Optimise Your Medical Communications Initiatives and Avoid “Predatory Journals”

Join us to learn tips and tools to enhance your medical publication efforts and avoid so-called “predatory journals”. Jeffrey Beall, Scholarly Communications Librarian and Associate Professor at the University of Colorado Denver, and ICON’s PubsHub team will discuss the growth of open access publishing and what precautions you can take to avoid falling into costly and career damaging traps. Learn best practices and tools to:

• Understand key attributes of true publication models so that you can differentiate between sanctioned and possible predatory journals/publishers
• Identify credible publishers and understand how they operate
• Create a personal list of possible predatory publishers to avoid future entrapments

Overview

Open access journals are scholarly publications, available across the internet, with limited or no price barriers, such as subscriptions licensing fees, and few if any copyright and licensing restrictions. From 2012 to 2017, the number of open access journals increased from 4,034 to 9,405. [1]

While there are clear cost and accessibility advantages to using open access journals for scientific publications, it is important for authors to be able to accurately assess the quality and reputation of any potential publisher.

What are predatory publishers?

Predatory publishers are profiteering individuals or companies, who use the open access publishing model to take advantage of and exploit authors, by charging them article processing fees without providing the high quality editorial services associated with legitimate journals [2]. The term “predatory publisher” was first coined by Jeffrey Beall, who tracked them on his Scholarly Open Access blog from 2012 until January 2017.

How prevalent are predatory journals?

The number of predatory journals appears to be growing with open access journals having cropped up across the Internet. They appear to be legitimate, with websites similar to those of any typical scholarly publisher: editorial boards supported by well-respected scientists, claims of rigorous peer review and indexing in the most prominent databases. However, many young and inexperienced researchers all over the world have been deceived, losing both money and reputation. This problem is also increasing to disproportionally affect researchers in developing countries, particularly for scientists in areas with relatively low levels of publication literacy, training, and support.

Register today to learn how you can improve your medical publication efforts and protect yourself from predatory publishers.

1. Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ)”. DOAJ. Retrieved 15 March 2017

2. Beall, J. (2016) Best practices for scholarly authors in the age of predatory journals. The Annals of The Royal College of Surgeons of England 98(2), 77-79.

Speakers