Publishing in Predatory Open Access Journals: A Case of Iran

Abstract

Scholarly publishing scams and predatory journals are emerging threats to academic integrity. During the last few years, the number of bogus journals has dramatically increased, defraud authors by promising fast review and prompt publishing. The current research investigates the contribution of Iranian researchers in predatory open-access journals in 2014. In this research, a total of 21,817 articles published by 265 journals from Beall’s list of predatory standalone journals were investigated. Although Beall’s weblog was taken offline on January 15, 2017, data was collected between January and March 2016 when his weblog was accessible. Results of the study revealed that Iranian researchers have contributed to 1449 papers from 265 journals, ranked this country as having the second largest contributor after India. Surprisingly, institutions with the highest share of publication in predatory journals are among the most reputable and well-known universities of the country. Un-vetted papers published in predatory journals can hurt individuals’ reputation and be a base for future low-quality research in Iran and other world countries. To avoid being victimized by questionable journals, researchers should be more familiar with scholarly publishing literacy skills to recognize and avoid publishing scams.