Predatory Journals in the Criminal Justices Sciences: Getting our Cite on the Target

Abstract

The advent of Open-Access publishing has opened the door to predatory journals. While many Open-Access publishers are trustworthy, not all of them are guided by legitimate or altruistic motives. When publishers become beholden to authors, rather than readers, the incentive and motivation to uphold and preserve integrity in research and scholarship is eroded. All disciplines would benefit from institutional and peer reviews of open-access journals listed as potentially, possibly, or probably predatory, and from a list of institutionally sanctioned acceptable-journals, prior to submitting their work for publication. At present, these protections do not seem to exist. Criminology/Criminal Justice researchers are being solicited by, and are published in predatory journals, which hold little scholarly value or credibility, resulting in serious negative ramifications for tenure and promotion. This exploratory study utilizes two surveys to assess knowledge and perceptions of predatory journals among criminal justice and criminology authors who have published in a predatory journal, and ACJS and ASC members.

Notes

¹ It should be noted that universities are increasingly relying on adjunct faculty (41% of faculty in 2013), who do not have the same publication requirements as tenure-track faculty, and who also do not receive the same benefits or status (Curtis & Thornton, 2013).

² No individual characteristics or institutional characteristics were collected in this survey, but future research should include these measures to test for variations in perceptions based on these variables.