According to new research that looks at the research world itself, there is a huge percentage of journals that are publishing thousands of research papers of little value and poor quality. The results from this investigation were published yesterday, 7th September 2017 in the journal Nature in a study entitled, “Stop this waste of people, animals and money”.
Dr. David Moher and his team from The Ottawa Hospital and the University of Ottawa found that predatory journals are a global problem and high income countries are not immune. Image Credit: The Ottawa Hospital
These journals are termed predatory journals and there are now approximately 8000 such journals that publish around 400,000 research papers annually collectively. The investigation reveals that over half of these predatory journals (57 percent) belong to high or upper middle income countries and some from prestigious institutions as well. These predatory journals and their schemes are only around a decade old and their modus operandi is to solicit researchers for their studies. They offer to publish the studies rapidly and typically at lower costs compared to legitimate journals. There is poor quality peer review of the papers and thus the quality of work published is of poor quality. Good peer reviewed journals typically accept a paper after independent subject experts or peer reviewers have provided their opinions regarding the acceptability of these research works. Peer review ensures that the final studies that appear in a journal are worthy of publication. These predatory journals do not show up on authentic search engines making their data unavailable for use of other researchers.
For this present report preparation, the researchers from the Ottawa Hospital and the University of Ottawa randomly selected 1,907 research papers published in 220 suspected biomedical predatory journals. The list of these suspected journals were created by the University of Colorado librarian Jeffrey Beall. Results from their analysis revealed that India led among the number of predatory journals with 27 percent from the country. Other countries with large number of predatory journals included 15 percent from United States, 5 percent from Nigeria, 4 percent from Iran and 4 percent from Japan. In the US, leading universities too fell prey with Harvard University - 9 articles) in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and the University of Texas - 11 articles were among the eight institutions with the most articles. The US National Institutes of Health (NIH) was the most frequently named funder of these studies.
According to Dr. David Moher, a senior scientist at The Ottawa Hospital and associate professor at the University of Ottawa in Canada, who was also a senior author of this latest study, this was an eye opener study in the sense that it was earlier believed that the problem of predatory journals was mainly in low income countries. He added that predatory journals publish research that comes from all around the world and sometimes from prestigious universities and institutions as well.
The study authors add that the percentages of predatory journals should be taken in context of the total amount of research that comes out of a country as well. This means that US generates more research work than others and while some of it is published in predatory journals, a vast majority still is published in valid peer reviewed journals. To assess the predatory journals the team also used checklists to see the standards of the journal. Larissa Shamseer, a PhD student at The Ottawa Hospital and the University of Ottawa and co-author of the study explained that quality was worse in predatory journals but was not always pristine in the legitimate journals. She explained that for a good human clinical trial, research ethics and approval of the ethical authorities is a must. Most of the studies in the predatory journals seem to cut corners when it comes to research ethics. These invalidate the results and may be potentially harmful for research in general.
Another co-author of the study Dr. Manoj Lalu, associate scientist and anesthesiologist at The Ottawa Hospital, assistant professor at the University of Ottawa also added a flip side to this story. He said that a humongous proportion of data from millions of participants and patients as well as laboratory animals is “tucked away” in these predatory journals. Readers fail to find these studies and health care regulators and policy makers who need research to upgrade and update health care information and guidelines fail to find these studies. In a sense these sometimes valuable data may remain buried he explained and this defeats the purpose of scientific research in biomedical sciences.
As a follow up to their study the team of researchers tried to contact 87 corresponding authors of the papers published in suspected predatory journals. Only 18 responses came from the authors to the mails. Of these 18, only two were actually aware that the journals they were publishing in were predatory in nature. To prevent more such incidents and also to help researchers not fall into these traps set by the predatory journals and losing their valuable research work, Dr. Moher set up a Centre for Journalology at The Ottawa Hospital in 2015. The Centre has a full-time Publications Officer. The responsibilities of this person is to provide training and consultation to researchers at The Ottawa Hospital and partner institutions. Dr. Kelly Cobey, Publications Officer at The Ottawa Hospital, adjunct professor at the University of Ottawa and co-author of the study emphasized on the need to educate researchers regarding this menace and added that many predatory journals can impersonate legitimate journals and researchers must be cautious. Dr. Moher added in conclusion the removing these predatory journals would eventually lead to big improvements in scientific advancements. He called for all parties including funders, universities, institutions, researchers as well as publishers to work together to eliminate predatory publishing.
Source: http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/549023a
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