Why do researchers decide to publish in questionable journals? A review of the literature

Peer review is a cornerstone of scientific publication, and consequently, predatory journals are feared to be a threat to the credibility of science as they perform no or low‐quality peer review. The question of why researchers decide to publish in a questionable journal remains relatively unexplored. This paper provides an overview of the existing literature on why researchers decide to publish papers in questionable journals, specifically whether or not they search for a low‐barrier way to getting published while being aware that the chosen journal probably does not adhere to acceptable academic standards. The choice of a publication outlet can be seen as a submission tree that consists of various incentives, and explaining why authors publish in deceptive journals may thus consist of a combination of awareness and motivational factors. Awareness and motivation of diligent authors is very different from that of unethical authors. Unethical authors may use a lack of awareness to excuse their actions, but they may actively search for a low‐barrier way to getting published. As there are different types of authors who publish in deceptive journals, we need different approaches to solve the problem.     

Why do evaluation?

This paper examines why library staff involved in the acquisitions process undertake vendor surveys and what they hope to get out of them. Briefly addressed are personal and professional issues involved in the survey process, as well as the resulting personal and organizational benefits.     

Citing data sources in the social sciences: do authors do it?

It is expected that authors will provide citations for all papers referenced in their writings. The necessity of providing citations for data is not so widely recognized. Proponents of the data‐sharing movement have advocated the citation of datasets in order to recognize contributions and enhance access. This study examines a sample of papers from the Inter‐University Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR) Bibliography of Data‐Related Literature that are based on secondary analysis of datasets available in the ICPSR data archive to determine the data citation practices of authors. The results indicate that many authors fail to cite the data used in secondary analysis studies. Possible reasons for the dismal state of data citation practices are considered, including the recent introduction of data into the scholarly record and its marginalization as an information format. Updating citation practices to include datasets will support data sharing and foster responsible scholarship.     

Republication of conference papers in journals?

Conference proceedings are one of the most important forms of communication for computer scientists. This study investigated the policies of a large number of computer science journals with regard to the republication of papers which had already appeared in conference proceedings. Nearly one‐quarter of journal editors would not republish such papers other than in special circumstances (such as a special conference issue), and almost all of the remainder would do so only after substantial updating and expansion of the original paper. Many specified the amount of content that should be new: 30% was the proportion most frequently mentioned. Thus, many sections of text may be identical to the original paper. However, some journal editors do not appear to consider this self‐plagiarism provided the original publication is properly cited. Nevertheless, such (re)publication is likely to lead to high similarity scores in CrossCheck; in this field, therefore, journal editors need to exercise particular discretion when evaluating CrossCheck results.     

Who should publish the law?

The provision of legal search and retrieval services by the Department of Justice or other components of the federal government is unwise, unnecessary, and dangerous. It would pose a threat to a free and open society by inviting political controls over judicial opinions and over users of a research service. The federal government is an unreliable supplier of information services because dissemination policies are influenced routinely by political and bureaucratic considerations. Users of a government-sponsored service would face the possibility that government workers would spy on their research activities. The government in its role as publisher would be required to make editorial judgments about the contents of a legal research system, and those judgments would be influenced by political and bureaucratic interests. Inherent in a government-operated legal research system is the potential for increased surveillance of users and for political control over the availability of the law.     

What satisfactions do self‐publishing authors gain from the process?

This paper, a follow‐up to our previous Learned Publishing paper ( http://dx.doi.org/10.1087/20130310 ), extends the reporting of new research into the motivations, demographics, processes, and outcomes of self‐publishing authors. The research findings challenge traditionally held notions about the lack of satisfaction in either the process or final product in self‐publishing. By contrast, the authors researched emerged as very satisfied with the process of self‐publishing, likely to do it again and recommend it to others – and these trends were observed across all the demographic categories and types of content. The generally high rate of republishing among the cohort can be taken as further evidence of associated satisfaction. The research offers conclusions that are relevant to all stakeholders in publishing and provides a foundation for more specific research within particular publishing sectors and roles.     

Predatory journals: Who publishes in them and why?

This sequential explanatory mixed-methods study investigated where predatory/fake journals (PFJs) are founded, which countries’ researchers publish more frequently in PFJs, the identity of the editors of PFJs, why researchers publish in PFJs, and what factors encourage such publications. A survey and semi-structured follow-up interviews were used to collect data. The results indicate that the majority of PFJs are located in developing countries; 119 journals provided incorrect postal addresses; the greatest number of researchers who published in PFJs are from India, Nigeria, and Turkey, suggesting that most of the publications in PFJs are submitted by researchers in developing countries; the interviewed Turkish researchers submitted their articles to PFJs in pursuit of rapid academic promotion; the incentive allowance system encourages researchers to publish in PFJs; and the well-known “publish-or-perish” pressure and unawareness are other potential factors that drive participants to submit their papers to PFJs.     

How do authors select keywords? A preliminary study of author keyword selection behavior

Author keywords for scientific literature are terms selected and created by authors. Although most studies have focused on how to apply author keywords to represent their research interests, little is known about the process of how authors select keywords. To fill this research gap, this study presents a pilot study on author keyword selection behavior. Our empirical results show that the average percentages of author keywords appearing in titles, abstracts, and both titles and abstracts are 31%, 52.1%, and 56.7%, respectively. Meanwhile, we find that keywords also appear in references and high-frequency keywords. The proportions of author-selected keywords appearing in the references and high-frequency keywords are 41.6% and 56.1%, respectively. In addition, keywords of papers written by core authors (productive authors) are found to appear less frequently in titles and abstracts in their papers than that of others, and appear more frequently in references and high-frequency keywords. The percentages of keywords appearing in titles and abstracts in scientific papers are negatively correlated with citation counts of papers. In contrast, the percentages of author keywords appearing in high-frequency keywords are positively associated with citation counts of papers.     

How are electronic journals and CD-ROMs being accepted in Japan?

The market for electronic journals and CD-ROMs in Japan is analysed. The electronic journal is changing the roles of the main players: publishers, libraries, and agents. Publishers go directly to libraries, while agents are trying to survive as coordinators for libraries to finalize licence agreements. CD-ROMs are selling as an alternative to books although not all the advantages of their digital format are yet being fully exploited. The time, however, is close when CD-ROMs will generate revenue by usage through a campus local area network.     

Do researchers collaborate in a similar way to publish and to develop projects?

The aim of this paper is to establish the similarities and differences between the way of collaboration and the production of researchers when dealing with publications or with the development of projects and whether the collaboration patterns change across disciplines.We have studied the networks of researchers formed through the collaborations in papers or in projects in a research institution (the University of Zaragoza) and we have analyzed a series of individual and global magnitudes. As a general result, we have observed that the laws governing the individual productivity are similar for the cases of publications and projects but, however, the behavior is different when analyzing more complex magnitudes such as the collaborations or other structural variables. We consider also the subnetworks defined by the researchers of the different disciplines and characterize their topologies and compare the corresponding collaboration patterns.Because of the general approach, we expect most of the conclusions to be applicable to other universities or research centers.     

How accurate are cited references in Iranian peer‐reviewed journals?

The references cited in scientific articles are as important as any other part of the paper, because of their usefulness to the scientific community and to abstracting and indexing services and citation databases. I studied inaccuracies in references and in‐text citations in sample of 97 of the 519 peer‐reviewed journals accredited by the Iranian National Commission for Journal Accreditation Policy (Ministry of Research, Science and Technology). The target journals published 2,980 articles with 74,577 cited references and 108,151 in‐text citations. The results showed 36.6% as the average percentage error rate (range 5.6% to 61.3%). The mean number of errors in cited reference and in‐text citations was 2.7 per article, and the mean number of errors per journal was 690. For the entire sample of articles, 4,369 in‐text citations did not match any source in the list of references (4%), and 8,683 cited references did not match any in‐text citation (11.6%). The stakeholders in scholarly communication, especially authors, pay insufficient attention to the accuracy of bibliographic references. Peer‐reviewed journals should encourage the use of standardized journal policies and quality‐control measures regarding peer review, data quality and accuracy.     

A qualitative content analysis of watchlists vs safelists: How do they address the issue of predatory publishing?

Predatory journals and publishers are a growing concern in the scholarly publishing arena. As one type of attempt to address this increasingly important issue, numerous individuals, associations, and companies have begun curating journal watchlists or journal safelists. This study uses a qualitative content analysis to explore the inclusion/exclusion criteria stated by scholarly publishing journal watchlists and safelists to better understand the content of these lists, as well as the larger controversies that continue to surround the phenomenon that has come to be known as predatory publishing. Four watchlists and ten safelists were analyzed through an examination of their published mission statements and inclusion/exclusion criteria. Notable differences that emerged include the remaining influence of librarian Jeffrey Beall in the watchlists, and the explicit disavowal of his methods for the safelists, along with a growing recognition that the “list” approach may not fully address systemic aspects of predatory publishing that go beyond the individual author's ethical decision-making agency.     

Why do electro dancers also dance on YouTube? The media logic of the cultural practices in the electro dance youth style

ABSTRACT

The notion of media logic is one of relevance in the recent debates around mediatization theories. Fundamentally applied to macrolevel, institution-focused analysis, this notion has not often been applied to narrower domains of cultural practice nor used as a conceptual point of departure in this regard. This article puts forward a three-pronged analytical scheme for the discussion of the media logic underlying the cultural production of electro dance, a dance-based, urban youth style born in Paris and spread globally over the past decade under the influence of digital media. Ethnographic attention is paid to a group of electro dancers and their YouTube-based practices to empirically understand how the cultural and social dimensions of the youth group life are crucially shaped by emerging communication forms that respond to a specific (media) logic. The article concludes by suggesting the transferability of the proposed conceptual scheme to better understand other microlevel, group-related mediatized phenomena.