News

Analysis on Predatory Journals Was Published in Scientometrics

15 February, 2021

We are happy to share the news that Vít Macháček and Martin Srholec had their paper entitled “Predatory Publishing in Scopus: Evidence on Cross-country Differences” published in Scientometrics journal on February 7. The paper examines cross-country disparities in the tendency of scholars to publish in predatory journals. The analysis loosely follows up the study that the authors conducted in 2006 for IDEA think tank.

The paper compares the titles indexed in Scopus, the largest abstract and citation database of peer-reviewed literature, with a list of journals accused of predatory practices. The authors analyze 172 countries in 4 fields of research and the outcome shows remarkable heterogeneity: 17% of articles in the most affected countries fall into the predatory category, while some other countries have no predatory articles at all.

"Middle-developed countries are mostly affected, especially in Asia and North Africa. These countries are specific in being rich in oil and gas," said Deputy Director of CERGE-EI for research and the main author of the analysis Martin Srholec.

"At the same time, the larger the national research in a given country, the more difficult it is to evaluate, manage and thus prevent the growth of predatory publishing," he added.

The article published in Scientometrics was created thanks to the support of the Czech Academy of Sciences. It is another output of the authors' long-term research interest. IDEA think tank had previously published applied studies and a web application for academics and librarians of academic institutions on the topic of predatory journals.