Predators and impersonators: A new breed of journals

In the new age of electronic publishing and the move toward open-access content, new journals are popping up overnight. Admit it, we all receive several invitations a month to publish in or serve on the editorial board of one of these new, self-described “premier” journals that claim to be in our field. In many cases, the titles of the journals are alarmingly similar to long-standing reputable journals, and there are, according to some observers, perhaps 4,000 of these impostors. Plus, the same sort of identity theft has been used to conjure up conventions that appear to be associated with highly respected scientific societies. Granted, a few of these new titles have become well-respected, peer-reviewed, scientific publications. However, most of these new online projects are creating a pseudo-academic world of prestigious-sounding titles, while attempting to capitalize on the long-standing reputations and branding of scholarly publications. Twenty years ago, it took almost two years to launch a new journal. The risks were major and costs were recouped over time through a variety of print distribution models. Today, the risks are minor, distribution is easy, and costs can be recouped quickly through a perversion of the open-access model. Open-access publishing has sparked considerable debate about the scholarly publishing model, and publishers have scrambled to develop new business models to sustain high-quality journals while they are losing subscription revenues. Often this has led to a model in which authors pay an open-access premium to offset costs associated with the peer-review process, producing high-quality and high-value content, protecting and having that content available in perpetuity, and helping to compensate for the loss of subscription revenue. There is a fundamental difference between authors paying reasonable fees to help offset the costs of publishing in rigorously peer-reviewed journals and the collection of absurd and undisclosed author fees following publication in predatory journals with fictitious editorial boards; no legitimate peer-review process; no copyediting or formatting in many cases; no indexing with, for example, Scientific Citation Index or other reputable services; little chance that their articles will be cited; and no assurance that articles will always be available! Yes, the differences are that extreme. The American Society of Animal Science (ASAS) has certainly taken advantage of the technological advances that make it easier and slightly less risky to launch a new journal! We have launched two in the last three years: Animal Frontiers and Natural Sciences Education. And, we certainly would not want people to dismiss our new journals, just because they are new. The differences between our fledgling new journals and the new breed of “predatory” journals are vast, but if you are not an animal scientist or have a long-term involvement in scholarly publishing, how can you tell the difference? In previous issues of the ASAS Newsletter Taking Stock and here in Animal Frontiers, we attempt to highlight how to evaluate the quality and legitimacy of a journal, with particular emphasis on identifying the impersonators. While Elvis impersonators may be entertaining and fun, scientific impersonators can seriously damage the reputation of authentic scientific journals and perhaps your professional reputation. With all of these new options, how do we know which new publications will contribute long-term to our field and, therefore, deserve our support while they are still in their infancy and which ones are designed purely to profit from the electronic age of easy publication? How do we get this message out to publishers, authors, and the public without inadvertently hurting potentially ethical and important new journals: good lists versus bad lists, or lists of criteria? And, if we start creating lists of good and bad, who becomes the judge? There are numerous examples of good and bad lists that are the serious work of reputable sources. Like impact factor, which is one valid form of evaluation, even though we may not know the details of the algorithms used to calculate it, the creators of good lists and bad lists admit to advantages, shortcomings, and flaws to their system. In doing research for this article, we found that many of the good lists and bad lists contain descriptions of their listing criteria and offer suggestions to potential authors for how to objectively evaluate a new journal. Thus, bad and good lists that are based on objective and openly available criteria can be a valid form of evaluation, especially when this is combined with information, such as impact factor, that can be obtained from reputable indexing services. In 2010, Jeffrey Beall, a librarian at the University of Colorado, developed and published his first “bad list” of “predatory” publishers. The list has grown and changed over the last three years. In December 2012, he published the second edition of Criteria for Determining Predatory Open-Access Publishers. We suggest using these criteria as a guideline to evaluate any and all journals before you publish. The criteria can be accessed at: http://scholarlyoa.com/2012/11/30/criteria-for-determining-predatory-open-access-publishers-2nd-edition/. The powerhouses in scholarly publishing have researched this topic and reported their findings. For example, a series of articles in the News and Comment section of Nature contains excellent information. In this series, Declan Butler published “Buyer Beware: A Checklist to Identify Reputable Publishers.” The checklist includes simple commonsense criteria including the final statement, “if it looks fishy, proceed with caution.” The checklist can be found at: www.nature.com/news/investigating-journals-the-dark-side-of-publishing-1.12666#/beware. For now, ASAS asks our members to be vigilant in their journal choices, investigate the journal, and if you have any doubts, ask questions or publish elsewhere. We also want to remind members that ASAS publishes three, and only three, journals. Here are the exact titles: Journal of Animal Science, Animal Frontiers, in collaboration with European Federation for Animal Science (EAAP), Canadian Society of Animal Science (CSAS), and the American Meat Science Association (AMSA) Natural Sciences Education, in collaboration with Alliance of Crop, Soil, and Environmental Science Societies (ACSESS). The American Society of Animal Science does not publish and is not affiliated in any way with online-only titles such as Journal of Animal Science Advances and Journal of Animal Science and Veterinary Technology, or any other online-only journal that incorporates various “takes” on the title Journal of Animal Science. The American Society of Animal Science is, however, closely allied with CSAS, which publishes the Canadian Journal of Animal Science, and EAAP, which, in collaboration with the British Society of Animal Science and Institute National de la Recherche Agronomique, publishes Animal. The Canadian Journal of Animal Science and Animal are well-established and highly-regarded publications. As academics, we tend to downplay or completely dismiss the harm that “predatory” journals can cause to the scientific community. Even though we believe that we can educate ourselves and avoid the trap, the publishers of these journals have duped many of our colleagues. In addition, whereas we may feel that we can easily identify these impostor journals, choose to publish elsewhere, and not cite their content, people who are not experts in our scientific disciplines and have little or no knowledge of how scientific publishing works will have an exceedingly difficult time distinguishing credible journals from the impostors. With that risk in mind, we strongly suggest that animal scientists exercise their due diligence before they publish in an unknown journal. In addition, please be aware that you may suddenly learn that you are listed as member of an editorial board or as an editor of a journal that you have never heard of, or you may learn that you are listed, along with your picture and bio from the web site of your institution, as an organizer of a meeting that you would never support in any way or consider attending. Times have changed, and there has been both a political and a public push for enhanced visibility within publishing. And really who can argue against transparency and visibility? Unfortunately, the short-sited, public-relations-driven push for transparency has resulted in creation of poor impersonators and scrambling for the legitimate scientific publications industry to create a new business model, meet the public and political demands, and fend off our new predators and impersonators. Unfortunately, access to an impersonator, whether it is Elvis or a scientific journal, never quite gives us the same “feel” as the original! The following letter by Professor Cledwyn Thomas, chair of the Animal Frontiers Management Board, was originally published in The Times (London), 30 May 2013: Sir: Governments, rightly, are asking those who receive public funds for research to publish in open-access journals. One effect of this policy is the rapid growth of new publishers providing online journals that require no subscriptions from individuals to read the articles. Instead authors are asked to pay. More competition in the field of science publishing is to be welcomed, but one regrettable side effect is that researchers are being inundated with emails inviting them to submit papers to these new journals. Of greater concern is that some of these new publications have adopted the name of a highly respected journal and simply made a minor modification to the title, such as a single letter or the inclusion of a hyphen. At best, scientists subsequently discover that they have published in a journal that has a low scientific impact. At worst, they may receive a substantial invoice in excess of the costs of publication. Scientists and scientific societies do not have the funds to take legal action against these journals. They are also very concerned that they themselves may be the subjects of legal action if they suggest that such minor modifications to journal titles are a deliberate attempt to deceive. The best course of action is to make both funders and scientists aware of the problem and for scientists to take great care when submitting a paper. Professor Cledwyn Thomas Edinburgh

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