Abstract
PurposeOne of the main tasks of a researcher is to properly communicate the results he obtained. The choice of the journal in which to publish the work is therefore very important. However, not all journals have suitable characteristics for a correct dissemination of scientific knowledge. Some publishers turn out to be unreliable and, against a payment, they publish whatever researchers propose. The authors call “predatory journals” these untrustworthy journals. The purpose of this paper is to analyse the incidence of predatory journals in computer science literature and present a tool that was developed for this purpose.Design/methodology/approachThe authors focused their attention on editors, universities and publishers that are involved in this kind of publishing process. The starting point of their research is the list of scholarly open-access publishers and open-access stand-alone journals created by Jeffrey Beall. Specifically, they analysed the presence of predatory journals in the search results obtained from Google Scholar in the engineering and computer science fields. They also studied the change over time of such incidence in the articles published between 2011 and 2015.FindingsThe analysis shows that the phenomenon of predatory journals somehow decreased in 2015, probably due to a greater awareness of the risks related to the reputation of the authors.Originality/valueWe focused on computer science field, using a specific sample of queries. We developed a software to automatically make queries to the search engine, and to detect predatory journals, using Beall’s list.
Highlights
Introduction and problem statementInternet is flooded with electronic messages with the objective to promote the submission of an article in an academic journal, or joining the editorial board of a new “important” journal
We focused on computer science field, using a specific sample of queries
Our research had as objective to discover the incidence of predatory journals among Google Scholar search results, and to understand which people are involved in this scenario
Summary
Introduction and problem statementInternet is flooded with electronic messages with the objective to promote the submission of an article in an academic journal, or joining the editorial board of a new “important” journal. The characteristic elements of this kind of email are identifiable: poor graphics, and text written incorrectly; proposal of response time very short: four to six days at the maximum; name of the journal is high-sounding; and cost for publication not high. These simple elements should generate some suspicions about the reliability of the journal presented by email and about the impact that this type of journal has on the academic literature. As argued by many authors (Beall, 2013, 2012a, 2012b, 2014; Dyrud, 2014; Pisanski, 2013), all the journals reviewed in the “Beall’s List” (http://scholarlyoa.com/2012/12/06/bealls-list-ofpredatory-publishers-2013) have some indication about a fee payment for publishing an article
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