InTech Research Articles

Hydatid Cysts of the Bladder: A Systematic Review of the Literature

Introduction Hydatid cysts mainly involve the liver and lungs, other areas may rarely be affected by the disease. Urinary bladder hydatid cysts are extremely rare. The aim of this study is to review hydatid cysts of the bladder. Methods We conducted a systematic literature search using various PubMed, Scopus, Web of Science, and Google Scholar were explored to identify papers that discussed hydatid cysts in the urinary bladder. Studies with incomplete reports or insufficient data were excluded, as were those published in predatory journals. The studies were identified through both electronic and manual searches. Sociodemographic and clinical data were extracted and discussed. Results The study included 122 articles, 6 studies were for full assessment and review. Seven cases were found in the papers, 4 patients (57%) were female, and 3 patients (43%) were male. Surgical intervention was the mainstay of the management without significant complications. Conclusion Bladder hydatid cyst is a rare condition with few reported cases. It presents a diagnostic challenge to the physician. Surgical intervention is the best management option.

Exploring authors engagement in journals with questionable practices: a case study of OMICS

The paper aims to understand the context and drivers of researchers' decision to submit a manuscript to a journal with questionable practices. Using OMICS as a case study and asking authors for their views, the paper presents their profile, motivations and publishing experiences. The methodology is based on a questionnaire sent by e-mail to all authors of articles in journals published by OMICS (+2200). The authors were asked about (a) the factors that influenced their decision to submit their article; (b) their publishing experience with OMICS; (c) their level of satisfaction; and (d) whether or not they would repeat the experience. A total of 86 responses were collected and 18 e-mails were received. The analysis made it possible to add details to the profiles of authors already identified in the literature, but also allowed new and more nuanced profiles. This research extends our knowledge on the phenomenon of predatory publishing from the authors' feedback and provides a better understanding of the socio-economic, psychosocial and geo-political conditions that drive researchers' decisions to submit their work to a possible, potential, or probable predatory journal. At the same time, it reveals some of the strategies used by OMICS to persuade authors to submit their papers. The findings will help to inform institutional policies that seek to put in place efficient measures to combat predatory publishing.

Paper mills in medical research: a serious ethical issue

Ethical research is an integral part of institutional and professional integrity, both for scientist her/himself as well as the associated institution. Maintaining ethics and truthfulness in research manuscripts not only adds valuable information in global body of knowledge but also encourages and inspires other researchers as well. With passage of time, these practices have become complex in nature and hard to identify. One of such research dereliction is termed as “Paper Mills”.

Examining the Diffusion and Adoption of Open Access Publishing among Academics at the University of Limpopo, South Africa

This study examined the diffusion and adoption of open access (OA) publishing among 250 academic staff members at the University of Limpopo (UL), South Africa. The study was guided by Rogers’s Diffusion of Innovation (DoI) theory to measure their (the academics’) level of awareness on the availability of OA platforms, to determine their adoption and usage levels of OA publishing for scholarly communication, to establish their attitudes towards the use of the OA publishing platforms, and to identify their perspectives with regard to challenges and benefits presented by OA publishing. A questionnaire was used as a data collection instrument. The findings revealed that most academics were, “to some extent,” aware of OA publishing, through their subject librarians and the internet. Although most were “strongly in favour” of OA publishing, their level of adopting it was lower than expected. The institutional repository (IR) was found to be the OA platform they have used most frequently to upload journal articles. Article processing charges (APCs), connectivity related issues, articles not being peer reviewed, predatory publishers, and lack of knowledge and OA access policies remain some of the challenges encountered in adopting OA publishing. It is recommended that the library staff should intensify its OA publishing marketing strategies and educate academics about its implications through workshops and seminars. Rewards for academics who publish in OA platforms should also be considered by the institution, and the academics who are reaping the benefits of OA publishing should also showcase their rewards to the other academics.

The phantom of the author: predatory publisher OMICS is ghost‐writing its own articles

Key points OMICS has a number of subsidiaries or imprints. All of them have been producing fake articles for the past 3 years. Most of the fake articles are collages of plagiarized material with fake authors and invalid emails. It is estimated that there could be more than 100,000 such articles. Academics should not be publishing with OMICS. Universities and research agencies should enact deterrent policies.

The ASGLOS Study: A global survey on how predatory journals affect scientific practice.

Predatory journals and conferences are an emerging problem in scientific literature as they have financial motives, without guaranteeing scientific quality and exposure. The main objective of the ASGLOS project is to investigate the predatory e-email characteristics, management, and possible consequences and to analyse the extent of the current problem at each academic level. To collect the personal experiences of physicians' mailboxes on predatory publishing, a Google Form® survey was designed and disseminated from September 2021 to April 2022. A total of 978 responses were analysed from 58 countries around the world. A total of 64.8% of participants indicated the need for 3 or fewer emails to acquire a criticality view in distinguishing a real invitation from a spam, while 11.5% still have doubt regardless of how many emails they get. The AGLOS Study clearly highlights the problem of academic e-mail spam by predatory journals and conferences. Our findings signify the importance of providing academic career-oriented advice and organising training sessions to increase awareness of predatory publishing for those conducting scientific research.

The changing landscape of scientific communication: open access, predatory journals and the near future.

The changing landscape of scientific communication: open access, predatory journals and the near future.

Beware of scientific scams! Hints to avoid predatory publishing in biological journals

Our motivation for writing this editorial is to alert the academic community about the risks of predatory publishing in Biology. By piggy-backing on the open access (OA) movement and taking advantage of the “publish or perish” culture in a system that prioritises quantity over quality, predatory publishing has grown exponentially in recent years and spread across all areas of knowledge. Thousands of predatory journals and books have emerged and (provided a fee is paid) they publish scientific papers and chapters without submitting them to rigorous peer review. Now there are even predatory meetings, which promise to accept talks and publish complete works for a fee, also without reviewing them properly. These profit-making machines can damage both academia and society, putting at risk the quality of science and public trust in it, the well-being of the population, the conservation of biodiversity and the mitigation of climate change. We show the modus operandi behind invitations to contribute to predatory journals, books and meetings and suggest ways to separate the wheat from the chaff. Finally, we discuss the need to create regulatory agencies that perform a careful and systematic evaluation of the activities carried out by publishers.

There is no such thing as a predatory journal

Key points A journal is inanimate and incapable of predation, hence there is no such thing as a predatory journal. The predators are the publishing company CEOs, journal owners and other complicit people. Those committing fraud and identity theft should be prosecuted. Less time and effort should be spent on scholarly investigations. More time and effort should now be devoted to prosecutions.

Comparing different search methods for the open access journal recommendation tool B!SON

Finding a suitable open access journal to publish academic work is a complex task: Researchers have to navigate a constantly growing number of journals, institutional agreements with publishers, funders’ conditions and the risk of predatory publishers. To help with these challenges, we introduce a web-based journal recommendation system called B!SON. A systematic requirements analysis was conducted in the form of a survey. The developed tool suggests open access journals based on title, abstract and references provided by the user. The recommendations are built on open data, publisher-independent and work across domains and languages. Transparency is provided by its open source nature, an open application programming interface (API) and by specifying which matches the shown recommendations are based on. The recommendation quality has been evaluated using two different evaluation techniques, including several new recommendation methods. We were able to improve the results from our previous paper with a pre-trained transformer model. The beta version of the tool received positive feedback from the community and in several test sessions. We developed a recommendation system for open access journals to help researchers find a suitable journal. The open tool has been extensively tested, and we found possible improvements for our current recommendation technique. Development by two German academic libraries ensures the longevity and sustainability of the system.

Pedagogical strategy for scholarly communication literacy and avoiding deceptive publishing practices

Informing and supporting researchers’ understanding of the challenges of scholarly communication, particularly how to avoid deceptive publishing practices, remains a challenge for the academic community and its stakeholders. Over the past decade, this community has developed various strategies to assist its members in addressing this issue. However, these measures do not seem to be sufficient, and many researchers, particularly younger and less experienced ones, continue to fall prey to predatory publications. This article presents a series of workshops on scholarly communication literacy as a pedagogical strategy to raise awareness and to prevent novice researchers from falling victim to the challenges of scholarly communication and unethical publishing practices. Most participants perceived these training workshops as an effective educational approach. The results of these educational seminars demonstrate that this type of pedagogical strategy that consists of training, awareness-raising, and prevention approaches is a key factor to informing and warning novice researchers about scholarly communication pitfalls and deceptive publishing practices.

The Danger of Predator Journal Publication for Researchers

Scientific publications in the form of scientific journals are one way for researchers to share information related to the results of research that has been done, besides that scientific publications can also be used to build the reputation of researchers both in the academic and research fields. However, there is a danger of publication which until now has not been known by novice researchers who have just entered the world of scientific publications, namely publication in predatory journals. This is an important thing that needs to be known well and also must be watched out for by novice researchers. This is because predatory journals are scientific journals that are not of good quality, where the journals that are managed are only for financial gain through expensive publication fees and do not pay attention to aspects of research quality and also a good peer review process in good governance. scientific journals. In researching and writing this journal, researchers discuss some of the dangers associated with publishing predatory journals for researchers in terms of decreasing academic reputation, publication costs and also falsification of research data published in a predatory journal. In addition, researchers also look at the specific and clear characteristics of journals that can be categorized as predatory journals.

The Classification of Q1 SJR-Ranked Library and Information Science Journals by an AI-driven “Suspected Predatory” Journal Classifier

AbstractIn academic publishing, there is a need to be able to discern scholarly from unscholarly, deceptive, and/or predatory journals. Predatory journals are not expected among highly ranked journals in reputable databases. SCImago Journal Rank (SJR), which ranks journals into four quartiles (Q1–Q4), acts as a whitelist or safelist for journal selection. Q1 SJR-ranked journals are likely not “predatory.” An artificial intelligence (AI)-based tool Academic Journal Predatory Checking (AJPC) system launched in February 2023 claims to differentiate suspected predatory journals (SPJs) from normal journals. AJPC system classified, in a 2 June 2023 assessment, 27 (or 42%) of the 64 Q1 SJR-ranked library and information science journals, most (48%) published by Taylor & Francis, as SPJs. This output is unlikely to be accurate (or is likely to be inaccurate) and may suggest that this free online AI-driven tool, whose output can be independently verified by anybody, may be providing erroneous output, and thus misleading information.

“Dear Doctor, greetings of the day!”: A 1-year observational study of presumed predatory journal invitations

BackgroundThis study aimed at investigating the predatory publishing phenomenon in orthodontics by analyzing the content of unsolicited e-mail invitations received within 12 months.MethodsAll electronic invitations for manuscript submission, review and editorial membership received between 1 October 2021 and 30 September 2022 were collected from an orthodontist’s inbox. The following data were recorded for each e-mail: date, journal title and origin, requested contribution, e-mail language, relevance to the researcher’s discipline, journal characteristics (claimed metrics, editorial services, article types accepted, and publication fees), journal/publisher contact information and online presence. Journal/Publisher legitimacy and publishing standards were evaluated by listing in the Beall’s list of potential predatory journals and publishers, the Predatory Reports of Cabell’s Scholarly Analytics, and the Directory of Open Access Journals.ResultsA total of 875 e-mail invitations deriving from 256 journals were retrieved within the observation period, with most of them soliciting article submissions. More than 76% of the solicitations originated from journals and publishers included in the blocklists used in the study. Salient features of predatory journals like flattering language, abundant grammatical errors, unclear publication charges and wide variety of article types and topics accepted for publication were confirmed for the examined journals/publishers.Conclusions Nearly 8 out of 10 unsolicited e-mail invitations sent to orthodontists for scholarly contribution may be related to journals suspicious for publishing malpractices and suboptimal standards. Excessive flattering language, grammatical errors, broad range of submissions, and incomplete journal contact information were commonly encountered findings. Researchers in orthodontics should be alert to the unethical policies of illegitimate journals and their harmful consequences on the scientific literature.

Decoding Predatory Publishing practices for Academia

Predatory or deceptive publishing is still a persistent issue in scholarly communication. A large number of predatory journals are being published, and it is essential to keep them in check as the potential harm they could do to the scientific discourse is enormous. With the Open Science Framework (OSF) project titled "Decoding Predatory Publishing Practices for Academia (DePA)," the authors try to equip users to identify potential predatory journals and endorse ethical and quality publishing. The project will consist of training materials and a rubric developed to examine the quality of an open-access scientific journal by combining the publisher and individual journal aspects. The project includes a rubric consisting of different aspects regarding publication in scientific journals, quantifying the quality of the publishing practices adopted by these journals. Predatory or deceptive publishing is still a persistent issue in scholarly communication. For instance, deceptive publishers could hold the unpublished manuscript indefinitely, and little can be done if the author has signed a copyright transfer agreement. We can reduce the impact of predatory publishers by aiding the scholar community with simple and easy-to-understand devices that help them analyse the journals and publishers themselves. This could be part of the orientation at a researcher’s, library’s, or mentor’s level.

Research grants, research collaboration, and publication in predatory journals: Evidence from publications by Indonesian social scientists

AbstractThis study investigates the role of research funding and research collaboration in the potential for publication in predatory journals among Indonesian social science academia. A total of 2953 articles published by at least one Indonesian author in the social science field between 2010 and 2020 in Scopus‐indexed journals were collected. The SCImago quartiles of 2019 for the Scopus database and Beall's list of potential predatory journals 2021 were used to evaluate the quality and credibility of the publication outlets. Descriptive statistics and decision tree analysis were performed to classify and predict the quality and credibility of the publications. A contrast in the quality and credibility of publications was identified between research funded by Indonesian and foreign institutions. Research publications that were financially supported by Indonesian ministries and authored by a single author and/or via local and national collaboration were more likely to appear in lower‐ranked journals and predatory journals than publications funded by international sponsors and/or that involved foreign author(s)/international collaboration. This study therefore highlights the need for significant changes in monitoring and evaluation systems, timelines, and output targets of Indonesian government research grant schemes, alongside the enhanced involvement of foreign researchers and reviewers in the research funding schemes.

Predatory journals—a cautionary tale for veterinary authors

Predatory journals—a cautionary tale for veterinary authors

Predatory Publishing by Jingfeng Xia

<i>Predatory Publishing</i> by Jingfeng Xia

The commodification of academic publishing – Relevance to cancer palliative care literature

ABSTRACT The commodification of academic publishing refers to the process of turning academic research and scholarship into a marketable product that can be bought and sold for profit. This has become an increasingly prevalent issue in recent years, as academic publishing has become dominated by a small number of large commercial publishers who control access to research and charge exorbitant fees for access to academic articles. In the context of cancer palliative care literature, the commodification of academic publishing has several important implications. First, it means that access to important research on cancer palliative care may be restricted to those who can afford to pay for it, effectively limiting its dissemination and impact. This is particularly problematic in low-income countries or regions where resources for cancer palliative care are already limited. Second, the commodification of academic publishing can lead to the proliferation of predatory journals that publish low-quality or even fraudulent research for profit, which can lead to misleading or harmful information being disseminated to practitioners, policymakers and the public. Finally, the emphasis on profit in academic publishing can create pressure for researchers to prioritise publishing in high-impact journals rather than focusing on research that is most relevant to the needs of cancer palliative care patients and their families. This can create a skewed incentive structure that values prestige over impact, potentially undermining the quality and relevance of research in this field. In summary, the commodification of academic publishing has significant implications for cancer palliative care literature, including issues of access, quality and relevance. It is important for researchers, policymakers and publishers to work together to address these challenges and ensure that the best research is made accessible to all those who need it, regardless of their ability to pay.

Bibliometrics Methods in Detecting Citations to Questionable Journals

In recent times, there has been a proliferation of questionable practices in research publishing, for example, via predatory journals, hijacked journals, plagiarism, tortured phrases and paper mills. This paper intends to analyse whether journals that had been removed from the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) in 2018 due to suspected misconduct were cited within journals indexed in the Scopus database. Our analysis showed that Scopus contained over 15 thousand references to the removed journals identified. The majority of the publications citing these journals came from the area of Engineering. It is important to note that although we cannot assume that all the journals removed followed unethical practices, it is still essential that researchers are aware of the issues around citing journals that have been suspected of misconduct. We suggest that research libraries play a crucial role in training, advising and providing information to researchers about these ethical issues of publication malpractice and misconduct.