In two previous posts, I’ve talked about how the global university rankings system is affecting scholarship and the work of scholars. (here and here)
Various metrics are used in creating university rankings. There are metrics, for instance, that are related to journal publications. In particular, a university’s rankings can be improved by increasing the number of “highly-ranked” articles produced by professors at that university.
As a result, administrators at universities that are trying to succeed in the university rankings system will want their faculty members to produce as many journal articles in “top-ranked” journals as possible, and they will even set “key performance indicators” (KPI) requiring them to do so if they want to maintain their position or get promoted, etc.
What then happens if someone finds it difficult to get published in a “top-ranked” journal?
A lot of the universities that are competing in the global rankings are located in countries where English is not the native language, and yet, the journal rankings systems are mostly focused on English-language journals. For professors in such countries, there can thus be an added level of difficulty in getting published if they normally work and write in a language other than English.
So, what do you do if you normally write in a language other than English, and you work in a local context that does not require you to engage with “international scholarship” and then suddenly you are told by your university administrators that you have new KPIs – you must publish an article in a Scopus-ranked journal, or at least in an “international” journal?
Not surprisingly, just as the craze for university rankings has spread across the globe, a new publishing industry has emerged that is targeted precisely at the huge number of professors around the world who now are required to publish in “international” journals.
This publishing industry takes different forms. The first is what we can think of as “do-it-yourself” (DIY) versions. For instance, some universities establish their own “international” journals. These university-backed journals come in different forms.
On one extreme, there are universities that will set up a journal that is published by an established academic publisher and will publish articles from scholars around the world. Such journals are set up more to raise the prestige of the university than to serve the publication needs of its faculty.
On another extreme, there are universities that will publish a journal themselves, and will focus heavily on publishing professors from their own university, although they will also publish the work of others who submit their manuscripts for publication.
Then there are university-backed journals that are somewhere on a continuum between those two extremes.
Depending on how they operate, these journals can become indexed by Scopus after a few years. After that happens, they can also rise up in the SCImago/Scopus rankings if they meet certain conditions.
Alongside the DIY version of publications, some of which are clearly meant to serve professors in need of an “international” journal article, is the “commercial” version. Simply put, there are massive publishing houses that have emerged in the past 20 years that have established journals covering every field imaginable.
Some of these publishers are what are known as “predatory” publishers.
What is a predatory publisher? There have been many different definitions over the years, but I like this one that some scholars published in the journal Nature in 2019:
“Predatory journals and publishers are 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.”
This definition contains various elements, and not all predatory journals exhibit all of these traits. Indeed, the line between “legitimate” and “predatory” journals can at times be quite blurry, particularly for people who are not knowledgeable about how to identify signs of predatory practices.
Before I moved to Asia in 2018, I don’t recall ever being solicited by a predatory journal. However, since moving to the region, I get emails at least a couple of times a week, encouraging me to submit to a journal like (I’m making this name up) the International Journal of Engineering, Life Sciences, Social Sciences and Humanities (IJELSSSH).
Such an email will indicate that the IJELSSSH is accepting submissions for issue #X, which is scheduled for publication next month (!!). What the email might not mention is a publication fee, but there will definitely be one.
What I have just described is the “crude” version of a predatory journal. There are now many predatory journals that are much more sophisticated in how they present themselves. Nonetheless, they are still usually easy to identify if you know what to look for.
This is something new. When I was a graduate student in the 1990s, and continuing on to when I started to work as a professor in the 2000s, there were new journals that got established, however, 1) they were very few in number, 2) they were published by established academic publishers, and 3) they were often targetted at some niche field.
What has happened over the past 10+ years is very different from that. Now there are many new journals getting established, and they are being published by a wide range of publishers.
Further, it is not a mystery why this is happening now. Just as universities around the world have started to pressure their faculty to publish in “international” journals to improve the rankings of their respective universities, there has been a tsunami of new journals that have emerged to serve this need.
Putting aside the issue of predatory journals, another major issue that this presents is a problem of scale. Simply put, when the world of publishing expands this much, this fast, it is impossible for expertise to keep up.
So, for instance, let us imagine that our International Journal of Engineering, Life Sciences, Social Sciences and Humanities is not a predatory journal. Nonetheless, the scope of this journal is too large for an editorial board to be able to consistently select appropriate readers to review articles, and as a result, it will inevitably end up publishing some articles that would not get published in journals of a smaller scope where the editor(s) has a better sense of who to select to review a submission.
What this ultimately means is that today virtually ANYTHING can get published in English.
If you have a paper and it is rejected by one journal, there is another somewhere that will publish it, because today there are many more journals than there were a decade ago and they vary widely in the level of their scholarly rigor.
In the case of a 100% predatory journal, it will publish the piece if the author is willing to pay the publication fee (or maybe the author’s university will pay for it).
A DIY journal that publishes articles in multiple fields might publish it because, out of a lack of knowledge of the specific field of the paper, the editor(s) might send the submission to reviewers who do not have the full expertise to review it, and it will pass through the peer-review process.
Long-established and reputable journals can also publish substandard scholarship, although at least theoretically that is not supposed to happen regularly. Nonetheless, it definitely does happen.
There are of course many other factors that can come into play, but the result is the same: virtually ANYTHING can now get published in English somewhere.
So, “Why does this matter?” the established professor asks. “After all, I’m never going to cite an article published in the International Journal of Engineering, Life Sciences, Social Sciences and Humanities.”
You’re not going to, but the person who is contributing to the Wikipedia page on your topic will cite the article that is published in that journal to support some point that has long been debunked in your “established” field. Further, many more people will get their information about your topic from Wikipedia than from anything you publish.
That’s just one example, but the point is that it does matter.
Indeed, I think we are entering a new phase. Just as we now live in a world where any piece of news can be “fake news” depending on one’s political position, any published scholarship can now be “fake scholarship” if it doesn’t fit with what one wants to say.
All one has to do is to back up one’s ideas with published articles from an “international” journal. For that, the International Journal of Engineering, Life Sciences, Social Sciences and Humanities or the predatory journal, HUMANOID KNOWLEDGE (another imaginary title), are ready and willing to help.
