Predators

Abstract

‘If it bleeds, we can kill it.’Dutch (Arnold Schwarzenegger) in the movie Predator (John McTiernan, 1987) It started some years ago with invitations to speak at a congress, in a faraway city, on any topic one wished. The congresses were sometimes in the field one was active in, but very often not, as they dealt with broad topics such as ‘Pain’, ‘Ageing’ or ‘Nursing’. One individual, a researcher in physics, who had accepted the invitation, found out there was indeed a conference, with participants who were lured there by the promise of famous speakers, many of whom, however, had not consented to speak. The few speakers who were present had all paid their own way. These are the academic equivalent of the e‐mails one receives from the wife of a deceased African prince or oil merchant, who just needs to use your bank account to transfer tens of millions out of the country, of which you will receive a sizeable percentage. The fraudulent nature of such ‘phishing mails’ was easily recognizable, since the English was in need of serious copy‐editing and even the salutation was often weird. Some days, we receive several invitations to present at scientific meetings, to submit an article or to become member of an editorial board. All are destined for the electronic waste bin. With the advent of online publishing, so‐called open access predatory journals entered the arena. The financial model of these journals is to make easy money by defrauding scientists: production costs are much lower than for printed journals (no paper, no printing, no mailing) and the author has to pay the journal to defray these costs. Most bonafide open access journals ask between 2000–3000 euros per article, which would be spent on reviewing, copy‐editing, scientific editing, and formatting. When a journal does not perform these activities, the author's contribution is pure profit. The number of predatory journals has grown exponentially over the last 8 years, and it is estimated there are now over 10 000 such journals, annually publishing 500 000 articles. According to the STM report, from the International Association of Scientific, Technical and Medical Publishers, the total number of scientific publications per year, in all fields, is 2.5 million, in 30 000 journals. So, these predators are not lone hunters. There have been some interesting experiments with predatory journals, where it was convincingly shown that they accept any manuscript without much ado. A Science editor sent an obviously flawed medical article to a large number of open access journals, of which 60% accepted it. Another journal accepted a manuscript that consisted only of a seven‐word profanity, repeated endlessly (to read it, go to http://www.scs.stanford.edu/~dm/home/papers/remove.pdf). There is even a computer program that can generate articles on computer science without any content, and several of these have been accepted by predatory journals. Unfortunately, the fact that these journals publish everything submitted to them, also leads to complicity by authors. Derek Pyne wrote in the Ottawa Citizen that many authors knowingly send articles to predatory journals, to boost their publication record. As the New York Times commented, the relationship is perhaps less one of predator and prey, and more of an ugly symbiosis. Bona fide authors do not wish to fall into the trap of predatory journals. Therefore, it would be good if there was a list. Actually, there was a list until January 2017 that was maintained by Jeffrey Beall of the University of Colorado, a publishing librarian who coined the phrase ‘predatory publishing’. Beall was forced to take his list offline after legal threats. Financial stakes are high, there is arguably a grey zone of near‐predatory journals, and universities do not always stand behind their personnel. Recently, there has been an increase of open access journals in our field. They have familiar sounding names like Journal of Hematology and Thrombosis, Journal of Hematology and Thromboembolic Diseases, Journal of Thrombosis and Circulation, and the Journal of Thrombosis. The latter uses the abbreviation JTH and sends out e‐mails with the subject ‘Get $210 waived on your submission to JTH’. We will carefully refrain from calling any of these journals predatory, to avoid Beall's fate, but would recommend authors visit a journal's website before submitting a paper. As an extra gesture, we continue offering free submission for all manuscripts submitted to the real JTH in 2018.