掠夺性期刊——即使这个词是有争议的——多年来一直是一个令人烦恼的问题，并且肯定是 Retraction Watch 和其他地方的报道主题。我们很高兴为您呈现一本新书《捕食者效应：了解掠夺性学术期刊的过去、现在和未来》的摘录，作者是出版业的长期观察家 Simon Linacre。文中的引文可以在本书中找到，该书是开放获取的。
作者在掠夺性期刊方面面临的问题可以用作者在 2010 年代中期在科威特遇到的一位学者的困境来概括。迫于所在机构要求在英文期刊上发表文章的压力，他提交、付费并在期刊上发表了一篇文章，后来他发现这篇文章是掠夺性的。他惊慌失措地问他的上级他应该怎么做，富有同情心的资深学者建议他应该在另一份更有名望的期刊上再次发表这篇文章。
不明白双刊的问题，他按时再次投稿，由二刊发表。问题解决了，或者他认为，直到某位出版主管在他的机构发表演讲，并描述了将同一篇文章提交给两个不同期刊的行为违反了出版道德。
这个故事的寓意是什么？好吧，一方面，作者应该非常了解出版伦理的各个方面，尽管它们很重要并且会危及职业生涯，但即使是研究最密集的大学也很少有深入的教授。然而，即使作为潜在作者的所有研究生都接受了充分的培训，许多人仍然会陷入掠夺性骗局，甚至可能会在几天内以几百美元的价格意识到保证出版的吸引力。
可悲的是，到目前为止，这方面的研究很少，大概是因为那些在掠夺性期刊上发表过文章的作者宁愿不承认和回答任何关于它的问题。在下一节中，我们将深入研究为数不多的明确关注作者动机的文章之一，其中心是作者是否不知道他们在假期刊上发表过文章，或者完全知道并且对此没有任何疑虑。
不知情或不道德。. . 或两者？
丹麦学者 Tove Faber Frandsen 于 2017 年发表了与掠夺性期刊相关的作者动机领域的杰出研究（Frandsen，2017 年）。本章标题中的中心问题“不知道或不道德”总结了弗兰森文章中的主要发现，该文章有两个主要研究问题：
- 作者是否引用了主要来自发展中国家的潜在掠夺性期刊和潜在的低科学标准期刊？
- 作者是否引用了潜在的掠夺性期刊和潜在的低科学标准期刊通常缺乏经验的作者，很少发表和引用？
在文章中，弗兰森谈到了学术界和学术出版界的一些假设，即这些作者是谁实际上在掠夺性期刊上发表了文章。这些假设的范围从那些认为没有人会天真到在此类期刊上发表文章的人，到那些认为西方没有人会屈服于在此类期刊上发表文章的人。围绕作者在掠夺性期刊上发表论文的动机，这些和其他想法存在一系列偏见，这是围绕 Frandsen 进行的研究的背景。
该研究首先着眼于关于作者在掠夺性期刊上发表文章的动机的文献，这至少可以说是有限的。当提示在此类期刊上发表文章时，作者通常不会站出来，而 Frandsen 引用了我们在第 6 章中看到的德国研究，在该研究中，被确定为在掠夺性期刊上发表过文章的 5,000 名德国作者中没有一个站出来（Krause 和 Langhans，2018 年）。很少有研究表明，作者在掠夺性期刊上发表文章的原因归结为意识（或缺乏意识）或动机。后者很有趣，因为它涵盖了不同的动机，例如出版物可以容易地导致推广或对整个学术传播行业的愤世嫉俗的不满（弗兰森，2017 年）。
Frandsen 还提供了一些解决方案，这些解决方案基于对作者进行掠夺性期刊相关固有问题的教育，同时还回顾了激励和奖励如何导致作者倾向于做出错误选择。值得提醒自己，为什么作者首先要在这一点上发表文章，通常是出于以下四个原因中的一个或多个：注册一个想法或实验或发现；证明和验证研究；传播该研究；并将研究存档以备将来参考。Frandsen 的研究得到了 Yeoh 等人 (2017) 的支持，他们发现了类似的动机，并呼吁建立新的合法出版渠道，以支持发展中国家的学者在远离掠夺性期刊的安全环境中展示他们的研究。
从掠夺性出版的角度审视这些传统动机可能是有益的，作者可能会被引导相信他们正在实现所有这些结果，但实际上每一个都可能失败。反过来，他们可能会记录他们的想法，但在错误的地方这样做，而且没有任何改变的希望；没有适当的同行评审，任何认证都是肤浅的；掠夺性期刊的传播很差，有时甚至不存在；并且存在的数千个空期刊证明，安全存档的保证很少（如果有的话）。
普什米-普鲁尤
那么，弗兰森是否正确地说，为掠夺性期刊做出贡献的作者是不道德和不知情的作者的广泛结合？虽然很少有其他文章直接回答作者动机的问题，但有大量的论文着眼于作者可能受到诱惑的原因。它们有两种形式，主要取决于推动或拉动因素。在推动方面，广为人知的“发表或灭亡”现象被广泛引用，描述了高等教育中的文化，其中暗示和明确鼓励学者发表他们的研究，通常遵循相当规范的“权利”清单期刊。奖励的形式是中国等国家的财政奖励或澳大利亚的研究资助，用于在顶级期刊上发表文章，
要深入了解作者经常面临的困境，只需看看印度，那里在掠夺性期刊上发表文章的作者数量和期刊本身的数量可能是世界上最多的（Shen 和 Bjork，2015 年）。在一篇调查该问题的文章中，呼吁印度政府介入（Seethapathy 等人，2016 年），在接下来的几年中，教资会多次尝试为印度人创建首选和有问题的期刊列表在最初的调查中，发现在 Beall's List 期刊的样本中发表过文章的作者将帮助提升和机构压力列为两个最大的推动因素——尽管同样值得注意的是，大多数人也否认这些期刊他们发表的文章是掠夺性的。
这突出了两个作者群体特别是早期职业学者（ECR）和来自全球南方的作者所感受到的困难。正如 Nicholas 等人在他们对 ECR 的研究（2020 年）中指出的那样，他们对掠夺性期刊有相当大的担忧，10% 的人表示他们避免在 OA 期刊上发表，因为他们认为这些期刊质量差，部分原因是掠夺性期刊出版现象。也许同样具有启发性的是，ECR 给出的不在 OA 期刊上发表的前两个原因——高昂的成本（38%）和缺乏可用的选择（21%）——是掠夺性出版商用来引诱作者发表的两个关键卖点跟他们。
对于位于全球南方大学的 ECR 而言，这些担忧可能尤其严重，因为那里支付高额 OA 费用或旨在帮助他们对出版渠道做出明智决策的支持结构可能较少的财政支持。然而，需要指出的是，虽然在 Shen 和 Bjork 的研究中，全球南方的许多国家在掠夺性期刊上发表文章的作者数量排名前列，但美国等外部国家也很突出，因此过于简单化，不能暗示掠夺性期刊“只是”这些国家的问题。
初始推动因素产生的其他问题包括信息不对称。例如，掠夺性期刊发现自己包含在用于发表推荐的数据库中，这可以吸引其他投稿。在意大利，一项针对意大利作者的大型调查发现了这种情况，此外还有一种“对冲你的赌注”型策略，即推动作者在期刊上发表文章不受出版专家的监管（Bagues 等， 2017）。
在某些期刊上发表论文的巨大压力无疑可以为游戏的发生创造合适的环境，而发表授权也可能会刺激这种行为。这是一些围绕 OA 授权的担忧，因为他们可以说服作者在廉价且快速的掠夺性期刊上发表文章，以勾选正确的 OA 框（Linacre 等人，2019 年）。然而，尽管 OA 授权有可能增加掠夺性出版行为的问题，但没有证据表明这种情况正在发生，一些研究表明，从 OA 的角度来看，掠夺性期刊中收录的文章数量可能是减少（Eykens 等人，2019 年）。
当我们研究与掠夺性期刊相关的学术拉动因素的后果时，我们可以看到吸引作者的诱惑，例如从学术人员经常收到的频繁电子邮件邀请中承诺加快发表时间。出版速度通常是作者的首要出版愿望，知道一篇文章将很快发表可能会激励作者投稿到掠夺性期刊，这通常会带来快速周转时间的承诺（Linacre 等人，2019 年）。
此类作者决定可能由承诺快速发布时间的电子邮件以及旨在激发作者期望响应的其他简单的好得令人难以置信的提议触发。在一项研究中，在对有问题期刊发表的调查作出回应的少数作者中，超过五分之二的人表示，他们最初是从征集电子邮件中识别出他们提交的期刊（Cobey 等，2017b）。
简单的便利也可能是一个拉动因素，加拿大有争议的汤普森河大学 (TRU) 丑闻可能证明了这一点。2017 年，TRU 学者 Derek Pyne 发表了一篇论文，调查了他的一些同事和其他学者的出版习惯，声称在有问题的期刊上发表的文章是为一些与获得内部研究奖项相关的研究人员提供的 (Pyne, 2017)。虽然其中一些研究受到质疑（Tsigaris 和 Teixeira da Silva，2019 年），但基本观点仍然认为，与掠夺性期刊相关的拉动因素有可能影响学术研究人员的决策。”
Simon Linacre 是 Digital Science 的内容、品牌和新闻主管。他曾在 Cabells 担任营销总监，并在 Emerald Publishing 工作了 15 年，领导其管理期刊项目。他的著作涉及文献计量学、出版伦理和研究影响等主题。西蒙是出版道德受托人委员会和学术和专业协会出版商协会的导师，并拥有哲学和国际商务硕士学位。
Deceptive Academic Journals: An excerpt from The Predator EffectPredatory journals — even the term is controversial — have been a vexing problem for many years, and have certainly been a subject of coverage at Retraction Watch and elsewhere. We’re pleased to present an excerpt a new book, The Predator Effect: Understanding the Past, Present and Future of Deceptive Academic Journals, by longtime publishing industry observer Simon Linacre. The citations in the text can be found in the book, which is available open access. The problems facing authors with regard to predatory journals can be summed up with the plight of an academic this author met in Kuwait in the mid- 2010s. Under pressure from his institution to publish in English-language journals, he submitted, paid for, and published an article in a journal that he subsequently discovered to be predatory. In panic, he asked his superior what he should do, and the sympathetic senior academic advised he should publish the article again in a different, more reputable journal. Not understanding the problems associated with dual publication, he duly submitted the article again, which was published by the second journal. Problem solved, or so he thought, until a certain publishing executive gave a presentation at his institution and described the breach of publication ethics surrounding the submission of the same article to two different journals.The moral of this story? Well, for one, authors should be very much aware of all aspects of publication ethics, which, despite their importance and career-threatening consequences, are rarely taught in any depth at even the most research-intensive universities. However, even if adequate training were given to all postgraduates as potential authors, many would still fall for predatory scams and may even be alerted to the attractiveness of guaranteed publication in a matter of days for just a few hundred dollars. Sadly, there has been little research done in this area so far, presumably because those authors who have published in predatory journals would rather not acknowledge and answer any questions about it. In the next section, we will look in depth at one of the few published articles focused explicitly on author motivations, which centers on whether authors are either unaware they have published in fake journals or are fully aware and have few qualms about doing so.UNAWARE OR UNETHICAL . . . OR BOTH? The standout research in the area of author motivations relating to predatory journals was published in 2017 by Denmark-based academic Tove Faber Frandsen (Frandsen, 2017). The central question of “unaware or unethical” in the heading of this chapter summarizes the key finding in Frandsen’s article, which had two main research questions: 1.Are authors citing potential predatory journals and potential poor scientific standards journals predominantly from developing countries? 2.Are authors citing potential predatory journals and potential poor scientific standards journals generally inexperienced authors with few publications and citations? In the article, Frandsen addressed a few assumptions in academia and scholarly publishing about who these authors were who actually published in predatory journals. These assumptions range from those who think that nobody could be so naïve as to publish in such journals to those who believe nobody in the West would stoop so low as to publish in such journals. There are a whole range of prejudices to unpack in these and other thoughts around the motivations behind authors publishing in predatory journals, which is the context around the research conducted by Frandsen. The study first looks at the literature on author motivations to publish in predatory journals, which is limited to say the least. Authors have not typically come forward when prompted about publishing in such journals, and Frandsen references the German study we saw in Chapter 6 where not one of the 5,000 German authors identified as having published in predatory journals came forward (Krause and Langhans, 2018). What few studies exist show that the reasons authors cite for publishing in predatory journals come down to awareness (or lack thereof ) or motivation. The latter is interesting, as this covers different motivations such as the perceived ease with which publications can lead to promotion or a cynical dissatisfaction with the scholarly communications industry as a whole (Frandsen, 2017). Frandsen also offers some solutions, based around the education of authors on the inherent issues associated with predatory journals, but also with a review of how incentives and rewards can lead to authors being tempted to make the wrong choices. It is worth reminding ourselves why authors want to publish in the first place at this point, and typically it is for one or more of four reasons: to register an idea or experiment or finding; to certify and validate research; to disseminate that research; and to archive the research for future reference. Frandsen’s study is backed up by Yeoh et al (2017), who found similar motivations and called for a new tranche of legitimate publishing outlets to support academics from developing countries to present their research in a safe environment away from the reach of predatory journals. It is perhaps instructive to review these traditional motivations through the lens of predatory publishing, where authors might be led to believe they are achieving all these outcomes but in fact can fail at each one. In turn, they may register their idea, but do so in the wrong place without any prospect of changing; any certification is superficial without proper peer review; dissemination is very poor in predatory journals and sometimes non-existent; and there are few if any guarantees of secure archiving as the thousands of empty journals that exist attest.So, is Frandsen right in saying that it is broadly a combination of unethical and unaware authors who contribute to predatory journals? While there are few other articles directly answering the question of author motivation, there is a healthy volume of papers that look at why authors might be tempted. These come in two forms, essentially dependent on push or pull factors. On the push side, the well-known “publish or perish” phenomenon is quoted extensively, describing cultures in higher education where there is both the implicit and explicit encouragement for academics to publish their research, often following fairly prescriptive lists of the “right” journals. Incentives have come in the shape of financial awards in countries like China or research grants in Australia for publishing in top-ranked journals, and on the flip side elsewhere a lack of promotion opportunities or even the sack if publishing targets aren’t met. For an insight into the quandaries often faced by authors, one need only look to India, where the numbers of authors publishing in predatory journals and the number of journals themselves are perhaps the largest in the world (Shen and Bjork, 2015). In an article investigating the problem, a call was made for the Indian government to step in (Seethapathy et al, 2016), and in the years following, numerous attempts were made by the UGC to create lists of both preferred and questionable journals for Indian authors to publish in. In the original investigation, authors found to have published in a sample of Beall’s List journals cited help with promotion and institutional pressures as the two greatest push factors—although it is also worth noting that a majority also denied that the journals they had published in were predatory. This brings into focus the difficulties felt by two communities of authors in particular—early career scholars (ECRs) and those from the Global South. As Nicholas et al pointed out in their study of ECRs (2020), there is considerable concern among them about predatory journals, with 10 percent saying they avoided publishing in OA journals because of the perceived poor quality of them, in part due to the predatory publishing phenomenon. Perhaps just as revealingly, the first two reasons given by ECRs for not publishing in OA journals—prohibitive costs (38%) and lack of available options (21%)—are two of the key selling points predatory publishers use to lure authors into publishing with them. These concerns are likely to be particularly acute for ECRs based at universities in the Global South where there is likely to be less financial support for paying high OA fees or a support structure designed to help them make informed decisions about publication outlets. However, it is important to point out that while many countries in the Global South figured among the top countries for authors who have published in predatory journals in Shen and Bjork’s study, countries outside, such as the United States, were also prominent, so it is too simplistic to suggest that predatory journals are “just” a problem for those countries. Other problems emanating from initial push factors include asymmetries of information. For example, where predatory journals have found them- selves included in databases used for publication recommendation, this can attract other submissions. In Italy, this was found to be the case in a large survey of Italian authors, in addition to a “hedging your bets”–type strategy where a push for authors to publish in journals was not regulated by publishing experts (Bagues et al, 2017). Strong pressure to publish in certain journals can undoubtedly produce the right circumstances for gaming to occur, and publishing mandates may also stimulate this behavior. This is a concern held by some around OA man- dates, as they could persuade authors to publish in cheap and quick predatory journals to tick the right OA box (Linacre et al, 2019). However, while the potential is there for OA mandates to add to the problem of predatory publishing behaviors, there is no evidence to suggest this is happening, with some studies suggesting that from an OA perspective the number of articles being included in predatory journals may be decreasing (Eykens et al, 2019). When we look at the consequences of pull factors in academia related to predatory journals, we can see the temptations that lure authors, such as promises of fast publication times from the frequent email invitations academics tend to receive on a regular basis. Speed to publication is often top of the publishing wish list for authors, and knowing that an article will be published quickly may incentivize authors submitting to predatory journals, which often lead with promises of fast turnaround times (Linacre et al, 2019). Such author decisions may be triggered by emails that promise fast publishing times as well as other simply too-good-to-be-true offers that aim to stimulate the desired response in authors. In one study, of the few authors who responded to a survey on publishing in questionable journals, over two-fifths said they initially identified the journal they submitted to from soliciting emails (Cobey et al, 2017b). Simple convenience may also be a pull factor, which the controversial Thompson Rivers University (TRU) scandal in Canada perhaps demonstrates. In 2017, TRU academic Derek Pyne published a paper investigating the publishing habits of some of his colleagues and other academics, claiming that publications in questionable journals were for some researchers correlated with receiving internal research awards (Pyne, 2017). While some of this research has been questioned (Tsigaris and Teixeira da Silva, 2019), the underlying point still holds that pull factors linked to predatory journals have the potential to influence the decision-making of academic researchers.”Simon Linacre is Head of Content, Brand & Press at Digital Science. He previously worked at Cabells as Marketing Director and for 15 years at Emerald Publishing, where he led its management journals program. He has been published on the topics of bibliometrics, publication ethics and research impact. Simon is a Committee on Publication Ethics Trustee and an Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers tutor, and holds masters degrees in philosophy and international business. https://retractionwatch.com/2022/11/08/deceptive-academic-journals-an-excerpt-from-the-predator-effect/
本站仅提供存储服务，所有内容均由用户发布，如发现有害或侵权内容，请
点击举报。
