Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Rubbish in Science

  • Organization of Research
  • Published:
Herald of the Russian Academy of Sciences Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

The problem of publications in “predatory” sources is actively discussed in the scientific community, and it has attracted the attention of government agencies responsible for scientific and technological policy. This article attempts to assess the scale of contamination of world scientific products with articles not worthy of publication. The research is based on a list of journals and collections of regular conferences excluded from the Scopus database for reasons of violation of scientific ethics. An analysis of the publications published in these sources in 2010–2019 made it possible to identify the countries and scientific areas that are most affected by the activities of predatory publishers. According to the results of calculations, the problem of scientific garbage has not spared Russia and is most acutely manifested in economic and technical sciences and some areas of medical sciences. The authors formulated conclusions about the sources of this problem and the tactics of counteracting the activities of publication “predators” on the part of states. The question is raised about how to relate to publication in a “garbage” journal and whether it is worthwhile to draw a line between “forced” and “selfish” publications in such periodicals.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Fig. 1.
Fig. 2.
Fig. 3.

Similar content being viewed by others

Notes

  1. Other definitions of such journals and periodicals are “predatory,” “garbage,” “doubtful,” “fake,” and “toxic.” Conventional qualifications are often added to soften the epithets: “potentially,” “having signs of,” etc. Hereinafter, all such epithets indicating violations of scientific ethics are used as synonyms.

  2. These data were derived from the built-in Scopus attribute “Funding sponsor.” A closer look at the numbers is likely to be higher.

REFERENCES

  1. J. Beall, “‘Predatory’ open-access scholarly publishers,” Charlest. Advis. 11 (4), 10–17 (2010).

    Google Scholar 

  2. A. Y. Gasparyan, B. Nurmashev, A. A. Voronov, et al. “The pressure to publish more and the scope of predatory publishing activities,” J. Korean Med. Sci. 31 (12), 1874–1878 (2016).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  3. D. Hicks, “Performance-based university research funding systems,” Res. Policy 41 (2), 251–261 (2012).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  4. K. Williams and J. Grant, “A comparative review of how the policy and procedures to assess research impact evolved in Australia and the UK,” Res. Eval. 27 (2), 93–105 (2018).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  5. M. A. Yurevich and D. S. Erkina, “‘Publication rally’: Direct threat or new opportunities for the scientific community?,” Sotsiol. Nauk. Tekhnol. 8 (2), 104–117 (2017).

    Google Scholar 

  6. M. Dadkhah and G. Bianciardi, “Ranking predatory journals: Solve the problem instead of removing it!,” Adv. Pharm. Bull. 6 (1), 1–4 (2016).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  7. M. Strinzel, A. Severin, K. Milzow, and M. Egger, “Blacklists and whitelists to tackle predatory publishing: A cross-sectional comparison and thematic analysis,” MBio. 10 (3) (2019). https://mbio.asm.org/content/10/3/e00411-19. Cited April 8, 2021.

  8. Beall’s list of potential predatory journals and publishers. https://beallslist.net/.

  9. W. Strielkowski, “Predatory publishing: What are the alternatives to Beall’s list?,” Am. J. Med. 131 (4), 333–334 (2018).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  10. W. Crawford, “Ethics and access 1: The sad case of Jeffrey Beall,” Cites Insights 14 (4), 1–14 (2014).

    Google Scholar 

  11. C. Shen and B. C. Björk, “‘Predatory’ open access: A longitudinal study of article volumes and market characteristics,” BMC Med. 13 (1), 1–15 (2015).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  12. M. Erfanmanesh and R. Pourhossein, “Publishing in predatory open access journals: A case of Iran,” Publ. Res. Q. 33 (4), 433–444 (2017).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  13. W. E. Nwagwu and O. Ojemeni, “Penetration of Nigerian predatory biomedical open access journals 2007–2012: A bibliometric study,” Learn. Publ. 28 (1), 23–34 (2015).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  14. J. Xia, J. L. Harmon, K. G. Connolly, et al., “Who publishes in ‘predatory’ journals?,” J. Assoc. Inf. Sci. Technol. 66 (7), 1406–1417 (2015).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  15. F. H. Wallace and T. J. Perri, “Economists behaving badly: publications in predatory journals,” Scientometrics 115 (2), 749–766 (2018).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  16. M. S. Perlin, T. Imasato, and D. Borenstein, “Is predatory publishing a real threat? Evidence from a large database study,” Scientometrics 116 (1), 255–273 (2018).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  17. J. Mouton and A. Valentine, “The extent of South African authored articles in predatory journals,” S. Afr. J. Sci. 113 (7–8), 1–9 (2017).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  18. M. Bagues, M. Sylos-Labini, and N. Zinovyeva, “A walk on the wild side: ‘Predatory’ journals and information asymmetries in scientific evaluations,” Res. Policy 48 (2), 462–477 (2019).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  19. J. Xia, “Predatory journals and their article publishing charges,” Learn. Publ. 28 (1), 69–74 (2015).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  20. I. Sterligov and T. Savina, “Riding with the metric tide: Predatory journals in Scopus,” HERB 1 (7), 9–12 (2016).

    Google Scholar 

  21. T. Savina and I. Sterligov, “Prevalence of potentially predatory publishing in Scopus on the country level,” arXiv preprint:2003.08283 (2020).

  22. A. E. Gus’kov, D. Kosyakov, and I. V. Selivanova, “Strategies for increasing the publication activity of universities participating in Project 5–100,” Nauch. Tekh. Bibl., No. 12, 5–18 (2017).

  23. A. E. Guskov, D. V. Kosyakov, and I. V. Selivanova, “Boosting research productivity in top Russian universities: the circumstances of breakthrough,” Scientometrics 117 (2), 1053–1080 (2018).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  24. Foreign Predatory Journals in Scopus and WoS: Translated Plagiarism and Russian Unscrupulous Authors (RAS Commission on Counteracting Scientific Research Falsification, Moscow, 2020). https://kpfran.ru/wp-content/uploads/plagiarism-by-translation-2.pdf.

  25. Elsevier. Your journal in Scopus. https://elsevierscience.ru/info/add-to-scopus/. Cited January 15, 2021.

  26. Elsevier. Discounted sources from Scopus. https://www.elsevier.com/__data/assets/excel_doc/0005/877523/Discontinued-sources-from-Scopus.xlsx. Cited January 15, 2021.

  27. C. Sonne, Y. S. Ok, S. S. Lam, et al., “First predatory journals, now conferences: The need to establish lists of fake conferences,” Sci. Total Environ. 715 (2020). https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0048969720305003. Cited April 8, 2021.

  28. B. Lund and T. Wang, “This is NOT spam!: An analysis of predatory publication invitations in library and information science,” Proc. Assoc. Inf. Sci. Technol. 57 (1) (2020). https://asistdl.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/pra2.344. Cited April 8, 2021.

  29. J. Gläser, S. Lange, G. Laudel, and U. Schimank, “Chapter 5: Informed authority? The limited use of research evaluation systems for managerial control in universities,” in Reconfiguring Knowledge Production: Changing Authority Relationships in the Sciences and Their Consequences for Intellectual Innovation, Ed. by R. Whitley, J. Gläser, and L. Engwall (Oxford Univ. Press, New York, 2010), pp. 149–183.

    Google Scholar 

  30. S. D. Rijcke, P. F. Wouters, A. D. Rushforth, et al., “Evaluation practices and effects of indicator use—a literature review,” Res. Eval. 25 (2), 161–169 (2016).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  31. Rosstat. Science and innovations. https://rosstat.gov.ru/folder/14477. Cited January 15, 2021.

  32. L. Zhang and G. Sivertsen, “The new research assessment reform in China and its implementation,” Scholarly Assess. Rep. 2 (1) (2020). https://www.scholarlyassessmentreports.org/articles/10.29024/sar.15/. Cited April 8, 2021.

  33. B. Patwardhan, S. Nagarkar, S. R. Gadre, S. C. Lakhotia, V. M. Katoch, and D. Moher, “A critical analysis of the ‘UGC-approved list of journals,’” Curr. Sci. 114 (6) (2018). https://www.researchgate.net/publication/323942993_A_Critical_Analysis_of_the_'UGC-Approved_List_of_Journals'. Cited April 8, 2021.

  34. Livanov: Ministry of Education and Science will cut funding universities for “garbage publications.” https://tass.ru/obschestvo/2359414. Cited January 15, 2021.

Download references

Funding

This study was supported by a grant from the Ministry of Science and Higher Education of the Russian Federation (project “Latest Trends in the Development of Human and Social Sciences in the Context of Digitalization and New Social Problems and Threats: An Interdisciplinary Approach,” agreement no. 075-15-2020-798).

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Psychology, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Russia

    A. V. Yurevich

  2. Financial University under the Government of the Russian Federation, Moscow, Russia

    M. A. Yurevich

Authors
  1. A. V. Yurevich
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. M. A. Yurevich
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to A. V. Yurevich or M. A. Yurevich.

Additional information

Translated by B. Alekseev

RAS Corresponding Member Andrei Vladimirovich Yurevich is Deputy Director of the RAS Institute of Psychology and Head of the Laboratory of Personality Psychology. Maksim Andreevich Yurevich is a Researcher at the Center for Macroeconomic Research, Financial University under the Government of the Russian Federation.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Yurevich, A.V., Yurevich, M.A. Rubbish in Science. Her. Russ. Acad. Sci. 91, 445–453 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1134/S1019331621040158

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Revised:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1134/S1019331621040158

Keywords:

Search

Navigation