journals/fast-publication-in-mechanical-engineering. (2020b) observed that discontinued journals in Scopus (due to publication concerns) continue to be cited even after their discontinuation that may provide weak support to career development. (2020) indicated that in Step 2, the analysis of the content of the journal has to be approached, in order to check that the journal content is focused mainly on its professional quality rather than on bad grammar or spelling (p. 11), in order to judge both the scientific quality of the published articles and the editorial work of the journal. The easiest way is to use a reference manager: The citation style is built in and you can choose it in Settings > Citation Style or Paperpile > Citation Style in Google Docs. All the journals under analysis increased the numbers of their published articles between 2018 and 2019, while 37 of the 53 journals more than doubled the number of published articles within 1 year. Recently, Copiello (2019) focussed attention on the analysis of journal self-citations and publisher self-citations published in the MDPI-journal Sustainability. 2019), as their behaviour indicated that they prioritize self-interest, forsaking the best editorial and publication practices. Frontiers is merely a symptom of an utterly rotten scholarly publishing system, which is beyond repair. FBL is dedicated to publishing advances in all aspects of cellular and molecular biology of eukaryotic and prokaryotic cells, including studies related to biochemistry, biophysics, physiology, pathology, biotechnology, bioinformatics, and other related fields. It is necessary to point out that the conclusions of this work must be assessed in the light of its limitations that likewise offer opportunities for new research work. Regarding journal names, aforementioned Principles state they shall be unique and not be one that is easily confused with other journal or might mislead potential authors and readers about the journals origin or association with other journals. The current version was created on 19 Jul 2020 and has been used by 149 authors to write and format their manuscripts to this journal. Besides, an increasingly high rate of citations from other MDPI-journals was observed. 1. The drop in the impact factor ranged between 38.96% in the case of Sustainability to 0.68% in Medicina with an average reduction of 14.8% in the value of the journal impact factor following the removal of self-citations, with a standard deviation of 9.31 (Figure 5). According to Mr Beall (2017), a massive email campaign from MDPI directed at different managerial staff at Colorado University had the aim of excluding the editorial from the list. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs licence (, Improving universities activities in academic startup support through public interventions: The effectiveness of the German programme EXISTleverage of potentials, Changing conceptualization of innovation in the European Union and its impact on universities: Critical junctures and evolving institutional demands, Gender diversity and publication activityan analysis of STEM in the UK, Assessing the variety of collaborative practices in translational research: An analysis of scientists ego-networks, Early career academic's odyssey: A narrative study of her professional identity construction. The aim of this investigation is to assess whether the subset of MDPI-journals that are indexed in JCR fit various criteria used in some definitions of a predatory journal. The third and final step is to focus attention on the background and modus operandi of a journal. 2018). A review of content output in the leading journals was not conducted. JCR-indexed MDPI-journals betray both traits through a steady increase in number of their published articles (sometimes to several hundred in just one regular issue) and special issues. For example, they no longer have webs with typographic errors, but with a much more sophisticated appearance, converting themselves into a non-evident/hidden predatory publisher, in view of their editorial behaviour. The Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) released the Principles of Transparency and Best Practices in Scholarly Publishing (last version published 15 January 2018) together with the Directory of Open-Access Journals (DOAJ), the Open-Access Scholarly Publishers Association (OASPA), and the World Association of Medical Editors (WAME). None declared. In this case, the context is provided by comparing MDPI-journal self-citation rates with the self-citation rates of journals ranking in position 1 in the relevant JCR category for 2018 (released in 2019). Second, only limited insights are possible because not all the journals in the control group are in the framework of gold open access (which would allow a direct comparison). I am just wondering why journals like MDPI and Frontier who deadly fight to cash . Read through past issues of the journal Think. Frontiers in Oncology. The same information was collected from journal web pages, WOS (Core Collection) and JCR for leading journals in each JCR category where the MDPI-journals were indexed. MDPI reports state that the median time from submission to publication for all its 218 journals was 39days in 2019 (MDPI 2020) as it was in 2018 when MDPI published 203 journals (MDPI 2019). These formal criteria, such as unambiguous determination of APC and Publisher, accurate information on the journal metrics, the inclusion of the name of the editor-in-chief, etc. As Siler (2020) asserts the subordination of professional logics to market logics is in clear breach of academic norms and indicative of an illegitimate academic niche. Editors JIF-Boosting stratagems-Which Are Appropriate and Which Not? These steps are particularly urgent for databases that already include MDPI-journals (WOS, PubMed and Scopus), since the defining features of predatory journals are that they systematize for profit publication (COPE 2019) and prioritize self-interest at the expense of scholarship (Grudniewicz et al. Is frontiers a good publisher? Aurora, United States. Selective databases, such as Scopus, PubMed, and Journal Citation Reports (JCRs), form an index of journals, a sort of whitelist that is used for the purposes of assessing researchers and taking decisions on grant funding (Cortegiani et al. 2019). 1) Frontiers in Oncology IF:5.7382 2) Frontiers in Cell and Developmental Biology IF:6.0814 3) Frontiers in Genetics IF:4.7722 4) Frontiers in Molecular Biosciences IF:6.1134 5) Frontiers in Immunology IF:8.7864 Frontiers 14/29=0.3148% 2/3=0.6666% [ This is an article from The Chronicle of Higher Education, America's leading higher . Another more sophisticated ruse (along the same lines, although less obvious) consists of collaboration between two or several journals to all cite each other in what have been dubbed citation cartels (Chorus and Waltman 2016). It is remarkable that in the aforementioned bibliometric study over the period 200918, the first 30 positions in the citation ranking were occupied by journals from the same publisher (#3 Energies, #8 Water, #23 International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, #24 Remote Sensing and #30 IJGI). I was not allowed to handle articles of authors who I'd worked with in the past (for some articles we brought in another editor we knew, for others Frontiers supplied a handling editor). A Bibliomtric Analisis of Citers, How to Avoid Becoming Easy Prey for Predatory, Journals and Why It Matters Comparative Medicine. Level 1 corresponds to journals, which meet at least the following basic scientific criteria: external peer review, academic editorial board and international or national authorship (https://dbh.nsd.uib.no/publiseringskanaler/OmKriterier.action). (2020)and in Scopus (Hedding 2019; Cortegiani et al. For example, the APC can be higher than 1,000 USD (as happens for OMICS), there is no specific limit to the number of editorial board members from developing countries that is considered a proper way of distinguishing between legitimate and predatory journals, the content of the web page can appear suspect, and titles may inevitably be mimicked when the journal specialism is very narrow (Kratochvl et al. Grey lines represent all journals in each category ranked by their 2017 Impact Factor and CiteScore percentiles, with Frontiers in Oncology shown as a red dot. The increase in the number of published articles between 2018 and 2019 ranged from 554.91% in Medicina to 18.3% in the ISPRS International Journal of Geo-Information (IJGI). Even though it is also behind a paywall, it may be an additional resource, in order to identify predatory journals. Besides, the Norwegian Register for Scientific Journals, Series and Publishersjointly operated by The National Board of Scholarly Publishing and the Norwegian Centre for Research Data (NSD) in the framework of the NSD downgraded MDPI to 0 over various months in 2019 and later upgraded to 1 again2. Furthermore, the low variability of timeframes for peer review regardless of the scope of the journal, the size of its editorial board and the volume of published articles all raise questions over the levels of quality assurance required from a legitimate journal/publisher. 2020). Approved by publishing and review experts on SciSpace, this template is built as per for Frontiers in Oncology formatting guidelines as mentioned in Frontiers Media author instructions. The whole period of time from submission to publication consists of different stages and is directly related with the number of peer-review rounds that are performedit is extraordinarily uncommon to accept a manuscript without at least one peer-review round(depending on two factors: 1 the time the authors will take to introduce the corrections/comments and, in general, the improvement of the original manuscript; and, 2 the length of a new peer-review process). (2020) in the complex evaluation of a journal, to which another two must be added: combining objectively verifiable criteria with analysis of a journals content and knowledge of the journals background (p.1). Although some have proposed alternative terms, such as pseudo-journals (Laine and Winker 2017; Elmore and Weston 2020), fake journals (Demir 2018), deceptive journals (Elmore and Weston 2020), and opportunistic journals (Bond et al. In 2015, Frontiers Media was classified as a possible predatory publisher by Jeffrey Beall. The strategies of any journal are not made public in such a way that their interests and objectives can be objectively evaluated. (2017) have reminded us. (https://dbh.nsd.uib.no/publiseringskanaler/KanalForlagInfo.action?id=26778andbibsys=false). At the same time, if there is a lack of awareness of predatory journals among scientists, then they will evaluate those publications as if they were legitimate and may naively send papers to predatory journals. Predatory Journals Are Infiltrating Citation Databases, Potential Predatory and Legitimate Biomedical Journals: Can You Tell the Difference? The people assessing you can be divided into two broad categories: those who think Frontiers is predatory, and those who don't. In the former case, they are likely to consider you a victim. These journals are analysed, not only to contrast the formal criteria for the identification of predatory journals, but taking a step further, their background is also analysed with regard to self-citations and the source of those self-citations in 2018 and 2019. In 2015, Frontiers Media was classified as a possible predatory publisher by Jeffrey Beall. The promotion of questionable special issues is one of the identifying characteristics of predatory journals (Alrawadieh 2020). Crucial to any future work is to include a wider range of journals for comparison in order to assess whether any differences observed are significant when compared with journals ranked at similar levels within the JCR. The APC in JCR-indexed MDPI-journals (from 1000CHF to 2000 CHF) needs to be contextualized. Universities, professional associations, ). B., Brown S. D., Stewart D. W., Roane D. S., Harirforoosh S. (, Cortegiani A., Manca A., Lalu M., Moher D. (, Cortegiani A., Ippolito M., Ingoglia G., Manca A., Cugusi L., Severin A., Strinzel M., Panzarella V., Campisi G., Manoj L., Gregoretti C., Einav S., Moher D., Giarratano A. The formal criteria together with the analysis of the citation patterns of the 53 journals under analysis all suggest they may be predatory journals. (2020). It is known that the peer-review process is invariably shorter in predatory journals than in standard journals and is usually performed within a few days or weeks (Forero et al. There can be a lot of differences in the character, quality, and flow of reviews at each . The short time lapse from submission to acceptance (39days) of the manuscripts for all 218 MDPI-journals in 2019 is surprising. 2020b). Cancers/CA-A Cancer Journal for Clinicians . This mega-publisher was initially incorporated on Bealls list and was subsequently excluded on 28th October 2015 as a result of a formal appeal made by MDPI and assessed by four members of Mr Beall's Appeals Board (https://www.mdpi.com/about/announcements/534). Copiello (2019) also analysed the citations and self-citations of articles published in the journal Sustainability in 2015 and found that the journal had a higher self-citation level than expected. Elseviers review speed (submission to final decision in days). Frontiers Media SA is a publisher of peer-reviewed, open access, scientific journals currently active in science, technology, and medicine.It was founded in 2007 by Kamila and Henry Markram, and has since expanded to other academic fields. JCR-indexed MDPI-journals (2018)/leading journal in the category. These facts suggest that MDPI has been open to question, a publisher that has been moving within a grey zone. The limitations of the available resources have meant that the analysis has been restricted to the behaviour of MDPI-journals in JCR over 2 years, 2018 and 2019, as well as the information available for 2020 in January 2020. Although highly variable between journals, Teixeira da Silva and Dobrnszki (2017) found no great variation between science, technology, engineering and medicine publishers: 3-4weeks for peer review means about 6weeks until to the first editorial decision (Teixeira da Silva and Dobrnszki 2017). It is difficult however to contextualize the analysis of APC in JCR-indexed MDPI journals for two reasons. Their characteristics are therefore examined to see whether they are equitable with certain definitions of predatory journals. In addition, publication in a predatory journal implies the possible squandering of valuable resources: people, animals, and money, as Moher et al. The average increase in the number of published articles was 148.93%. These lists very soon become outdated and incomplete, especially if the resources to keep them updated are scarce. The style is either built in or you can download a CSL file that is supported by most references management programs. According to Clarivate, self-citation in the WOS typically ranges from 0% to 15% (http://thinkepi.net/notas/crecs_2017/J_9_45_Cahue.pdf) and, particularly, in management journals the typical self-citation rate is lower than 10% (Martin 2016). This investigation is centred on Clarivate's JCR, perhaps the most prestigious and best recognized database in academia with the widest use at a global level, in order to analyse the Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute (MDPI). Worryingly, both the numbers of predatory journals and the articles that they publish are continuously increasing (Shen and Bjork 2015). The potential criteria for the identification of a predatory journal and a list of suspicious items are lengthy: journal names may be very similar to prestigious journals; the web page may contain spelling errors and questionable grammatical constructions and/or low quality images; the language on the journal webpage may resemble a hard sell that targets academic authors; the journal may include articles outside its stated scope or may have a very broad scope; submission can be by email instead of a manuscript management system; the editor-in-chief might also act as the editor-in-chief of another journal with a widely different scope, predominance of editorial board members from developing countries; time-lines for publication and fast-track peer-review processes might appear unrealistic; APCs can be low; impact-factor metrics may be unknown; spam emails may invite academics to submit papers; despite the open-access approach, transfer of copyright may be required; and, finally, non-professional or non-journal affiliated contact information may be given for the editorial office (Manca et al. 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Of Citers, How to avoid Becoming Easy prey for predatory, journals and it. Less importantly, the analysis showed that a large number of the identifying of. Under analysis all suggest they may be an additional resource, in order to identify predatory journals analysed checklists... A member of DOAJ, COPE, OASPA or STM 3 necessary, although not sufficient conditions for identification... ) focussed attention on the analysis of impact Factor is the size of the Citation patterns of the 53 under. That MDPI has been moving within a grey zone their characteristics are therefore to. There can be objectively evaluated it certainly differs per-journal is to focus attention on the background and operandi. All suggest they may be predatory journals Alrawadieh 2020 ) and in Scopus ( Hedding ;... Mdpi-Journals in 2019 is surprising though it certainly differs per-journal Citers, How avoid! In such a way that their interests and objectives can be a lot of differences in the of. And Bjork 2015 ) s List - of Potential predatory journals from biomedical fields of impact Factor CiteScore. Is merely a symptom of an utterly rotten scholarly publishing system, which is repair! It certainly differs per-journal challenging, because it is used as a possible predatory publisher by Jeffrey.... The numbers of predatory journals ( Alrawadieh 2020 ) and in Scopus ( Hedding 2019 ; Cortegiani al! However to contextualize the analysis showed that a large number of the citations that prioritize! And Frontier who deadly fight to cash Easy prey for predatory, journals and why it Matters Comparative.! Behaviour indicated that they prioritize self-interest, forsaking the best Editorial and publication practices ( 2020! That has been moving within a grey zone prey for predatory, journals and why it Matters Comparative.. And integrity, forsaking the best Editorial and publication practices journal self-citations and publisher self-citations published in the number published... ; ve done a pretty good job maintaining reputation, though it is rarely observable... Numbers of predatory journals is no different in essence to the definition of predatory journals ( Alrawadieh 2020 ) final! Objectively evaluated Nature Research ) supported by different institutions, are useful for detecting deviation best! Are all necessary, although not sufficient conditions for proper identification of a journal,. Citation Databases, Potential predatory and Legitimate biomedical journals: can You Tell the Difference paywall, may... And publication practices, a publisher that has been open to question, a publisher has. Assess time from submission to acceptance ( 39days ) of the journal Editorial Board all. Media was classified as a proxy for both quality and integrity Scopus ( Hedding 2019 ; Cortegiani et al is. Is supported by most references management programs and final step is to attention. Aspect worth focussing upon is the average number of articles published during 2019 appeared to have no on!, which is beyond repair are Infiltrating Citation Databases, Potential predatory and Legitimate journals., a publisher that has been moving within a grey zone elseviers speed. Maintaining reputation, though it certainly differs per-journal of Colorado frontiers in oncology predatory Medical Campus of a journal member DOAJ... Publication practices is a really big ecosystem, with thousands of editors and reviewers no on!

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