Predatory publishing
Predatory publishing denotes an unethical academic publishing scheme wherein journals and publishers extract article processing charges from authors under the guise of legitimate open-access outlets, while delivering negligible peer review, editorial scrutiny, or dissemination value, thereby subverting scholarly integrity for financial gain.[1][2] This model exploits the "publish or perish" pressures inherent in academia and the gold open-access paradigm, where fees ostensibly fund accessibility but instead line predatory operators' pockets without reciprocal quality assurance.[1][3] The phenomenon, which surged post-2000 amid open-access expansion, manifests in hallmarks such as unsolicited email solicitations, fabricated editorial boards stocked with unwitting scholars, inflated or invented impact metrics, and lax acceptance criteria that prioritize volume over rigor.[1][4][5] Coined by librarian Jeffrey Beall in the early 2010s, the term galvanized awareness through his curated lists of suspect entities, though backlash from implicated parties led to the lists' temporary discontinuation in 2017; archived versions persist as cautionary tools.[1][6] Predatory outputs erode trust in peer-reviewed literature, inflate citation metrics with substandard papers, divert research funds to valueless publications, and jeopardize researchers' reputations via tainted CVs, with estimates suggesting thousands of such journals active globally and disproportionate prevalence in fields like biomedicine and social sciences.[2][7][8] Countermeasures include vetting tools like Cabell's Predatory Reports, DOAJ whitelists, and campaigns such as Think. Check. Submit., yet systemic incentives—tenure demands, funding ties to output quantity, and lax oversight in developing regions—sustain the issue, underscoring causal links between distorted academic evaluation metrics and fraudulent proliferation.[1][9]Definition and Core Features
Defining Predatory Publishing
Predatory publishing refers to an exploitative academic publishing practice in which journals or publishers charge authors fees for publication while failing to deliver expected scholarly services, such as rigorous peer review, editorial oversight, and proper indexing.[1] The term was coined by librarian Jeffrey Beall in 2010 to describe open-access publishers that prioritize financial gain over academic integrity, often mimicking legitimate journals through deceptive websites and aggressive solicitation tactics.[6] These operations exploit the author-pays model of open access, where article processing charges (APCs) are levied without corresponding quality controls, leading to the dissemination of low-quality or pseudoscientific content.[10] Core characteristics include promises of rapid publication timelines that bypass thorough evaluation, with acceptance rates approaching 100% regardless of manuscript merit; lists of editorial board members who are unaware of or uninvolved with the journal; and hosting on platforms that lack transparency about ownership, location, or business practices.[11] Predatory outlets frequently engage in spam emailing to solicit submissions, using templates that exaggerate journal prestige or offer fake impact factors.[1] They may also rebrand existing predatory titles or hijack legitimate journal names to confuse authors, while providing no mechanisms for article retraction or correction even when errors or misconduct are evident.[12] Unlike legitimate open-access journals, which adhere to established standards like those from the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) or Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), predatory ones systematically misrepresent their operations to extract fees, often ranging from hundreds to thousands of dollars per article, without investing in peer review expertise or long-term archiving.[1] This model undermines scholarly communication by flooding databases with unverifiable research, eroding trust in published literature, and incentivizing quantity over quality in academic evaluation metrics.[2] Empirical assessments, such as sting operations submitting flawed manuscripts, have confirmed that predatory journals publish without substantive revision, highlighting the absence of genuine editorial gatekeeping.[10]Distinguishing from Legitimate Publishing Models
Legitimate scholarly publishing models, including both traditional subscription-based and reputable open access journals, prioritize rigorous quality assurance through expert peer review, typically involving multiple independent reviewers selected for their subject expertise, with processes lasting from weeks to months before acceptance.[13] Predatory journals, by contrast, often simulate or entirely omit substantive peer review, promising publication in days or guaranteeing acceptance to attract submissions and fees, thereby undermining scholarly standards for profit.[13] [14] Editorial structures provide another clear demarcation. Reputable journals assemble verifiable editorial boards of field experts whose affiliations and credentials align with the publication's scope, ensuring oversight and accountability.[13] Predatory operations frequently list fictitious, unresponsive, or unqualified editors, or centralize control under the publisher without independent input, as evidenced by investigations into deceptive practices.[12] Transparency in financial and operational policies distinguishes ethical publishers. Legitimate open access journals disclose article processing charges (APCs) explicitly post-acceptance, detail funding sources, offer waiver options for authors, and adhere to standard licensing like Creative Commons, while maintaining clear contact information and author guidelines.[14] [13] Predatory entities obscure or demand fees upfront, employ vague scopes mismatched with published content, and use spamming tactics for solicitation, often lacking verifiable publisher details.[14] Discoverability and metrics further highlight differences. Established journals achieve indexing in recognized databases such as Web of Science, Scopus, or PubMed, enabling genuine impact measurement via tools like Journal Citation Reports.[13] [12] Predatory journals typically evade such indexing, fabricating metrics or relying on obscure ones, and produce content with evident quality lapses like grammatical errors or irrelevant articles.[12]| Aspect | Legitimate Publishing | Predatory Publishing |
|---|---|---|
| Peer Review | Rigorous, expert-led, multi-stage (e.g., 2-3 reviewers, 2+ weeks) | Minimal or absent, rapid (days), often guaranteed acceptance[13] |
| Editorial Board | Verifiable experts aligned with scope | Fictitious or unqualified members[13] |
| Fee Transparency | APCs post-acceptance, waivers available, funding explained[14] | Upfront or hidden fees, no clear support model[14] |
| Indexing & Metrics | In Scopus, WoS; real citation data | Fake or no legitimate indexing[12] |
Evolving Tactics and Deceptions
Predatory publishers have increasingly adopted sophisticated deceptions following heightened awareness, such as Jeffrey Beall's predatory journal list initiated in 2009 and discontinued in 2017 amid legal pressures, as well as regulatory actions like the U.S. Federal Trade Commission's $50 million fine against OMICS International in 2018 for deceptive practices.[15][16] These adaptations include retconning, where notorious publishers rebrand journals to distance themselves from prior scandals; for instance, OMICS transferred titles like Advances in Pharmacoepidemiology & Drug Safety to Longdom Publishing in 2019, obscuring its origins while continuing operations.[17] Publishers also implement cosmetic changes to evade detection tools and blacklists, such as altering URLs, website designs, and typesetting without substantive improvements in editorial rigor; OMICS reportedly modified hundreds of journal URLs in 2020 and launched new imprints like Hilaris to simulate legitimacy.[17] Journal hijacking persists as a core tactic, involving the creation of fraudulent websites that replicate legitimate journals' branding, domains, and metadata to solicit submissions and fees; this method targets journals with minimal online presence, exploiting researcher trust in established titles, with documented cases traced back to at least 2015 and ongoing threats noted in 2024 analyses.[18][19] To mask exploitative fee structures, operators now disguise article processing charges as "hybrid variant" access fees payable post-acceptance, often for content inaccessible via standard libraries, diverging from earlier overt pay-to-publish models.[15] Coercive elements have intensified, including blackmail tactics like refusing manuscript withdrawals without refund penalties or threatening legal action.[15] Bootlegging—republishing peer-reviewed articles from reputable sources without permission—further bolsters apparent credibility; a 2021 incident involved nine papers illicitly lifted from Elsevier's Bone Reports into iMEDPub's Journal of Bone Research and Reports.[17] Recent evolutions leverage technology for deception, such as employing AI to simulate peer review processes, proofreading, and editorial polish, while assembling nominal "established" teams to claim oversight—though lacking blinded expert reviews or multiple iterations—allowing outlets to mimic quality without substantive rigor.[15] Websites are optimized to conceal hallmark predatory indicators, frustrating AI-based detectors like Random Forest Classifiers or JournalsCOPE, thereby sustaining operations amid automated scrutiny tools developed post-2020.[15] These shifts reflect a broader pattern of fluid adaptation, prioritizing survival over transparency and prioritizing revenue extraction through refined mimicry rather than overt flaws characteristic of pre-2017 practices.[20]Historical Development
Emergence in the Open Access Era
The open access (OA) movement gained formal momentum with the Budapest Open Access Initiative in February 2002, which advocated for free online availability of peer-reviewed scholarly literature to accelerate research and remove access barriers. This initiative promoted two primary models: green OA (self-archiving) and gold OA (publishing in journals that provide immediate open access, often funded by article processing charges or APCs paid by authors or their institutions).[21] The gold OA model, reliant on APCs typically ranging from hundreds to thousands of dollars per article, shifted economic incentives from reader subscriptions to author-side payments, creating opportunities for low-cost digital publishers to enter the market with minimal overhead.[22] As OA journals proliferated in the mid-2000s, enabled by affordable web technologies and the absence of traditional gatekeeping, some operators began exploiting the model by soliciting APCs without delivering rigorous peer review or editorial standards.[23] Early examples of questionable practices appeared around 2001 with journals like the Journal of Biological Sciences published by ANSInet, which accepted submissions with lax scrutiny for fees.[24] By the late 2000s, the volume of such outlets grew, with predatory journals publishing an estimated 53,000 articles in 2010 alone, reflecting the rapid scaling facilitated by the OA era's demand for quick publication venues amid academic pressures.[22] Librarian Jeffrey Beall first systematically identified these exploitative publishers starting in 2008, analyzing 18 entities between 2009 and 2012 that operated over 1,300 journals while exhibiting hallmarks like aggressive solicitation, fake impact factors, and superficial review processes.[25] Beall's work highlighted how the OA shift, while democratizing access, inadvertently lowered barriers to entry for profit-driven entities uncommitted to scholarly integrity, leading to a surge in low-quality outputs that mimicked legitimate journals.[22] This emergence underscored causal vulnerabilities in the author-pays system, where verifiable quality controls were often absent, allowing predatory practices to thrive alongside genuine OA innovations.[26]Investigative Experiments and Exposés
Librarian Jeffrey Beall initiated systematic scrutiny of predatory publishing by compiling and publishing an online list of potential predatory publishers and standalone journals starting in 2010, drawing from observed patterns of deceptive practices such as aggressive solicitation, lack of rigorous peer review, and substandard editorial oversight.[6] Beall's criteria included indicators like exaggerated claims of impact, poor website quality, and failure to adhere to Committee on Publication Ethics standards, which he detailed in scholarly analyses of specific publishers between 2009 and 2012.[25] The list grew to identify over 1,000 journals and 200 publishers by 2016, serving as a de facto blacklist that influenced academic institutions worldwide, though Beall removed it in 2017 amid legal threats from a listed publisher.[6] In a landmark investigative experiment published in Science on October 4, 2013, journalist John Bohannon submitted a fabricated manuscript titled "Nuclear protein in brain of dead schizophrenic" to 304 open-access journals, using SCIgen software to generate pseudoscientific content with deliberate methodological flaws.[27] Of these, 151 journals (about 50%) accepted the paper for publication, including 45 that proceeded to print despite evident errors like incorrect protein localization and ethical lapses; notably, 82% of outright acceptances came from journals on Beall's predatory list, with 35 predatory publishers accepting at least one submission.[27] This sting operation empirically demonstrated widespread deficiencies in peer review among fee-charging open-access outlets, prompting debates on distinguishing predatory from legitimate models while highlighting vulnerabilities in the system.[27] Subsequent exposés built on these foundations, such as a 2018 collaborative investigation by The Guardian and German publishers, which uncovered an expansive network of predatory operations producing low-quality or fabricated research primarily for article processing charge revenue, often mimicking reputable journals through hijacked branding and spam emails.[28] More recently, anonymous online accounts since 2018 have documented specific instances of predatory tactics via social media, including forged editorial boards and citation manipulation, amplifying awareness without formal experiments.[29] These efforts underscore persistent issues, as evidenced by 2024 analyses showing predatory entities adapting by acquiring legitimate titles to launder credibility, though empirical sting operations like Bohannon's remain rare due to ethical and resource constraints.[29]Legal and Regulatory Milestones
In 2016, the United States Federal Trade Commission (FTC) initiated the first major legal action against a predatory publisher by filing a complaint against OMICS International in the U.S. District Court for the District of Nevada, alleging deceptive practices including misleading claims about peer review rigor, indexing status, impact factors, and article processing charges that were often undisclosed until after acceptance.[30] The court granted a preliminary injunction in 2017, and in March 2019, ruled in favor of the FTC, imposing a $50.1 million judgment representing OMICS's net earnings over six years, along with mandates to cease deceptive operations, provide compliance reports for 20 years, and notify affected parties.[31] This case established a precedent for treating predatory publishing as consumer fraud under Section 5 of the FTC Act, emphasizing accountability for false representations of editorial standards, though enforcement remains limited by the offshore nature of many operations.[30] In response to domestic proliferation, India's University Grants Commission (UGC) escalated regulatory measures starting in 2017 by releasing a blacklist of over 4,300 suspected predatory journals and conferences, barring their consideration for academic promotions or evaluations.[32] This evolved into the UGC-Consortium for Academic and Research Ethics (CARE) framework in 2018, which maintains a dynamic whitelist of approximately 17,000 approved journals as of 2023, requiring institutions to exclude non-listed outlets from faculty assessments and tying compliance to funding allocations.[33] Pakistan's Higher Education Commission (HEC) implemented parallel policies through its Journal Recognition System (HJRS), established in 2016 and updated periodically, deeming non-recognized journals ineligible for promotion credits and issuing guidelines in 2018 to detect scams via red flags like unsolicited invitations and hidden fees.[34] These national whitelists, while reducing incentives for predatory submissions—evidenced by a reported drop in suspect publications in UGC evaluations—face criticism for potential overreach and inclusion errors, as predatory entities adapt by mimicking legitimate titles.[32] Private litigation emerged as a complementary mechanism in 2023 when eleven authors, supported by the Authors Guild, sued U.S.-based publishers MindStir Media and GenZ Publishing in Florida federal court for breach of contract and fraud, claiming they operated as predatory entities by promising marketing services and royalties while delivering substandard editing, deceptive royalty calculations, and failure to pay over $100,000 owed.[35] The suit highlighted exploitative contract terms and lack of transparency, seeking class-action status; similar claims against hybrid models underscore growing author awareness but limited deterrence absent systemic oversight. Internationally, the European Academies' Science Advisory Council (ALLEA) issued a 2023 statement urging member states to strengthen national codes of research integrity, enhance funder policies against predatory outputs, and promote transparency in open-access fees, though without binding enforcement.[36] These milestones reflect a shift from voluntary blacklists to enforceable prohibitions, yet causal factors like unchecked author-pays models persist, with regulatory efficacy constrained by jurisdictional gaps and the pseudonymous operations of many predatory firms.[37]Prevalence and Scale
Estimates of Predatory Outlets
Jeffrey Beall's scholarly blog and list, started in 2009, provided early systematic estimates by cataloging potential predatory publishers and journals based on criteria such as deceptive practices and lack of editorial rigor. By 2015, Beall identified approximately 996 such publishers overseeing more than 11,800 journals.[38] After Beall discontinued his list in 2017 amid controversy, Cabell's Predatory Reports became a leading commercial database for tracking deceptive journals, applying over 60 behavioral indicators to classify outlets. The blacklist surpassed 12,000 entries by October 2019, reached around 13,500 by July 2020, and exceeded 17,000 by 2023.[39][40][41] Other analyses corroborate these figures, estimating over 15,000 predatory journals active in 2021, with the total difficult to pinpoint precisely due to evolving tactics and underreporting.[42][43] A 2025 machine learning study flagged more than 1,000 suspect open-access journals at a balanced classification threshold, noting these outlets collectively produce hundreds of thousands of articles annually and receive millions of citations, suggesting the broader predatory ecosystem remains substantial.[44] These estimates highlight predatory publishing's growth alongside open-access expansion, though blacklists like Cabell's face criticism for potential false positives and incomplete coverage of standalone or rebranded outlets.[45]Geographic and Disciplinary Patterns
Analysis of articles published in suspected predatory journals indexed in Scopus between 2015 and 2017 indicates marked cross-country variations in prevalence, with the share of such articles relative to total national output ranging from a mean of 2.8% across 172 countries to maxima exceeding 17% in select cases.[46] The highest concentrations occurred in Kazakhstan (17.00%), Indonesia (16.73%), Iraq (12.94%), Albania (12.08%), and Malaysia (11.60%), predominantly in Asia and North Africa.[46] These patterns correlate with factors such as smaller research sectors, lower GDP per capita, and reliance on English-language outlets, which predatory operators exploit through aggressive solicitation.[46]| Country | Share of Articles in Suspected Predatory Journals (%) |
|---|---|
| Kazakhstan | 17.00 |
| Indonesia | 16.73 |
| Iraq | 12.94 |
| Albania | 12.08 |
| Malaysia | 11.60 |
| Discipline | Share of Articles in Suspected Predatory Journals (%) |
|---|---|
| Social Sciences | 3.99 |
| Life Sciences | 3.39 |
| Health Sciences | 1.98 |
| Physical Sciences | 1.96 |