Early Career Researchers between Predatory Publishing and Academic Excellence: The Views and Behaviours of the Millennials

David Nicholas,Cherifa Boukacem-Zeghmouri,Tatiana Polezhaeva,Abdullah Abrizah,Marzena Świgon,Blanca Rodríguez-Bravo,Anthony Watkinson,Jie Xu,Eti Herman

doi:10.17323/2500-2597.2021.1.56.65

David Nicholas, Cherifa Boukacem-Zeghmouri + Show 7 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.17323/2500-2597.2021.1.56.65

Copy DOI

Journal: Foresight-Russia	Publication Date: Mar 25, 2021
Citations: 7	License type: cc-by

Affiliation: Wuhan University

Abstract

The paper draws on evidence of predatory publishing obtained from the 4 year-long Harbingers research study of the changing scholarly communication attitudes and behaviour of early career researchers (ECRs). The project featured longitudinal interviews for its first 3 years with 116 ECRs researching science and social sciences who came from China, France, Malaysia, Poland, Spain, UK and USA. The interview data provided the building blocks for a questionnaire survey in the 4th year, which obtained 1600 responses from a global audience, which included arts and humanities ECRs and those from Russia. These studies investigated predatory publishing as part of general questioning about scholarly communications, in other words, in context. The main finding from the interview study were: 1) ECRs generally do not publish in predatory journals; 2) they only allude to them lightly and mainly in the context of open access publishing; 3) they no longer acquaint all open access publishing with predatory journals. The questionnaire found that, as in the case of the interviews, complaints that open access is low quality publishing are diminishing, however, this positivity has been partly offset by increased concerns about the dangers of predatory journals.

Highlights

What we have not done to date though, is to publish what we discovered about predatory publishing and ECRs, and given the considerable rise in predatory journals over the period of the Harbingers study and the amount of research produced about them, literally hundreds of papers published, we wish to contribute our findings to the body of knowledge
There were questions about scholarly communications where the topic could have been raised in a broader context especially in connection with open access publishing (e.g., What do you think are the advantages and disadvantages of OA publishing from the point of view of the author? Do you think OA publishing advances science and research, or are you worried that it will dilute the quality of publications, or do you agree/disagree with both propositions?)
When predatory journals were mentioned, it was mostly in connection with questions about the pros and cons of open access publishing, which is not surprising because open access clearly opened the door for predatory publishing

Summary

Introduction

What we have not done to date though, is to publish what we discovered about predatory publishing and ECRs, and given the considerable rise in predatory journals over the period of the Harbingers study and the amount of research produced about them, literally hundreds of papers published, we wish to contribute our findings to the body of knowledge We are doing this especially due to the special methodological approach taken, : 1) it is the result of studying ECRs in depth, and often personally, for four years; 2) we largely avoided direct questioning about what is a very sensitive and delicate subject, preferring in the interviews to approach the topic broadly or indirectly via discussions about related scholarly activities, such as open access and ethics, and largely through open ended questions in the case of the survey

Methods

Results

Conclusion