VOLUME 29, ISSUE 2

These journals usually have many hidden costs that are not apparent until it is too late. Once the transfer of copyright has been assigned to the publisher, then the “publishing fees” appear. If the author refuses to pay the large fees (usually between $1000 and $3000), then the manuscript is held in limbo. It cannot be submitted elsewhere since copyright has been assigned to the open access journal. There are many reports of authors whose work has been hijacked in such a way. In addition, they offer peer review, however, it is commonplace for them to have no discernible peer review or to disregard any critiques offered by the reviewers and publish the work “as is” with very poor quality. Since these journals are rarely PubMed indexed, the author’s work will rarely be seen by anyone else and thus will be rarely referenced or have any significant contribution to our practice of medicine. Since the journals frequently publish flawed research and plagiarized manuscripts, these practices will also impact the perception of your manuscript.

The second large implication is that, if you are willing to pay their fee, they will publish anything, regardless of its legitimacy. This practice has been referred to as predatory publishing. The publishers frequently retrieve authors email addresses from legitimate journals and send a multitude of emails soliciting future manuscripts. If you are contacted by an open access journal and you wish to find more information about their credibility, Jeffrey Beall, a medical librarian, maintains a website devoted to critical analysis of scholarly open access publishing. It can be found at https://scholarlyoa.com/ and is a wealth of information about the predatory practices of these journals. In addition, an initiative to assist authors in the process was launched in mid-2015 mid 2015 and is available at https://thinkchecksubmit.org Bohannon conducted a trial where he submitted a sham article with obvious faulty materials and methods, questionable ethical practices, and results that were not consistent with the data to 304 of the open access journals identified by Beall as predatory publishers. Of these, 157 journals accepted the manuscript (most with no evidence of peer review), 98 rejected the manuscript, and 29 sites appeared to be abandoned, and 20 stated that the review was ongoing. Only 36 of the 304 journals gave editorial comment recognizing the obvious paper’s scientific problems and 16 of those journals still accepted the manuscript for publication, despite the reviewer’s harsh statements.²

In addition, Mr. Beall’s web site also has information related to predatory companies organizing medical conferences that are deliberately misleading. Several of these companies organize and promote conferences that bear names that are deceptively similar to other well-established meetings that are well known and legitimately run by scientific societies. These companies also use names of physicians and scientists to promote their meetings. They imply that these well-established physicians are either presenting at the conferences or involved in the organization of the conference. Oftentimes, they do this without the physicians’ permission.

These companies also imply that their esteemed editorial board is involved in the planning of these meetings, often held in China, India, or the Middle East and that your invite to present your work at these meetings is based on your great accomplishments in your field. Your previous work is typically mentioned in the email invites in a further attempt to legitimize the invitation. The invitations are often signed by editorial board members, however many of these individuals never agreed to be meeting organizers and some have never agreed to be editorial board members.

Additionally, there are reports that the companies refuse to reimburse registration fees once they have been found out, even if their meeting is cancelled. Previously, these companies were easily recognizable by their broken English emails originating from foreign countries. However, many have adapted to creating a base in the United States and have done a much better job of correcting their broken English, such that it is becoming much more challenging to determine the legitimate meetings from the predatory meetings.

In summary, scientific research / publication and medical education can be manipulated by predatory companies who prey on unsuspecting or inexperienced scientists and physicians for their own monetary gain. It is important for us to maintain our vigilance with regard to the journals that we associate with and the meetings that we attend. We are likely safest in dealing with journals that have an established track record in the medical community and obtaining/contributing CME at meetings run by societies or companies that we are very familiar with.

References:

1. Vinny PW, Vishnu VY, Lal V. Trends in scientific
publishing: Dark clouds loom large. J Neurol Sci 2016 15;363:119-20.

2. Bohannon J. Who’s afraid of peer review? Science.
2013 Oct 4;342(6154):60-5.