Abstract
This study describes a method for identifying hijacked journal domains based on an analysis of the archives of clone journals. This method is based on the argument that fraudulent publishers recycle identical papers to create a fictitious archive for a hijacked journal. A Google Custom Search API is used to search the details of papers published in hijacked journals (title/authors/affiliation) and provide links to where similar texts were published. An analysis of the archives of hijacked journals facilitates the detection of 62 clone websites of 57 authentic journals. It also enabled the prediction of two hijacked journal websites before they became operational. This study shows that the majority of detected hijacked journals are within a network of clone journals organized by the same fraudulent individual(s). The information and content of nine out of the 57 examined legitimate journals have been compromised in international and national scientometric databases by hijackers, which poses a challenge for the international academic community.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
Hijacked journals are listed on the following websites: https://beallslist.net/hijacked-journals/, https://predatoryjournals.com/hijacked/, https://ugccare.unipune.ac.in/Apps1/User/Web/CloneJournals.
References
Abad-García, M. F. (2019). Plagiarism and predatory journals: A threat to scientific integrity. Anales De Pediatría, 90(1), 57.e1-57.e8. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.anpede.2018.11.006
Abalkina, A. (2020a). The case of the stolen journal. Retraction Watch, July 7. URL: https://retractionwatch.com/2020/07/07/the-case-of-the-stolen-journal/ (retrieved on 20.10.2020).
Abalkina, A. (2020b). Organisation of dissertation mills in Russia. 6th International Conference PAEB 2020 First Virtual ENAI Conference. URL: http://academicintegrity.eu/conference/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Conference-Abstract.pdf (retrieved on 06.03.2021).
Al-Amr, M. (2020). How did content from a hijacked journal end up in one of the world’s most-used databases? Retraction Watch. September 1. URL: https://retractionwatch.com/2020/09/01/how-did-content-from-a-hijacked-journal-end-up-in-one-of-the-worlds-most-used-databases/ (retrieved on 20.10.2020).
Asadi, A., Rahbar, N., Asadi, M., et al. (2017). Online-based approaches to identify real journals and publishers from hijacked ones. Science and Engineering Ethics, 23, 305–308. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11948-015-9747-9
Bagues, M., Sylos-Labini, M., & Zinovyeva, N. (2019). A walk on the wild side: ‘Predatory’ journals and information asymmetries in scientific evaluations. Research Policy, 48(2), 462–477. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.respol.2018.04.013
Beall, J. (2012). Predatory publishers are corrupting open access. Nature, 489(7415), 179. https://doi.org/10.1038/489179a
Becker, G. (1968). Crime and Punishment: An Economic Approach. Journal of Political Economy., 76(2), 169–217.
Björk, B.-C., Kanto-Karvonen, S., & Harviainen, J. T. (2020). How frequently are articles in predatory open access journals cited. Publications, 8(2), 17. https://doi.org/10.3390/publications8020017
Bohannon, J. (2015). How to hijack a journal. Science, 350(6263), 903–905. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aad7463
Bohannon, J. (2013). Who’s afraid of peer review? Science, 342 (6154), 60–65. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.342.6154.60
Bruton, S. V., Medlin, M., Brown, M., & Sacco, D. F. (2020). Personal motivations and systemic incentives: Scientists on questionable research practices. Science and Engineering Ethics, 26, 1531–1547. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11948-020-00182-9
Cartwright, E., & Menezes, M. (2014). Cheating to win: Dishonesty and the intensity of competition. Economics Letters, 122(1), 55–58. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.econlet.2013.10.016
Cortegiani, A., Manca, A., & Giarratano, A. (2020). Predatory journals and conferences: why fake counts. Current Opinion in Anaesthesiology, 33(2), 192–197. https://doi.org/10.1097/ACO.0000000000000829
Dadkhah, M. (2015). New types of fraud in the academic world by cyber criminals. Journal of Advanced Nursing, 72, 2951–2953. https://doi.org/10.1111/jan.12856
Dadkhah, M., & Borchardt, G. (2016). Hijacked journals: an emerging challenge for scholarly publishing. Aesthetic Surgery Journal, 36, 739–741. https://doi.org/10.1093/asj/sjw026
Dadkhah, M., Maliszewski, T., & Jasi, M. (2016). Characteristics of hijacked journals and predatory publishers: our observations in the academic world. Trends in Pharmacological Sciences., 37(6), 415–418. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tips.2016.04.002
Dadkhah, M., Maliszewski, T., & Teixeira da Silva, J. A. (2016). Hijacked journals, hijacked web-sites, journal phishing, misleading metrics, and predatory publishing: actual and potential threats to academic integrity and publishing ethics. Forensic Science Medicine and Pathology, 12, 353–362. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12024-016-9785-x
Dadkhah, M., Maliszewski, T., & Lyashenko, V. V. (2016). An approach for preventing the indexing of hijacked journal articles in scientific databases. Behaviour & Information Technology, 35(4), 298–303. https://doi.org/10.1080/0144929X.2015.1128975
De Rond, M., & Miller, A. N. (2005). Publish or Perish. Journal of Management Inquiry, 14(4), 321–329. https://doi.org/10.1177/1056492605276850
Demir, S. B. (2018). Predatory journals: Who publishes in them and why? Journal of Informetrics, 12(4), 1269–1311. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.joi.2018.10.008
Dony, C., Raskinet, M., Renaville, F., Simon, S., Thirion, P. (2020). How reliable and useful is Cabell’s blacklist? A Data-Driven Analysis. LIBER Quarterly, 30, 1–38. https://doi.org/10.18352/lq.10339
Dyke, G. (2019). Does the early career ‘publish or perish’ myth represent an opportunity for the publishing industry? Learned Publishing, 32, 90–94. https://doi.org/10.1002/leap.1217
Fanelli, D., Costas, R., & Lariviere, V. (2015). Misconduct policies, academic culture and career stage, not gender or pressures to publish, affect scientific integrity. PLoS ONE, 10(6), e0127556. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0127556
Garoupa, N. (2014). Economic theory of criminal behavior. In G. Bruinsma & D. Weisburd (Eds.), Encyclopedia of Criminology and Criminal Justice.Springer.
Huang, Y. (2020). Doctoral writing for publication. Higher Education Research & Development. https://doi.org/10.1080/07294360.2020.1789073
Hopp, C., & Hoover, G. A. (2017). How prevalent is academic misconduct in management research? Journal of Business Research, 80, 73–81. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres.2017.07.003
Jalalian, M. (2015). The story of fake impact factor companies and how we detected them. Electronic Physician, 7(2), 1069–1072. https://doi.org/10.14661/2015.1069-1072
Jalalian, M., & Dadkhah, M. (2015). The full story of 90 hijacked journals from August 2011 to June 2015. Geographica Pannonica, 19(2), 73–87. https://doi.org/10.18421/GP19.02-06
Jalalian, M., & Mahboobi, J. (2013). New corruption detected: bogus impact factors compiled by fake organizations. Electronic Physician, 5, 685–686. https://doi.org/10.14661/2013.685-686
Jalalian, M., & Mahboobi, J. (2014). Hijacked journals and predatory publishers Is there a need to re-think how to assess the quality of academic research. Walailak Journal of Science and Technolgy, 11(5), 389–394. https://doi.org/10.14456/WJST.2014.16
Honig, B., & Bedi, A. (2010). The fox in the hen house: a critical examination of plagiarism among members of the academy of management. Academy of Management Learning & Education, 11(1), 101–123. https://doi.org/10.5465/amle.2010.0084
Kurt, S. (2018). Why do authors publish in predatory journals? Learned Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1002/leap.1150.
Lukić, T., Blešić, I., Basarin, B., Ivanović, B. L., Milošević, D., & Sakulski, D. (2014). Predatory and fake scientific journals/publishers: A global outbreak with rising trend: A review. Geographica Pannonica, 18(3), 69–81. https://doi.org/10.5937/geopan1403069l
Martinson, B., Anderson, M., & de Vries, R. (2005). Scientists behaving badly. Nature, 435, 737–738. https://doi.org/10.1038/435737a
Memon, A. (2019). Hijacked journals: A challenge unaddressed to the developing world. Journal of the Pakistan Medical Association, 69(10), 1413–1415.
Necker, S. (2014). Scientific misbehavior in economics. Research Policy, 43(10), 1747–1759. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.respol.2014.05.002
Owens, J. K., & Nicoll, L. H. (2019). Plagiarism in predatory publications: A comparative study of three nursing journals. Journal of Nursing Scholarship, 51(3), 356–363. https://doi.org/10.1111/jnu.12475
Patwardhan, B. (2019). Why India is striking back against predatory journals. Nature, 571, 7. https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-019-02023-7
RAS. (2020). Inostrannyye khishchnyye zhurnaly v Scopus i WoS: perevodnoy plagiat i rossiyskiye nedobrosovestnyye avtory [Predatory journals at Scopus and WoS: Translation plagiarism from Russian sources. Commission for Counteracting the Falsification of Scientific Research] in collaboration with Anna A. Abalkina, Alexei S. Kassian, Larisa G. Melikhova. URL: https://kpfran.ru/wp-content/uploads/plagiarism-by-translation-2.pdf (retrieved on 20.10.2020).
Samuel, A. J., & Aranha, V. P. (2018). Valuable research in fake journals and self-boasting with fake metrics. Journal of Pediatric Neurosciences. https://doi.org/10.4103/JPN.JPN_66_18
Sanderson, K. (2010). Two new journals copy the old. Nature, 463, 148. https://doi.org/10.1038/463148a
Schwieren, C., & Weichselbaumer, D. (2010). Does competition enhance performance or cheating? A laboratory experiment. Journal of Economic Psychology, 31(3), 241–253. https://doi.org/10.1038/463148a
Seethapathy, G., Kumar, J., & Hareesha, A. (2016). India's scientific publication in predatory journals: Need for regulating quality of Indian science and education. Current Science, 111(11), 1759–1764. https://doi.org/10.18520/cs/v111/i11/1759-1764
Shahri, et al. (2018). Detecting Hijacked journals by using classification algorithms. Science and Engineering Ethics, 24, 655–668. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11948-017-9914-2
Van Zundert, A., & Klein, A. (2019). How to avoid predatory and hijacking publishers? European Journal of Anaesthesiology, 36(11), 807–809. https://doi.org/10.1097/EJA.0000000000001072
Weber-Wulff, D. (2019). Plagiarism detectors are a crutch, and a problem. Nature, 567. https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-019-00893-5
Acknowledgements
I would like to acknowledge the helpful comments and suggestions of Olga Ulyanova and two anonymous reviewers as well as the assistance of Natalia Toganova and Evgeny Enikeev in writing the scripts. I gratefully acknowledge financial support from Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich where this study was finalized. I would also like to thank my daughter, who allowed me to work during the lockdown.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Conflict of interests
The author has no conflicts of interest to declare that are relevant to the content of this article.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Abalkina, A. Detecting a network of hijacked journals by its archive. Scientometrics 126, 7123–7148 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-021-04056-0
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-021-04056-0