Analysis of thirteen predatory publishers: a trap for eager-to-publish researchers

Abstract

Objective: To demonstrate a strategy employed by predatory publishers to trap eager-to-publish authors or researchers into submitting their work.

Methods: This was a case study of 13 potential, possible, or probable predatory scholarly open-access publishers with similar characteristics. Eleven publishers were included from Beall’s list and two additional publishers were identified from a Google web search. Each publisher’s site was visited and its content analyzed. Publishers publishing biomedical journals were further explored and additional data was collected regarding their volumes, details of publications and editorial-board members.

Results: Overall, the look and feel of all 13 publishers was similar including names of publishers, website addresses, homepage content, homepage images, list of journals and subject areas, as if they were copied and pasted. There were discrepancies in article-processing charges within the publishers. None of the publishers identified names in their contact details and primarily included only email addresses. Author instructions were similar across all 13 publishers. Most publishers listed journals of varied subject areas including biomedical journals (12 publishers) covering different geographic locations. Most biomedical journals published none or very few articles. The highest number of articles published by any single biomedical journal was 28. Several editorial-board members were listed across more than one journals, with one member listed 81 times in different 69 journals (i.e. twice in 12 journals).

Conclusion: There was a strong reason to believe that predatory publishers may have several publication houses with different names under a single roof to trap authors from different geographic locations.

Keywords:

• Open access
• publication ethics
• questionable journal
• scientific publishing

Transparency

Declaration of funding

None.

Declaration of financial/other relationships

P.B. has disclosed that he is an employee of Tata Consultancy Services, Mumbai; however, the views presented in this paper are those of the author (purely personal) and not of his current or any previous employers.

CMRO peer reviewers on this manuscript have no relevant financial or other relationships to disclose.