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Dr. Jeremy Horne shares his insights on Predatory Publishing and Practical Ways To Combat this Threat

Post-Webinar Q&A: Is It Time to Banish the Blacklist? A Practical Guide to Combating Predatory Publishing

By IGI Global on Mar 22, 2018
JeremyHorneTo honor its commitment to providing research on the latest trending topics to the academic community, IGI Global organized a webinar on February 15, 2018 entitled, “Is It Time to Banish the Blacklist? A Practical Guide to Combating Predatory Publishing,” presented by Dr. Jeremy Horne of the International Institute of Informatics and Systemics, USA, and author of the best-selling IGI Global book Philosophical Perceptions on Logic and Order.

The central theme of the webinar was how librarians and researchers can take action against predatory publishing and eradicate this threat that undermines the quality of academic research. With hundreds of views, the webinar proved so popular that Dr. Horne was unable to answer all the questions during the open Q&A session at the end of his presentation. Due to the engaging conversation that occurred, he collaborated with IGI Global to curate the most pertinent questions that were asked. To watch Dr. Horne’s full presentation, please click here.

How can individuals identify a predatory publication?

While I am a critic of Beall's List, I do not think he is out of line in presenting judgement criteria. The most immediate item I identify is the time from submission to acceptance. This is somewhat subjective, but the obvious red flag is a very short time – less than two weeks. My call for a knowledge quality institute (KQI), that was mentioned in the webinar, would go a long way towards helping people assess the integrity of a journal or conference.

I just serendipitously came across Loyola-Marymount University’s checklist for publishers on the subject. Also, I did note in my presentation that while lists of criteria are floating around, there is still anarchy, as there is no comprehensive uniform set of criteria that has been settled upon by peer review of a wide-ranging community of experts.

What's the best way to mentor new faculty and graduate students about predatory publishing?

Generically, if philosophy, scientific methods, logic, epistemology, and critical thinking were required in schools, we would have less of a problem. Coupled with this is the need for REQUIRED ethics courses, as well. These do not guarantee knowledge quality, but, as it is now, I find the conspicuous absence of philosophy in schools as a major contributing factor of the terrible poor knowledge quality situation in which we find ourselves now. Also, the knowledge quality institute (KQI) would be on the cutting edge of developing courses, monitoring, and other measures to help maintain and improve the knowledge quality environment overall. For example, I see courses, publications, knowledge quality lists (of journals, conferences, etc.).

Why do journal articles and book chapters take so long to publish?

Two immediate reasons are the availability of reviewers and the content of the material submitted for publication. Most peer reviewing occurs through the good graces of the reviewers who freely make their time available through already overcrowded schedules and without compensation. Here would be an excellent opportunity to have faculty fulfill their “publish or perish” obligations by being in a pool of peer reviewers. This pool should not be commercial but rather non-profit/academic. Such would be one function of the knowledge quality institute (KQI).

The content of the material to be published affects review time, as in detailed (especially technical) presentation taking more time to fact check and analyze. Naturally, the longer the presentation, the more time it will take. Ideally, the reviewer should be able to recreate the presentation independently through research, in effect starting from the origin and ending with the same material as that presented by the presenter. While this usually does not happen, it often is the case that the reviewer can be bogged down even in simple fact-checking. Think of how long it takes to grade a student's term paper as a rough benchmark of a usually simple case. Book chapters can be more problematical, as the reviewer must take into account the context of the whole book. For example, is the chapter even relevant? Is it consistent with the other content, etc.?

Would making a holistic, comprehensive, and more collaborative overhaul of the peer-review process only lengthen an already lengthy process? Wouldn’t doing that put even more pressure on tenure-track faculty to fulfill their publication requirements?

I have two responses. First, what is the trade-off between quality and time? The extreme is with the predatory journals where the turnaround time is just days. The other is a publication taking weeks, or even months. The latter often can be attributed to lack of resources, such as availability of competent reviewers, their schedules, delay times in correspondence, etc. Much research does have a time value, and this needs to be addressed.

This brings me to my second response: part of the difficulty in the peer review process is the anarchy. There are no uniform standards, procedures, organized and vetting pools of reviewers, and so forth. Think back to the time when railroads had to somehow coordinate schedules when there were no times zones, decent telecommunications, and so forth. The knowledge quality institute (KQI) would be a step towards making peer review processes more uniform and fairly applied.

What is the relation between predatory publishing and Open Access publishing?

I have not done a statistical analysis. This would be an interesting project, but the criteria for what constitutes “predatory” would have to be well established, as well as to the exact reasons why a publication would be included on such a list. Keep in mind the reasons why Beall's list came under fire. He never gave any specific reasons for why a publication was included. The knowledge quality institute (KQI) would take the DOJ (as well as Scopus and other lists) under review and produce a “master list” of these publications, along with the judgment criteria and exactly why each publication was listed. There also would be a method of being removed from the list, with probably a probationary period to allow the publication to stop the practices that made it predatory or of low quality.

What do you recommend about evaluating faculty, who have published in a predatory journal, for promotion and tenure? Should they not be promoted and tenured? Are they responsible for knowing it is a predatory journal?

To be charitable, just because an article does appear in a predatory journal does not logically mean that it is of low quality. However, one should ask why the author did not undergo a real peer review process. There are two basic situations: either she/he was aware of the publication's quality and standards or not. The first I have addressed by my call for a knowledge quality institute (KQI), discussed in my presentation. While Beall's list was well-intentioned, it surely was not infallible, as my presentation demonstrated. The second situation focuses on asking why one would knowingly want to publish in a low-quality journal. I can think of low self-esteem, need to be granted tenure/promotion, etc. Then, there is a simple lack of ethos about knowledge quality. Maybe the faculty member knows that what she is submitting is junk and is looking for a fast-track way of getting ahead.

Let's get back to why the faculty member was hired in the first place. Compare the quality of what she/he is doing now with what existed at the time of hiring. If the quality is the same, then one should question the judgment of the hiring committee. Maybe their publications should be checked too! This should be done, especially if they are alerted to the person's publishing in a predatory journal and they do not act. I would recommend a university/college-wide interdepartmental review committee for such faculty member, an “academic court”, as it were to review each case. This might be a project for a faculty senate, for instance.

Now, let's say that there was such a court and a number of cases were heard and faculty ultimately wound up being allowed to publish in predatory journals. To me, this would be grounds for escalating the problem to regional university/college accrediting agencies. There are other venues, such as the American Association of University Professors. If these two would fail in taking ownership of the problem, the KQI would.

IGI Global would like to thank Dr. Jeremy Horne for sharing his thoughts on the issue of predatory publishing, and we look forward to more collaborations that will benefit researchers, librarians, and academia as a whole.

Also, be sure to check out the following authoritative references on this relevant topic and recommend them to your library:

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not reflect the views of IGI Global.
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