Predatory Journals: The price that the academic field pays for incentivising journal publishing

Predatory journals have long been a problem within the world of academic publishing. In 2020, one academic reported how he managed to get “seven pages of flapdoodle” published which followed the plot of the TV series Breaking Bad (B Allf, 2020). Predatory journals publish such low-quality articles that have not undergone peer review or editing but still collect fees. If cited or used as a basis for research by others, these articles can pollute the academic field further. Countries such as India, Russia, South Africa, and China have pointed to incentives, largely from universities, as a driving cause of these phony journals. What incentives are pushing academics to publish their work in predatory journals and is there a solution to end this practice?

In 2013, India’s University Grants Commission (UGC) mandated that students must have two articles published as a condition for receiving their PhD. This has been criticised as the reason for the proliferation of predatory publishing in India, with students desperate to be published turning to these sham journals. Indeed, in 2017 the UGC found that 88% of titles that had been submitted by universities were of poor quality. Recently, an official committee has called for this condition to be scrapped and other strategies are being proposed that will support PhD students in producing high-quality work worthy of a suitable journal (B. Patwardhan, 2019). This highlights how academic publishing can be supported by incentive structures.

Evidence has also emerged from South Africa that incentives in journal publishing drives quantity not quality. In 2005, the government introduced a publication-incentive programme to drive academic output. Consequently, South Africa’s output rose from 4,063 articles in 2005 to 25,371 in 2018. For each article, the researcher received around 120,000 rand (that’s over £5000). Furthermore, there is no expectation that a researcher should use this money for research purposes, it is simply a financial reward (D. W. Hedding, 2019). Whilst researchers support the incentive programme, they have agreed that it can promote unethical practices. This was proven when a study found that between 2005 and 2014, the government had paid up to 300 million rand for articles published in predatory journals (S. Wild, 2020). So, how can the academic field rid itself of these predatory journals if, like in India, those working within the field systemically gain from them?

With these countries raising questions on their own incentivised publishing systems, is it logical to stop individual incentives (either in the form of promotion, qualification or payment) for getting journals published? South African academic David William Hedding believes so, stating that “if South Africa hopes to drive innovation, it must stop publication payouts” which he calls “the enemy of research quality” (D. W. Hedding, 2019).

There are not only explicit incentives, but also indirect incentives. For example, in many universities, publication is a key criterion for promotion, and pay bonuses exist for staff who bring in funding from publication (McKenna & Muthama, 2020). These indirect incentives show that it is something entrenched in academic publishing which would be difficult to remove completely without changing the culture entirely.

Recognising that the incentive structures that exist within academic publishing threaten academic integrity is key in the fight against predatory journals. Culture within universities must be changed to reward staff based on the quality of the research and the journal that they are published in. China has attempted this by creating a blacklist of predatory journals. However, this is hard to keep track of, with new ones constantly popping up (Nature Editorial, 2018). In India, the government created a ‘white list’ of approved journals which is used by the universities to evaluate promotion and has been thoroughly checked for predatory journals (G. Vaidyanathan, 2019). Easier to maintain; this puts the burden on journals to prove themselves. Is this the kind of model that academic publishers should emulate in the future? It could certainly help to transform the incentive structures from serving the individual, into advancing academic integrity.

Bibliography

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Hedding, D. W., Payouts push professors towards predatory journals, Nature (2019). [Online] Available at: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-00120-1. [Accessed 16/02/2021].

McKenna, S. and Muthama, E., Paying commission to academics reduces the value of research, The Conversation (2020). [Online] Available at: https://theconversation.com/paying-commission-to-academics-reduces-the-value-of-research-146498. [Accessed 17/02/2021].

Patwardhan, B., Why India is striking back against predatory journals, Nature (2019). [Online] Available at: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-02023-7. [Accessed 16/02/2021].

Vaidyanathan, G., India culls hundreds more ‘dubious’ journals from government approved list, Nature (2019). [Online] Available at: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-02038-0. [Accessed 16/02/2021].

Wild, S., Researchers decry ‘pay to publish’ system — but don’t want it to stop, Nature (2020). [Online] Available at: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-03483-y. [Accessed 16/02/2021].