INtroduction
Predatory journals, which have been defined as “entities
that prioritize self-interest at the expense of scholarship and are
characterized by false or misleading information, deviation from best editorial
and publication practices, a lack of transparency, and/or the use of aggressive
and indiscriminate solicitation practices” [1], have become a concern in the
health sciences [2]. Their lack of editorial rigour has consequences; articles
published by such journals have been shown to be of lower quality than those
published in reputable journals. Moher and colleagues found that only a small
number of the articles published in predatory biomedical journals reported
items such as ethics approval, funding source, blinding procedure, allocation
methods, or, for systematic reviews, risk of bias assessment. As the authors
state, these articles “consistently failed to report key information necessary
for readers to assess, reproduce and build on the findings” [3]. Bianchini et
al. found that the scores on PEDro (a critical appraisal tool used in physical
therapy) received by randomized controlled trials published in journals on
Beall’s List (a list of potentially predatory journals) were significantly
lower than those received by non-Beall’s List journals [4]. And Nieminen and
Uribe found that statistical methods were reported significantly less
thoroughly by predatory dental journals than by non-predatory dental journals
(whether they were open access or subscription-based) [5].
Citing articles published in predatory articles
disseminates the unreliable data they may contain and may undermine the
integrity of science. Although a significant number of studies have
investigated the citation impact of articles published in predatory journals
[6–11], relatively few have focused on health sciences. We will discuss these
below.
Using data from Google Scholar, Nwagwu and Ojemeni
studied 5,601 articles published in 32 Nigerian predatory biomedical journals.
They found that, on average, each predatory journal received 394 citations, and
each article published in these journals was cited 2.25 times [12]. Shamsi et
al. also used Google Scholar data when investigating predatory dermatology
journals, and found that of 4,164 articles, 1,146 appeared in Google Scholar,
where they received on average, 4.1 citations each [13]. Oermann et al. found a
much lower citation rate when they used data from Scopus to examine seven
predatory nursing journals [14]. They found that these articles were cited 814
times by 141 non-predatory journals, and that each of the 7 predatory journals
received, on average, 116 citations, with each of the non-predatory journals
citing a median of two predatory articles. When examining citation data from
Dimensions for 591 articles written by German researchers and published in 88
predatory medical journals, Stephen found that these articles were much more
highly cited; they received on average 4.6 citations, nearly all from
non-predatory journals. She concluded that predatory articles were extensively
cited [15]. Dodgson et al. used a different approach; they investigated how
many of the 127 manuscripts accepted for publication in the Journal of Human
Lactation (a legitimate journal) from 2019-2021 cited articles
published in predatory journals [16]. They found that 23 (18%) of these
articles cited predatory articles.
While the extent to which predatory articles are cited
varies from study to study, these studies demonstrate that predatory journal
articles in health sciences have been cited, potentially polluting the
scholarly record.
Citation of predatory journals by any type of article is
problematic, but a concern particular to the health sciences is the inclusion
of predatory articles in systematic reviews. Health care practitioners depend
on systematic reviews and other knowledge syntheses to make informed clinical
decisions. This means that including poor-quality articles in these reviews
could threaten patient safety. Again, the extent to which this has occurred has
been found to vary depending on the sample used. Ross-White et al. found that
of a sample of 6,302 predatory journal articles, 120 were cited by 157
systematic reviews, of which 137 were published in reputable journals [17]. Collom
et al. analyzed 78 review articles that cited predatory journals and found that
65.4% used these sources in a substantive way—either by including them in the
review or by using them to support or extend the review’s findings [18]. Notably,
39.2% of these reviews had a clinical focus. In contrast, Boulos et al. found
that, of the 6,750 studies included in the systematic reviews published by two
Cochrane networks in 2018 and 2019, only 55 were deemed to have been published
in “questionable”, “likely predatory” or “presumed predatory” journals [19].
Research has also been done to determine who cites
predatory journal articles. Some researchers have found that authors who cited
predatory journal articles were primarily inexperienced researchers from Africa
and Asia [6,20], although Oermann found that in nursing, most authors who cited
predatory journals were American, Australian or Swedish [21].
As can be seen above, previous studies of citations of
predatory health sciences journals have focused on particular aspects (such as
a particular health sciences discipline, or authors or predatory journals from
a particular country) of this topic. This study aims to take a broader approach
by studying citations to articles published in a sample of predatory journals
from across the health sciences.
Specifically, two questions will be addressed:
1.
How often are articles published in predatory health sciences
journals cited by articles published in legitimate journals?
2.
What are the characteristics of legitimate articles and journals
that cite predatory health sciences journals?
Methods
Identification of Predatory Journals
To identify potential predatory journals, we went to the
home page (https://www.omicsonline.org) of a publisher recognized as predatory
by the US Federal Trade Commission [22]. From the “Journals” drop-down menu at
the top of the page, we chose “Browse by Subject” and then in the “Journals by
Subject” box, clicked the “Medical Sciences” category, which led to this web
page: www.omicsonline.org/medical-sciences-journals.php.
This page listed 26 journals in the Medical Sciences category; these were
selected as the study objects for this research. To confirm that these
journals were indeed predatory, we examined the website of each journal for
common characteristics of predatory journals, such as false Journal Impact
Factors or Cite Scores, misleading metrics (e.g., Index Copernicus), promotion
of rapid publication, or obvious errors.
We recorded the first publication year and the most
recent publication year for each journal. We manually counted the number of
articles published by each journal, including only the document types (as
identified by the journals) in which research was formally reported (research
article/research, review, mini review, case report/study/series, brief report,
market analysis, survey report, clinical investigation, and investigating
article). We therefore excluded document types such as editorial, commentary, short
communication, abstract only, book review, non-citable items (e.g., conference
and award announcements), and articles that were no longer available on the
website. A complete list of the journal titles can be found in the Appendix.
Searching for Citations of Articles Published in Predatory Journals
The predatory journals we investigated were not indexed
by Web of Science. Therefore, we searched the “Cited Work” (i.e., journal
title) field using the “Cited References” search function in the Web of Science
Core Collection; this allowed us to identify cited articles from the predatory
journals, even though these articles were not indexed in this database.
Because journal titles are often abbreviated in Web of
Science citation records, we used two methods to search for each title. First,
we searched the truncated form of the journal title. For example, for the Journal
of Palliative Care & Medicine, we searched “j* pall* care med*” in the
Cited Work field. However, for journals that contained words commonly used in
titles of health sciences journals (e.g., Archives of Medicine),
searches using truncation retrieved too many results, making it unfeasible to
review all the results. Therefore, we decided that if the truncated journal
title search produced more than 5,000 results, we would search the exact
journal title with quotation marks. Web of Science allows a maximum of 5,000
records to be downloaded when using the Cited References search function,
making this a useful upper limit.
Because the Cited Work field in Web of Science retrieves
articles from similar journal titles (e.g., Journal of Preventative Medicine
vs. Journal of Preventative Medicine and Hygiene), we reviewed the
result list and selected only the articles from the journals we were interested
in. Then we downloaded the records for the articles published in predatory
journals (subsequently referred to as “Predatory Articles”) and the records for
the articles that cited the predatory articles (subsequently referred to as “Citing
Articles”) for each journal.
The downloaded records of the predatory articles from Web
of Science included many duplicate articles because if the original article was
cited slightly differently (e.g., uppercase vs. lower case used in title,
different version of author name, full journal title vs. abbreviation) by two
different articles, it would show up in Web of Science as two different
original articles. Therefore, we manually examined various fields in the
downloaded records including article title, journal title, author, volume, issue,
and page numbers for matches and, when necessary, consulted the website of the
journal to confirm that the cited articles were the same. We merged the
duplicates and their associated citation counts to obtain an accurate number of
unique predatory articles. Data collection was completed in July 2023.
To identify the document types of citing articles, we
searched the article titles for the words “systematic review”, “scoping
review,” “meta analysis”, “meta-analysis”, “metaanalysis”, “realist review”,
“randomized”, “randomised”, “guideline” and “guidelines”. We also scanned the
titles to ensure that the results were actually publications of the desired
types, rather than merely articles that discussed these document types.
Results
Of the 26 journals categorized as “Medical Sciences” on
the predatory publisher website, 25 were published in English while 1 was
published in Spanish. One journal (Journal of Liver: Disease &
Transplantation) was subscription-based from 2012 to 2018 and only became
fully open access from 2019, therefore, we excluded this journal. Thus, 25
journals were included in this study.
Of the 25 journals, most began publishing between
2015-2017, with the earliest started in 2005 (Archives of Medicine). At
the time of data collection, 5 journals were inactive, while 20 were still
publishing.
All 25 journal websites possessed characteristics of
predatory journals. Most displayed a false journal impact factor and/or a false
CiteScore. Some also indicated that they had a fast publication process or
provided misleading information such as the Index Copernicus value or an
incorrect definition of the h-index.
Number of Predatory Articles
Through manual counting, we identified 3,671 articles
published in the 25 predatory journals. The average number of articles per
journal was 147, though this ranged from 17 to 548. Fifteen journals published
fewer than 100 articles (Figure 1). The total number of articles published per
year in these journals began to increase in 2012 (when 127 were published),
reached a peak in 2016 (when 544 articles were published), and then started to
decline gradually with only 298 articles published in 2022 (Figure 2).
Number of Predatory Articles Cited
The initial search of the full or truncated title of the
25 predatory journals in the “Cited Work” field within Web of Science found
that 3,109 predatory articles were cited by Web of Science-indexed journals. As
described in the Methods section, this set of articles included many
duplicates. After merging the duplicates, we found that there were 1,151 unique
predatory articles. Thus, out of the citable pool of 3,671 predatory articles,
31.4% (n=1,151/3671) were cited by Web of Science-indexed journals. On average,
27% of the articles in each of the 25 journals were cited in Web of Science,
but this ranged from 1% (n=1/76 citable articles in Journal of Preventive
Medicine) to 55.5% (n=15/27 citable articles in Evidence Based Medicine
and Practice).
While the number of predatory articles cited remained
fairly low from 2005 to 2010, it started to grow in 2011 and reached its peak
in 2016 (Figure 2). About half (n=574/1,151; 49.9%) of the cited articles were
cited once and about half (n=577/1,151; 50.1%) more than once. Seven (0.6%)
articles were cited more than 30 times (Table 1).
Of the 3,613 citing articles, 1,560 (43%) listed a
funding source. Of this funded research, 310 (19.9%) studies were funded by 11
major funding bodies for health research (National Institutes of Health,
Wellcome Trust, European Commission, European Research Council, U.K. Medical
Research Council, France’s Institut national de la santé, U.S. Department of
Defense, Canadian Institutes of Health Research, Australian National Health and
Medical Research Council, Howard Hughes Medical Institute and Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft).
In terms of publication types, of the 3,613 citing
articles, 767 (21.2%) were review articles. The vast majority (n=2,624; 72.6%)
were non-review journal articles (and were not letters or editorial material). There
were 7 (0.2%) practice guidelines, 137 (3.8%) systematic reviews, 83 (2.3%)
meta-analyses (of which 61 (1.7%) were also labelled as systematic reviews), 32
(0.9%) scoping reviews, and 1 (0.03%) realist review among the citing articles.
There were also 40 (1%) randomized controlled trials.
Discussion
In this study, we analyzed the characteristics of
articles published in 25 predatory journals and the articles that cited them.
We found that the number of articles published per year by the predatory
journals in our sample grew from 2011 until 2016, and then began to decline. This
was likely due to increased awareness of predatory journals among researchers
in the health sciences. Oermann et al. found that by 2021, 631 articles on
predatory publishing in health care had been published, many of which warned
researchers about the hazards of publishing in predatory journals [2].
The number of predatory articles cited began to increase
in 2010 and peaked in 2016. There are two likely reasons for the decrease after
2016. First, as noted above, the number of articles published in this predatory
journal article sample started to decline in 2016, so the number of articles
available to be cited is smaller, which could have led to a smaller number of
citations. Second, articles are often not cited for three to five years after
being published, and so it is possible that the articles in our sample that
were published in more recent years have just not had enough time to be cited
[23]. While the decline in citations could be the result of researchers’
increased awareness of predatory journals (and their decision not to cite
them), this seems unlikely given that the number of citing articles increased
steadily from 2014 to 2022 (Figure 2).
Aside from the alarming finding that the number of citing
articles soared 10-fold from 2014 to 2022, there are several other indications
that the influence of predatory articles on scholarship in the health sciences
has increased over time. First, we found that 31.4% of the predatory articles
were cited by articles in journals indexed in Web of Science. This number is
considerably higher than the rate of 6-13% reported in other studies which also
used Web of Science citation data [8,20]. The previous studies looked at
Turkish predatory journals (from a variety of disciplines) and predatory
journals in the social sciences. Our much higher citation rate may indicate
that in the health sciences, content from predatory journals has infiltrated
reputable journals more extensively than has occurred in other fields. Further,
about 72% of the citing articles in our study were published in journals
indexed in the Science Citation Index or the Social Sciences Citation Index
(rather than the Emerging Sources Citation Index, an index used mainly for
newer journals, or other Clarivate Citation Indexes), showing that most of
these citations came from important, established journals, which may have a
higher potential to spread the unreliable information contained in predatory
articles. In addition, because Web of Science is known to be selective when
choosing journals for indexing, if citations from all journals were included,
the total number and average number of citations received by our sample would
likely be higher than what we reported here.
An additional item of concern is the continued evidence
of incorporation of predatory articles into not just knowledge syntheses, but
practice guidelines. Our study found that 7 practice guidelines, and 137
systematic reviews of which 61 were meta-analyses, and a further 22
meta-analyses not also described as systematic reviews, cited the predatory
article sample.
While Akça et al., Frandsen, and Oermann et al. found
that most of those who cited predatory journals were based in particular
regions [6,20,21], our study’s results were somewhat different. We found that
the citing articles were authored by researchers all over the world, though
those from the U.S., India, and the U.K. were the most likely to cite predatory
articles. In addition, our results show that 43% of the research was funded
(with 19.9% funded by 11 major funding bodies for health research) and that
most papers were associated with at least one ORCID ID, showing that, contrary
to what was found by Akça et al. and Frandsen, at least some authors of citing
articles are experienced researchers. The largest number of citations of our
sample came from journals published by the large, established publishers
Elsevier and Springer, followed by MDPI, a major open access publisher. Citing
predatory research, then is not something done only by inexperienced
researchers or by small publishers.
Predatory journals are often unstable; they lack
long-term archiving or preservation mandates, and their websites can be shut
down or changed at any time. This instability poses challenges for those
studying the effects of predatory journals. For instance, at the time of
writing this manuscript, the URL for the Journal of Gastrointestinal Cancer
and Stromal Tumors, one of the 25 predatory journals selected for our
study, was redirecting to the site of another predatory journal, the Journal
of Cancer Science and Research. However, when we searched Web of Science,
we found citations for articles published under the title Journal of
Gastrointestinal Cancer and Stromal Tumors. When we examined the full-text
PDFs of the cited predatory articles, we found that some PDFs displayed the
OMICS logo and the title Journal of Gastrointestinal Cancer and Stromal
Tumors, while others showed both the titles Journal of Gastrointestinal
Cancer and Stromal Tumors and Journal of Cancer Science and Research.
This suggests that both journal titles might have been used for the same
journal at some point to attract more submissions. We suggest that in future,
those studying the citation impact of predatory journals save or take
screenshots of their websites to allow readers to verify and reproduce the
results.
Our study has a few limitations. First, as has been noted
by others, citation of an article does not necessarily mean that the citing
author agrees with, or approves of, the research done by the cited author. So,
while it is possible that some of the predatory articles in our sample were
cited for the purpose of criticizing them, it has been found that authors only
rarely cite articles for negative reasons, so it seems likely that that would
be the case in our sample as well [24]. Second, as indicated in the methods,
some of the predatory journals had titles that made doing a comprehensive
search for them very difficult. It is therefore possible that the number of
citations received by articles published in these journals was even higher than
indicated here. Conversely, following the practice of Web of Science [25], we
counted only the number of citable items (e.g., research articles) published in
the predatory journals but we did not check that the citations to these
journals were always to the citable items that we had counted instead of to
non-citable items such as editorials or other publication types. So, the number
of citations per article reported in this study may be slightly inflated. Finally,
similar to many other bibliometric analyses, our results rely on citation data
from Web of Science. The accuracy of our findings depends on the precision of
the data provided by this database. However, several studies have shown that
citation database data can sometimes be inaccurate due to citation errors by
authors or mistakes made by databases during data entry or within their
internal citation matching algorithms [26,27]. Nevertheless, our study provides
a snapshot of how articles published in predatory health sciences journals have
been cited by other works.
Citing predatory articles lends them an air of legitimacy
and respectability, thus making them an even more attractive place to publish
[28]. If authors continue to cite predatory articles, what is the solution?
The International Committee of Medical Journal Editors
(ICMJE), in its “Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and
Publication of Scholarly work in Medical Journals”, advises (and has done so
since 2019) that “Authors should avoid citing articles in predatory or
pseudo-journals” [29]. Similarly, the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE)
states in its discussion document on predatory publishing that authors,
professional societies and institutions should “avoid citing predatory journal
articles and beware when performing systematic and meta-analyses” and that
reviewers and editors, journals and publishers, funders and institutions should
all “discourage” citations of articles from predatory journals [30]. So, it is
not for lack of guidance that authors are citing predatory articles.
During the last decade, there have been considerable
efforts to promote the awareness of characteristics of predatory journals among
researchers and provide them with strategies to avoid publishing in these
venues. While these strategies seem to have been successful (as shown in our
study by the declining number of predatory articles), it is time to develop
strategies to prevent citation of predatory journals. Authors, editors,
publishers, and peer-reviewers all have a role to play in curbing the influence
of predatory journals and in protecting the integrity of science [31]. Part of
the solution may lie in non-predatory journals changing their own policies. If
such journals adopt open peer review and institute data sharing policies,
require trial registration and adherence to reporting standards, and for
systematic reviews, require risk of bias assessment, it will make it easier for
researchers to identify and avoid citing predatory journals, which presumably,
would not have such policies [28]. Publishers and/or editors could also ask
authors to confirm, when submitting a manuscript, that they have not cited
predatory journals [10]). As the ICMJE has stated, we must “avoid engaging
these charlatans….to strengthen and preserve the trust that is central to
science and medicine” [32].
Data availability statement
Data associated with this article are available in the
Federated Research Data Repository at: DOI: https://doi.org/10.20383/103.0998
Author Contributions
Erin Watson: conceptualization; formal analysis;
investigation; methodology; writing -original draft; writing -review and
editing. Li Zhang: conceptualization; data curation; formal analysis;
investigation; methodology; visualization; writing -original draft; writing
-review and editing
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Supplemental Files
Appendix A
Authors’ Affiliations
Erin Watson, AHIP, e.watson@usask.ca, https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7250-9912,
University of Saskatchewan Library, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada
Li Zhang, li.zhang@usask.ca, https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9056-7868,
University of Saskatchewan Library, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada
