Publishing in predatory journals?

[MastersHoping]

This is an article from the New York Times last year. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/30/science/predatory-journals-academics.html 

 

I have come across it recently and found it fascinating. Although for fields like medicine when people's health is on the line, for some fields, like my particular field (esp. the subfield) have little direct consequence for poor quality scholarship. If an individual does not plan to pursue a high-research career at prestigious universities and would prefer instead to opt for teaching careers at lower ranked places, what's the harm in publishing your work in these? Especially if you put forth an earnest effort in your writing. Sometimes, the distinction between "legitimate" and "predatory" journals are not even that unambiguous. For the record I'm not saying I plan to do so, but was just hoping to get your thoughts. 

[TakeruK]

If you're asking, here are the reasons I would give to sway someone against publishing in a predatory journal:

1. You are being scammed. You are paying money for something that is objectively worthless. There is a reason they are predatory journals, not just low impact factor journals. 

2. Putting legitimate work into these scam journals helps to legitimize these scam journals. It might lead to other honest researchers thinking that this journal is more legitimate and consider them. People who choose to publish in these predatory journals anyways is part of the reason why it's not always unambiguous that a journal is a scam.

3. These journals have little peer review, or it's just a joke. Putting your work there and then passing it off as a "real" journal article is unethical. 

4. If you want to put some low impact work online for others to see, there are other ways you can do this for free or for a very low cost, through legitimate and easy means. For example, in my field, there is a no fee, no peer review (other than editorial review) journal for "research notes" that are for things like null results or partial analysis that can't be completed but would be useful to share.

5. If you are knowingly spending grant money on publishing charges of predatory journals, then you are wasting the grantor's money (whether it's a private fund or tax dollars). I think this is also unethical/irresponsible use of granted money.

[rising_star]

4 hours ago, MastersHoping said:

If an individual does not plan to pursue a high-research career at prestigious universities and would prefer instead to opt for teaching careers at lower ranked places, what's the harm in publishing your work in these? 

Well, the people on the search committee and tenure & promotion committees will question your publications if they are in predatory journals. That might result in you not being considered for the position, not being promoted, etc. Basically, it casts doubts on your ability to be a scholar because they'll wonder why your work wasn't in truly peer-reviewed journals, what you have to hide, whether you even did your own research, etc. I've been on search committees and I definitely do pay attention to where applicants have published.

[MastersHoping]

Thank you for the advice. I definitely will avoid these journals then. 

What about low impact journals then? Like legitimate but not very prestigious ones. For someone who is aiming is not aiming to work at large research universities, are such journals okay? 

[maxhgns]

I don't have anything to add to TakerUK's excellent response above, so I'll just reiterate their point (2), which I think is the most important from an ethical standpoint: these journals and conferences are a scam, and exist to (1) swindle the unwary, and (2) profit from the unscrupulous. By affiliating yourself with them, you help them to perpetrate harm against (A) members of the profession (and if they're being swindled, they're usually vulnerable in some way), and (B) the profession (by legitimizing the unscrupulous and their piss-poor work, some of which is then picked up by politicians, corporations, etc. to legitimize whatever piss-poor view they're peddling; also by harming the most vulnerable in the profession). Your work belongs in the journals you read or recognize, not just any old outlet.

 

1 hour ago, MastersHoping said:

Thank you for the advice. I definitely will avoid these journals then. 

What about low impact journals then? Like legitimate but not very prestigious ones. For someone who is aiming is not aiming to work at large research universities, are such journals okay? 

Yes, that's fine. And if you look at the CVs of senior members of your profession--especially at research-oriented schools--you'll see that their publication strategies shift over time. For many of those who don't end up as deadwood, they start publishing more and more in less prestigious outlets once they've got tenure, and especially once they make full. This work is not necessarily of low quality; the idea is just that they no longer have much incentive to shoot primarily for prestigious journals, and instead they have a greater incentive to just get their ideas out there in print, where others can find them.

One thing we've recently realized in my field is that teaching-focused institutions don't mind if your pubs are in tier-2 or tier-3 journals, as long as you have several and show that you'll be able to churn out whatever the requisite number for tenure is supposed to be. Having publications thus matters more than the prestige of those publications (for those jobs, and in my field). That said, don't rush off to find the crappiest journals you can. People at teaching schools know which journals are which, and they'll still expect you to be publishing in venues appropriate for your work. Besides which, you want to make yourself as attractive as possible to as wide a range of jobs as you can, which means publishing in decent outlets. Teaching schools aren't all the same, and some care more about quality or prestige of research than others.

[MastersHoping]

11 minutes ago, maxhgns said:

I don't have anything to add to TakerUK's excellent response above, so I'll just reiterate their point (2), which I think is the most important from an ethical standpoint: these journals and conferences are a scam, and exist to (1) swindle the unwary, and (2) profit from the unscrupulous. By affiliating yourself with them, you help them to perpetrate harm against (A) members of the profession (and if they're being swindled, they're usually vulnerable in some way), and (B) the profession (by legitimizing the unscrupulous and their piss-poor work, some of which is then picked up by politicians, corporations, etc. to legitimize whatever piss-poor view they're peddling; also by harming the most vulnerable in the profession). Your work belongs in the journals you read or recognize, not just any old outlet.

....

Awesome, thanks for the advice. While I never planned to publish in predatory journals, I will now be extra careful to avoid them. 

Speaking of which, how can I find some lower-tier journals? I'm not particularly ambitious when it comes to publishing in prestigious journals, and would rather just get my work out there than stress about rankings. 

[maxhgns]

1 hour ago, MastersHoping said:

Awesome, thanks for the advice. While I never planned to publish in predatory journals, I will now be extra careful to avoid them. 

Speaking of which, how can I find some lower-tier journals? I'm not particularly ambitious when it comes to publishing in prestigious journals, and would rather just get my work out there than stress about rankings. 

Identifying appropriate venues for publication (and developing a rough sense of journal rankings) is an important aspect of socialization into the profession. If you don't know yet, then that's probably a sign that you're not quite ready (although that's not to say that you shouldn't be taking steps to get properly socialized!).

The first step is to identify the journals that are publishing the articles you read, and those you want to read. The next step is to sort the journals according to what kind of stuff they're publishing: some will focus primarily on a particular subfield, whereas others will be more generalist in orientation. You need to figure out which are the main outlets for work in your subfield, which are secondary outlets, which tertiary, etc. And you need to do the same thing for the generalist journals, and it's useful to get a sense of what the main outlets are for other subfields, too.That means spending a fair bit of time reading things, skimming recent issues for interesting titles or abstracts, checking the CVs of people in the profession whose career trajectory you want to emulate (to see where they're publishing), etc.

When you're ready to send something out there, my advice is not to start low. Aim high, and go down the ladder as it's rejected. You don't want to short-change your work, and having some well-ranked pubs will open more doors--even at teaching schools--than a slew of very low-ranked ones will. For the teaching schools, a mix (one or two T1/T2, several T3/4) will probably give you the best shot. To do that, the usual advice is to be an R-selector: always have 5-10 papers out there under review at a mix of journals. That's hard to do while you're working on the dissertation, so most grad students end up K-selecting; but if that's what you're doing, then you're better served by aiming high since if you aim too low and it's accepted, you've now got just one not-very-impressive pub, and still need to come up with a few more to impress the teaching school crowd.

Edited May 14, 2018 by maxhgns

[TakeruK]

I second everything @maxhgns says about publishing in lower impact / less competitive journals!