{"id":9012,"date":"2021-06-03T10:53:45","date_gmt":"2021-06-03T10:53:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thepublicationplan.com\/?p=9012"},"modified":"2021-09-15T14:08:01","modified_gmt":"2021-09-15T14:08:01","slug":"researchers-find-hundreds-of-predatory-journals-indexed-on-scopus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thepublicationplan.com\/2021\/06\/03\/researchers-find-hundreds-of-predatory-journals-indexed-on-scopus\/","title":{"rendered":"Researchers find hundreds of predatory journals indexed on Scopus"},"content":{"rendered":"

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With predatory publishing continuing to escalate<\/a>, there is a need to evaluate the extent to which it has infiltrated academic practice. In a recent analysis<\/a> of Scopus<\/a>, a leading scholarly database, researchers found that almost 3% of indexed studies had been published in potentially predatory journals.<\/p>\n

As highlighted in a recent Nature news article<\/a>, researchers searched Scopus for the names of \u201cpotential, possible or probable\u201d predatory journals and publishers identified by Beall (2016<\/a>). A total of 324 suspected predatory journals were identified; these titles published over 160,000 articles between 2015\u20132017, accounting for 2.8% of the studies indexed during this period.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, this isn\u2019t an isolated problem \u2014 predatory journals have previously been found<\/a> to be indexed on other databases such as PubMed. It is widely recognized that predatory publishing threatens research integrity, however defining \u201csafelists\u201d and \u201cwatchlists\u201d isn\u2019t easy<\/a> and they are difficult to maintain as these journals constantly evolve their practices.<\/p>\n

Although a spokesperson for Scopus told Nature that it has stopped indexing new content for 65% of flagged journals, old content remains. This means that their \u00a0citation counts still increase<\/a>, and may continue to misinform important institutional decisions such as employee evaluation and funding. The authors of the analysis suggest that the current filters used to assess journals are proving ineffective against the more convincing predatory journals, and call for fact checking and upgraded selection criteria to address the issue.<\/p>\n

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They warn that \u201cunless the selection criteria are upgraded and\/or the bar for inclusion is raised significantly, fake scientific journals will keep creeping in the database\u201d.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

We look forward to seeing how scholarly databases adapt to this evolving threat.<\/p>\n

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After reading the article, click here<\/a>\u00a0for a brief survey and to receive your authorization code for your Credit Tracker. This serves as documentation for the activity.<\/p>\n

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