Two Case Reports
Case Report 1: A research article was submitted and later withdrawn, even though it was proceeding nicely through the review process at the Journal of the American Board of Family Medicine (JABFM). On further investigation, the author reported they had originally submitted the manuscript to a predatory journal, but within 48 hours recognized their error and requested withdrawal of the article. The predatory journal published the article anyway, without permission, a fact discovered only during the review process at JABFM.
Case Report 2: A reviewer of a manuscript submitted to Family Medicine (FM) discovered a possible duplicate in an online journal, which led to an allegation of academic misconduct for submitting a previously published article. The author had paid a fee when submitting the manuscript to a predatory journal but later asked that the article be withdrawn after it became apparent that the journal conducted no formal peer review. The predatory journal published the article anyway, without the author's permission. The author learned the article had been published only when questioned about possible academic misconduct.
The Problem
The earnest authors in these case reports fell victim to a growing threat to academic publication: predatory journals. As editors of journals serving family medicine, we see both the injuries done to well-intentioned authors and the losses of research and scholarship resulting by predation by unscrupulous journals. The risks of entanglement with predatory publishers are of special concern in family medicine because our research and scholarship range so widely over topics, methods, and disciplines. Our discipline also encourages scholarly work by authors who may be less versed in the process and perils of publishing, including learners, nonacademic practitioners, teachers, patients, and community representatives.
Our 3 family medicine journals (JABFM, FM, and Annals of Family Medicine [AFM]) serve a large community of authors, readers, researchers, reviewers, patients, and populations. We adhere to international ethical and scientific standards, including the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE; http://www.ICMJE.org) and Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE; https://publicationethics.org). Our journals provide free content to all readers worldwide and are indexed in MEDLINE for recognition and immediate retrieval. We charge no submission, processing, or publication fees to authors. (See Table 1.) We do all this through the sustained generous support of our professional organizations dedicated to family medicine/primary care. We also rely on our dedicated corps of peer reviewers who generously donate their time and expertise to the essential peer review process.
Our true “free access” model is unfortunately becoming rare in the competitive world of medical journal publishing. We write to alert potential authors and help them navigate the shifting sands of predatory publication in medical science.
Predatory journals pose several risks to authors (see Table 2). Their presence and practices also threaten the legitimacy and quality of published scientific reports and threaten to undermine confidence in published research and science. Readers and news outlets who do not recognize predatory journals may rely on and disseminate their published research findings. These journals have been called “fake news” by Bloomberg Businessweek,1 “garbage collectors” by A Moore,2 and simply, a “scam” by Jones and McCullough, who noted that “The real ethical injustice of predatory medical journals is … in contaminating the medical literature with nonscientific publications or even perversions of scientific publications, which are potentially harmful to patients should unsuspecting readers put unfounded ideas into … practice.”3
The terms “predatory journal” and “predatory publisher” were adopted in 2010 by the University of Colorado librarian Jeffrey Beall to describe “unscrupulous open access publishers publishing articles with little or no real peer review.”4 We agree with the Wikipedia definition, “predatory open-access publishing is an exploitative open-access publishing business model that involves charging publication fees to authors without providing the editorial and publishing services associated with legitimate journals (open access or not).”5 A predatory publisher may operate multiple predatory journals, sometimes many.
Predatory journals do not meet the accepted standards for professional scientific publications and do not qualify for indexing in major bibliographic indexes, such as MEDLINE and PubMed. Thus, they may not be searchable and less likely to be cited by other scholars. The names often seem attractive by using familiar words found in the titles of well-recognized legitimate journals. Predatory journals typically charge fees to authors, work on for-profit business models, and are based in countries outside the United States, Canada, or Europe (although their inviting messages often originate from US addresses). The fee may not be revealed until after the author submits the manuscript or after it is accepted. Manuscripts often undergo little or no peer review, get inadequate editorial guidance, and may appear on-line, if at all, with poor production quality. Some predatory journals publish submitted articles online immediately or within days of the receipt of the publication fee.
To give themselves the appearance of legitimacy, these journals try to assemble editorial boards and reviewer panels, often by sending mass email invitations to recruit researchers and faculty members to join. They may offer free submission and publication to those who agree to serve. Some offer money for editorial positions. Those who unwittingly agree may find it difficult to get their names dissociated from such journals. Some academics have discovered their names listed as editors or editorial board members of predatory journals without ever having been asked for, or given, their permission.6
Once an article is published, even in a predatory journal, it cannot be submitted or published in another journal. Publication ethics and scientific practice prohibit duplicate publication of original research except under specific circumstances, as noted by ICMJE and COPE. An author may recognize the predatory nature of the journal too late and find it difficult or impossible to retract the manuscript or to get the article removed from the website. The author may also discover that the article is only intermittently available on the journal's website.7 Furthermore, there may be no clear publishing agreement or effective copyright protection.
Why Has This Happened?
Many factors have contributed to the appearance of predatory journals. First, the internet and inexpensive software provide a low-cost platform that allows anyone, anywhere, to create a journal and website, invite authors to submit manuscripts, and pretend to process them. Without the same costs as legitimate journals, it takes only a few unsuspecting authors to make a profit from each plausible, but illegitimate, journal title. Second, the volume of scientific research and pressures on academics to publish have increased exponentially. Third, pharmaceutical advertisers have directed their dollars away from journals, often to direct-to-consumer media. As a result, some financially struggling professional organizations have turned their journals over to corporate publishers. Fourth, the recent consolidation of journal publishing by several large publishing firms has resulted in soaring subscriptions prices8 for individuals and libraries, whose resources are dwindling.9
As a consequence of the decline in subscriptions and revenues, journal publishers seek to cover their costs and/or increase their profits by charging “article processing fees” (APFs) to authors. Some offer prompt “open access” publication for a substantial fee but sequester the articles of those who do not pay behind subscription paywalls. A growing number of legitimate journals charge such fees, which has made it more difficult for authors to detect “predatory” journals. These paywalls also create barriers. Although readers connected to major health science libraries may get subsidized access to legitimate journals, unfortunately, others including patients, community members, and practitioners often have to pay significant amounts per use to read [taxpayer supported] research reports.
As authors and their institutions struggle with increasing publication fees, predatory journals have found a ready market of eager authors. In 2015, BMC Medicine estimated the revenue from the predatory journal market at $74 million compared with $244 million for reputable open-access journals and $10.5 billion that traditional journals collected in 2015.10
What to Do: Navigating the New World of Scientific Publication
Authors should carefully navigate this complex and changing landscape of journal publishing. We encourage all authors to investigate prospective journals thoroughly and choose a target journal early in the process of research and writing. Several resources can help authors identify predatory journals14 (Table 4). Beall's list was an attempt to identify predatory journals, but under pressure, he quit publishing in 2016; at that time, the list included 1155 publishers.1
Additional warning signs and strategies to identify predatory journals are listed in Table 3.
“Indexing” is an important measure of legitimacy. Established journals that meet quality standards can apply for and become included in key bibliographic indexes. The world standard index for clinical medicine and biomedical sciences is MEDLINE, the National Library of Medicine (NLM) journal citation database. To be indexed in MEDLINE, the journal must be examined and approved by the NLM Literature Selection Technical Review Committee (LSTRC) using explicit criteria (https://www.nlm.nih.gov/pubs/factsheets/jsel.html).11 Medline can also deselect journals if they no longer meet criteria (see example of a journal switching from legitimate to predatory).12 NLM supports practices outlined by COPE, International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICJME), Council of Scientific Editors (CSE), and National Information Standards Organization (NISO). Indexing in MEDLINE means your published article will be searchable on PubMed. PubMed index is worthwhile, but falls short of MEDLINE standards. PubMed Central (PMC) is a NLM digital repository that includes publications and databases with looser criteria. Google Scholar can be a useful search tool, but it has been known to include articles from predatory journals.13
Summary
We all share responsibility for addressing the threats of predatory publishing. Authors can avoid submitting work to such journals, even if promised sure acceptance and prompt publication. Readers can be vigilant when assessing the sources of published reports. Journal editors can check submitted manuscripts for duplicate publication, refuse to consider work already published in predatory journals, and carefully review article references before publication. Reviewers should be suspicious of requests from unfamiliar journals and refuse involvement with predatory journals and publishers. Professional organizations that sponsor journals can renew their commitments to quality, control, and access. Investigators can write grant budgets to include processing fees for publication in reputable journals. Academic institutions can restructure their criteria for academic advancement to favor quality over quantity of scholarly publications.
What is at stake is the soundness of our science, the quality of our scholarly literature, and the public's trust in our work.
Acknowledgments
We thank the organizations that sponsor our journals and their members who recognize the value scientific journals bring to their patient care, education, policy, research, organizations, and specialty. JABFM: American Board of Family Medicine, Inc. FM: Society of Teachers of Family Medicine. AFM: jointly sponsored by the American Board of Family Medicine, Association of Departments of Family Medicine, Association of Family Medicine Residency Directors, College of Family Physicians of Canada, North American Primary Care Research Group, and Society of Teachers of Family Medicine.
Notes
Funding: none.
Conflict of interest: Authors serve as editors of indexed journals. Dr. Bowman is Editor of the Journal of the American Board of Family Medicine. Dr. Saultz is Editor of Family Medicine. Dr. Phillips is Senior Associate Editor of the Annals of Family Medicine. Dr. Phillips served on the Literature Selection Technical Review Committee of the National Library of Medicine. The authors have no other conflicts of interest to declare.
To see this article online, please go to: http://jabfm.org/content/31/5/671.full.