Rising number of predatory academic journals undermines research and public trust in scholarship

Taxpayers fund a lot of university research in the U.S., and these findings published in scholarly journals often produce major breakthroughs in medicine, vehicle safety, food safety, criminal justice, human rights and other topics that benefit the public at large.

The bar for publishing in a scholarly journal is often high. Independent experts diligently review and comment on submitted research without knowing the names of the authors or their affiliated universities. They recommend whether a journal should accept an article or revise or reject it. The piece is then carefully edited before it is published.

But in a growing number of cases, these standards are not being upheld.

Some journals charge academics to publish their research without first editing or scrutinizing the work with any ethical or editorial standards. These for-profit publications are often known as predatory journals because they are publications that claim to be legitimate scholarly journals but prey on unsuspecting academics to pay to publish and often misrepresent their publishing practices.