Predatory attributes analysis of publications as the University campus library service
Vol.10,No.2(2018)
Purpose – Since 2017 the University Campus Library has been providing service intended to uncover typical attributes of so-called predatory journals. The service is provided exclusively to PhD students and researchers from CEITEC, Faculty of Sports Studies, Faculty of Medicine and departments of Faculty of Science situated in the University Campus Bohunice.
Design/methodology/approach – Responsible persons in the library analyze formal attributes of journals e.g. contact details, author fees, editorial board, peer review, indexing in databases, metrics and Open Access. Requests are submitted via a form available on the website.
Results – A total of 134 requests submitted by 41 users were handled during first year of service. It took 65 hours to perform all of these analyses. Overall 39 journals, 2 conferences and 3 publishers were found suspicious. The most frequent attributes were lack of information regarding review time (22), mimicking titles of trustworthy high-quality scholarly journals (20), no information about editor-in-chief (18) or lack of his/her contact details (17), irregular periodicity (18), fictional members of editorial board (14), unspecified or missing article processing charges and using misleading metrics.
Originality/value – From economics and personal view the service proved to be more efficient and much cheaper than Cabell's Scholarly Analytics. Coincidentally providing the service has led to an increase in library reputation and a reassessment of the importance of some attributes to check. One of the side effects is re-consideration of the term „predatory journals” and whether it is still appropriate and explanatory enough. The best way how to evaluate formal attributes of scholarly journals is on the COPE, DOAJ, OASPA and WAME principles of transparency basis.
predatory journals; library services; science and research; scholarly journals; medicine; University Campus Library; publication ethics
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