“Predatory publishers/journals” was the terminology first used by Jeffery Beall who was an American librarian. He became controversial during the period he maintained his so-called list of predatory publishers and journals. The controversies started when research stakeholders and academics questioned his eligibility and credibility to maintain the list. Many questions were raised by various academic actors such as the credibility of his list, his eligibility to maintain the list, ethical issues, his qualification to undertake such a sensitive work, transparency issues, anti-open access biasedness etc. In 2017, Beall permanently removed this list due to the immense pressure from his employer (University of Colorado Denver) and fear of job loss. This shows that Beall failed to prove his qualification, eligibility, ethical, and transparency standards needed to maintain this list. Therefore, the list became past. It is important to note that Beall used the “potential, possible, or probable predatory scholarly open access publishers/journal” title to present his concept of the journals which were not functioning as per his perceived quality criteria. This clearly shows that Beall himself didn’t know whether his listed journals were predatory or not. He was in no position to issue a verdict about the listed journals.

Literature shows a lack of definition of “predatory journals” because researchers yet don’t stage a unanimous delineation of what constitutes a predatory journal (Cobey et al., 2018). Many scholars attempted to define “predatory journals” but often failed to present a complete definition. Many published definitions are conflicting and incongruent. In 2019, scholars from 10 countries presented an agreed upon definition in their comment published in Nature (Grudniewicz et al., 2019). They defined predatory journals/publishers as:

“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.”

Again, this definition has many loopholes because many well-known so-called leading publishers prioritize their self-interests at the cost of scholarship and by compromising ethical publishing, and quality control practices. In our published articles, we presented many examples of unacceptable practices adopted by many publishers, for instance, Emerald, Wiley, Elsevier, Cell Press, PLOS, Taylor and Francis etc. We already presented that these publishers are publishing erroneous articles with nescient review, orthographic errors, methodological flaws, structural errors, indexing their published journals in their own databases to earn money, and sometimes they publish complete nonsense.

Today, we will analyse an article titled “De-naturalizing the “predatory”: A study of “bogus” publications at public sector universities in Pakistan”. The article was authored by Shah et al. (2024) and published in “Accountability in Research” journal which is published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. The journal is indexed in Web of Science (SCIE Impact Factor 2022: 3.4), Scopus (Q1), and other indexing databases.

This article used a descriptive analysis method to address the first research question and qualitative methods to address the second research questions posed by the authors. We are concerned with the criterion used by the Authors to identify “predatory journals” and the second research question.

The Authors mention on page 87:

“The HJRS helped the present authors to identify the journals as recognized by the system. On the contrary, those journals and published articles that were not recognized by the HJRS were labeled as “predatory” in the present study following the HEC’s guidelines.”

Strangely, the Authors considered all journals not indexed in HJRS as predatory journals and mentioned that they did so following the HEC’s guidelines. If Pakistan’s HEC anywhere discloses that all the journal not listed in HJRS are predatory, then HEC should reconsider its guidelines because HJRS itself is an attempt by HEC to promote Web of Science and Scopus which are the products of corporate giants i.e., Clarivate Analytics and Elsevier. HJRS offers nothing new to the Pakistani scholarly community but only lists journals indexed in Web of Science and Scopus along with few indigenous journals. We all know that indexing of a journal in Web of Sciences or Scopus doesn’t reflect the quality of publication contents, review, and other editorial practices. We regularly cover the blunders, editorial misconducts, and nescient reviews conducted by the journals listed in these databases. Therefore, the claim by Authors and/or HEC that all the journals not listed in HJRS is itself questionable. We wonder why the journal Editors and Reviewers allowed the publication of this article with this stringent and rationally false selection criterion. The Authors could have mentioned that “the journals not listed in HJRS are not considered by HEC for various academic needs” but mentioning that they are “predatory” is a false statement which should be condemned. Below, we give few reasons, why a journal not listed in HJRS or other databases should not be considered as “predatory”:

1. A journal may have a publication history less than 2 years so that it cannot apply for indexing in Web of Science and Scopus.

2. Journal’s Editors may feel hesitant to apply for indexing in Web of Science and Scopus due to biased decision-making practices these companies regularly follow.

3. Journal’s Editors may not be interested in the politics of indexing and abstracting.

4. Journal may want to prove that it can publish better content without getting indexed in Web of Science and Scopus.

5. The Editors may prefer not-for-profit indexing/ranking entities over for-profit products such as Web of Science and Scopus.

According to the criterion adopted by Shah et al. (2024), a journal would become predatory immediately after its inception and will remain predatory until it is recognized by money making corporate giants like Web of Science and Scopus. The listed 5 possibilities have no place under Shah et al.’s work. The study snatched the legal freedom and right to publish a journal from persons who are willing to start their own journals. We know that many students, academics, and professionals owned journals are operating in the market but Shah et al. (2024) declared that all such journals are predatory because they are not listed in Web of Science and/or Scopus and hence not accommodated in HJRS.

Let’s look at the method adopted by Shah et al. (2024) to address the second Research Question. Strangely, the Authors didn’t mention which qualitative research design they applied to address the second RQ. On page 87, they mentioned:

“A semi-structured interview was conducted with 20 postgraduate researchers, two from each field of study,…”

And on page 88, they reported:

“We transcribed and analyzed the interview data using Braun & Clark’s (2006) thematic analysis technique…”

We know that neither interviews nor thematic analysis reflect the qualitative research design. Interviews are just a qualitative data collection method and thematic analysis is just a qualitative data analysis technique. Authors completely failed to follow the standard protocol needed to write a qualitative study. Even if, Braun and Clark’s (2006) thematic analysis technique was followed, as reported, the Authors should have reported the step-wise approach to thematic analysis as proposed by Braun and Clark (2006). The Authors should have reported how data familiarization was achieved? How were the initial codes generated? How was the theme map drawn? How was internal homogeneity and external heterogeneity dealt? Unfortunately, nothing was mentioned. In fact, the needed details regarding the qualitative methodology are completely missing. All the needed information about the adopted Interview Protocol Refinement (IPR) framework, credibility and reliability of interview questions, follow-up questions, coding process, and maintaining the oomph are not provided at all. We wonder how this manuscript crossed the editorial and peer review process. The publication of this manuscript clearly shows nescient and unethical review practices followed by Accountability in Research journal.

No doubt, the publication of such works makes the Accountability in Research journal “predatory”; it is surprising to read that a predatory article published in a predatory journal issues a verdict that all journals not listed in HJRS are “predatory.” Isn’t it strange!

References

Cobey, K.D., Lalu, M.M, Skidmore, B. et al. (2018). What is a predatory journal? A scoping review. F1000Research, 7,1001.

Grudniewicz, A., Moher, D., Cobey, K. D., Bryson, G. L., Cukier, S., Allen, K., … Lalu, M. M. (2019). Predatory journals: no definition, no defence. Nature, 576(7786), 210–212.

Don’t forget to throw your thoughts if you like this article. Do comment now.

Update: On 11 May, 2024, first author Mr. Waqar Ali Shah contacted us via email and refused to accept our criticism. He said that our criticism is a defamation against the authors, HEC, Pakistan, Journal editor, Journal, and the other regulatory bodies that involve academic publishing process. He also said that our objective is to protect the Open Access journals and we are committing cybercrime. He claimed that our forum has been paid to write such criticisms.

Update: On 15 May, 2024, Dr. Lisa Rasmussen, Editor-in-Chief of Accountability in Research contacted us and assured that she will consider the concerns raised by "Scholarly Criticism".