‘Predatory journals’ pose a danger that could undermine the quality, integrity, and reliability of published scientific research, a new joint statement from three leading organisations, professional in medical writing and publication planning, has warned.
The American Medical Writers Association (AMWA), European Medical Writers Association (EMWA), and International Society for Medical Publication Professionals (ISMPP) have released a ‘Joint Position Statement on Predatory Publishing’, which outlines the ‘serious threat’ that predatory journals pose – both to researchers publishing the results of their work and to the peer-reviewed medical literature itself.
If not stopped, the ultimate result of predatory journals – which as defined in the statement, are those which subvert the peer-review publication system for the sole purpose of financial gain with little evident concern for ethical behaviour – will be to ‘harm’ scientific literature.
In seeking a resolution, the authors of the paper – published in Current Medical Research & Opinion – call for all potential medical authors to carry out due diligence by examining the reputation of the publications to which they submit, and to send their work only to those journals that provide proper peer review and that genuinely seek to contribute to the scientific literature.
The statement provides a key set of 11 identifiers, typical of predatory journals and their publishers. As well as providing a lack of information, and poorly made websites, these include a lack of journal indexing in a recognised citation system such as PubMed or within a legitimate online directory such as the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ); promises of unrealistically quick peer review, or no information about the process; claims made of broad coverage across multiple specialties in medicine or across multiple subspecialties in a particular discipline; a large stable of journals that have been started very recently and/or that contain no or few published articles, or are of obviously poor quality; and an editorial board consisting of members from outside the specialty or outside the country in which the journal is published.
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