Disturbance of questionable publishing to academia

Abstract

• Using billions of citation records from Scopus, we performed a quantitative and controlled experiment on questionable publications compared with unquestioned counterparts. • Our analysis discloses that questionable publishers overstate their citation impact by attributing publisher-level self-citations, which make it hard to detect by conventional journal metrics. • The comprehensive influence reflected in disruptiveness and network centrality is also lower for questionable publications, indicating the negative ect of questionable publishers in academia. Questionable publications have been accused of “greedy” practices; however, their influence on academia has not been gauged. Here, we probe the impact of questionable publications through a systematic and comprehensive analysis with various participants from academia and compare the results with those of their unaccused counterparts using billions of citation records, including liaisons, i.e. , journals and publishers, and prosumers, i.e. , authors. Questionable publications attribute publisher-level self-citations to their journals while limiting journal-level self-citations; yet, conventional journal-level metrics are unable to detect these publisher-level self-citations. We propose a hybrid journal-publisher metric for detecting self-favouring citations among QJs from publishers. Additionally, we demonstrate that the questionable publications were less disruptive and influential than their counterparts. Our findings indicate an inflated citation impact of suspicious academic publishers. The findings provide a basis for actionable policy-making against questionable publications.