In the March issue, we talked about how predatory journals are still going strong, fuelled by several factors – including demand. In this feature, we look at how predatory journals are evolving to meet that demand.
By Claudia Civinini, Contributing Writer
In the 1960s, a psychiatrist tried to cure violent psychopathy with attempts to teach patients empathy – and high doses of LSD. But upon release, his patients’ reoffending rates were much higher than those normally observed in other violent psychopaths.
The reason, according to the brilliant rendition of this disturbing story in Jon Ronson’s book, The Psychopath Test, was that the violent psychopaths had learned to fake empathy, and this allowed them to trick victims even more efficiently.
A bit like the psychopaths in that clinic in the 1960s, predatory journals have understood how they need to look and behave in order to avoid detection. And, according to many in the sector, they are increasingly more able to fake it.
Wolves in sheep's clothing
Talking about predatory journals conjures images of prank papers accepted for publication and emails with creative spelling, something that clearly doesn’t belong in reputable indexes and databases. But it seems some predatory publishers won’t stop there.
Dr Nicola Alberto Valente, the Head of the Division of Periodontology at the Università degli Studi di Cagliari, Italy, has been conducting work into predatory publishing and has written about its impact and potential risks in dentistry. He tells QS Insights Magazine how he has observed the evolution of predatory publishing.
“Over the years, some of these publishers have got more organised and they were able to infiltrate the major indexes,” he says. "People’s concern years ago was that [predatory] journals got you published but then your paper was going to get lost because they are not on the indexes. It’s like asking these publishers to say ‘Ok, what do you want from us? Do you want us to be on the indexes? Then we are going to be on the indexes. What else do you want? Do you want a review process with at least two feedbacks? Then when you send the article, we’ll send some feedback.”
A researcher who didn’t want to be named explained that very well-run predatory publishers have a chance to be able to crawl under what they called “the bar” set by indexes by looking and behaving like regular journals. “[But] what's happening behind the scenes is very far from it,” they said.
"The publish or perish culture has allowed these fictitious publishing houses to flourish."
Some research papers have been flagging the issue over the past few years. To classify a journal as predatory, some researchers used the Beall’s list, which was shut down in 2017. While the fluidity of the definition of what makes a journal predatory is at the centre of the debate, this is a problem that both researchers and organisations running databases and indexes are aware of.
It’s easy to see why indexes would be a target for predatory publishers.
The rise of predatory journals has been in part fuelled by the demand for quick publications in a system dominated by the publish-or-perish culture. Being in an index would be the logical next step: doing so would enable predatory journals to further cater to demand as some countries and universities require publication in an indexed journal for career or salary advancement or for allocation of funding.
Valente explains that while a system of rewards based on the number of publications and citations is useful for measuring the productivity of academics, it also shifted the attention from quality to quantity.
“This can’t be the only way. We need to make an effort and sit down and judge the quality of what academics produce, not just the quantity,” he insists.
“The publish or perish culture has allowed these fictitious publishing houses to flourish… and if you tell people they must publish as if there were no tomorrow, they’ll do what they can. I can’t even blame them.”
Asked whether there are predatory journals in Scopus, Web of Science and PubMed, Lacey Earle, CEO of Journal metrics company Cabells, says: “Our internal analyses have indeed found journals that Cabells has classified as predatory are present in all of these databases. The operators of predatory journals are able to infiltrate these lists because they are clever and constantly adapting. You have to remember that this is a large source of income for them ($75 million in 2016). They are not going to ‘go gentle into that good night’.
Earle explains that the sheer volume of predatory journals being created and their constant adaptation makes catching predators a difficult endeavour.
Predatory is also a broad term, she explains, that tends to elude a universal and exhaustive definition. Cabells uses a series of criteria which identify behaviours in line with the characteristic that is central to predatory publishing: deception.
"Deception is at the core of what it means to be a predatory journal."
She says: “Deception is at the core of what it means to be a predatory journal. The difficulty in arriving at the unifying theory of predatory journals is that deceptive tactics are used and combined to create a growing number of predatory archetypes which operate very differently.”
For example, some predatory journals may mislead authors by pretending to be more prominent than they are, while others may “spring surprise fees” on authors, she explains. “Each archetype deceives on some level, but the strength and nature of the deception can vary greatly between cases,” Earle says. [cc1]
Up to 3 percent of journals indexed in the “major journal indexing platforms” are in Cabells’ predatory reports, Earle explains.
Delist me
We reached out to the organisations behind Web of Science, PubMed/MEDLINE and Scopus to understand how they are preventing predatory journals from entering their indexes
In March, Clarivate announced it had delisted 50 journals from the Web of Science in 2023 alone. In a comment made in a blog post announcing the decision, Dr Nandita Quaderi, Editor-In-Chief and VCice President of Web of Science, said threats to the integrity of the scholarly record are increasing.
“In recent months, we have taken additional proactive steps to counter the increasing threats to the integrity of the scholarly record. We have invested in a new, internally developed AI tool to help us identify outlier characteristics that indicate that a journal may no longer meet our quality criteria,” she wrote.
“This technology has substantially improved our ability to identify and focus our re-evaluation efforts on journals of concern. At the start of the year, more than 500 journals were flagged. Our investigations are ongoing and thus far, more than 50 of the flagged journals have failed our quality criteria and have subsequently been de-listed.”
Journals can also be delisted for title changes, mergers and splits. Publisher BMJ, for example, pointed out that of the two titles de-listed, one had been closed and the other had been renamed.
Clarivate did not wish to comment on Cabells’ claims but pointed to the full Removal from Coverage policy.
"A journal may be a good quality journal at one point and may change over time"
The National Library of Medicine (NLM), which reviews hundreds of applications each year for journals to be included in PubMed Central and MEDLINE, explains in a response to QS Insights Magazine, “Once added to MEDLINE or PMC, NLM expects a journal and publisher to continue to meet NLM's standards for the NLM Collection and notify NLM of any changes that may impact practices and scope of the publication.”
Asked to comment on Cabells’ data, they say: “The National Library of Medicine (NLM) takes seriously its role in providing access to trusted health information to researchers, clinicians, and the public. It relies on a robust set of procedures to assure the quality of the journals and articles it collects and makes available through online services such as PubMed.”
They add: “NLM literature databases also archive and index articles, author manuscripts, and book chapters that may be from publications that have not yet undergone scientific review by NLM, are traditionally out of scope for the NLM collection, or have not met NLM’s standards for inclusion in a given database if a paper is deposited under the NIH Public Access Policy or a similar funder policy or the Public Health Emergency COVID-19 Initiative.
“All NIH-funded research is highly vetted and closely monitored during its progress. NIH has also taken steps to encourage authors to publish in reputable journals to protect the credibility of papers arising from its research investment.”
To maintain the quality of the archive, they explain, the NLM regularly reviews current journals in PubMed and re-evaluates its participation if it has particular concerns, such as if there are problems with articles that a publisher fails to address or that appear to be systemic, if there are verifiable concerns about the scientific or editorial quality of the journal content, or if there are significant changes to a journal, as described in the Changes to PMC Journals policy.
Over at Scopus, the database contains more than 27,000 journals, Senior Director of Product Management Dr Wim Meester says. Since 2016, 800 journals have been discontinued – 501 of these for ‘publication concerns’.
A board of experts evaluates journals for entry into Scopus and re-evaluates them regularly, Meester explains, and they receive concerns from stakeholders and researchers flagging journals. Sometimes, concerns about predatory publishers are flagged by research papers. While he says they encourage researchers to submit concerns, he explains that the team conducts its own investigation to re-evaluate journals that have been flagged as problematic.
QS has been told by interviewees that some journals manage to get indexed by operating normally for a while, and once indexed, they adopt predatory practices.
Meester says: “I agree, this behaviour is what we see as well. A journal may be a good quality journal at one point and may change over time, and that's why we have a re-evaluation programme. We review journals when they are selected, and we also re-evaluate those titles again to see if they still meet the quality criteria that we have in place.”
Meester explains that quality assurance and peer review are what distinguishes predatory from regular journals, but he adds that the standard of peer review is difficult to check directly as most information is not public and can only be judged using the scientific quality of articles as a proxy.
"It's not a binary thing, something is predatory or not, it's more like a spectrum"
“Some journals have an open peer review process that is more visible and transparent… but for most of the titles, those indicators are indirect. It’s the scientific quality that's being assessed overall, which gives us an indication of whether the peer review itself is done on an acceptable level.”
But while he explains that the team at Scopus is aware of the problem of journals adopting predatory practices and tries to catch them on time, content may already be present in the database by the time the journal in question gets caught. And, he observes, Scopus is not a judge of predatory behaviour, and researchers should take responsibility as well.
“It’s important that the researchers realise that if a journal is listed in Scopus, that doesn’t mean that it has gone through a predatory publishing safe list. If a journal is on the Scopus list, it doesn’t mean that you should publish in it blindly because it’s the easiest way to get into the indexing service. This is also the responsibility of the author.”
The way research evaluation works, he says – echoing what other researchers have told QS– is partly to blame.
“If [research evaluation] is focused on quantity and not so much on quality, then authors are incentivised to publish as many articles as possible. And if that is a journal that is listed in Scopus, even better, because some organisations may have Scopus as a list of journals which they get credit for. But is that really the best thing for your research?”
Despite these cautions, many do feel it is reasonable to view indexes such as Scopus as a ‘safe list’ of journals, a point Meester agrees with, but explains: “Scopus can be considered as a safe list in the sense that it meets the Scopus criteria. It's not a safe list in the sense that it meets other people’s criteria and definition of what predatory publishing is.
Meester adds there is no clear definition of what predatory means, which makes it difficult to compare indexes. “It's not a binary thing, something is predatory or not, it's more like a spectrum in which some behaviour may be considered more predatory than others.
Meester says he doesn’t dispute Cabells’ data, but the definition of predatory. “I would agree, if they've done the research, that there are journals that they [Cabells] consider predatory in Scopus. If that's what they have analysed, those are facts. And I would not disagree with that. I would disagree with the fact that these are predatory journals. I don't think this is a statement you can make because of this whole fluidity of the definition, and what is considered predatory may be different for different parties.”
Asked whether it would be beneficial for all indexing platforms to sit down and agree on a definition, Meester says that while indexing platforms would need to be represented, this is an industry-wide issue.
“Indexes by themselves cannot address the issue completely,” he says.
“We are all in this together: the producers of content, the publishers, the indexers of content, and the organisations that work on the evaluation of research.”
Universities are often focused on efficiency and productivity, which can happen at the expense of the individual, leading to a workplace that is stressful and unfulfilling. Dr Ant Bagshaw explores the meaning and importance of joy in higher education institutions. By Dr Ant Bagshaw, Senior Advisor, L.E.K. Consulting
"For many students and graduates who I talk to, higher education is, disappointingly, an impersonal and uninspiring experience."
Every week, I spend time on a university campus, talking to colleagues and friends about their experiences of higher education. There’s one thing about the discourse on the contemporary university which is bothering me: we seem to be able to have successful institutions working well, in aggregate, but failing to ensure that each individual member of the community finds personal satisfaction.
The universities I work with are objectively successful. In Australia, where I live, universities have grown significantly in size offering educational opportunities to an increasingly large proportion of the population. The sector is also demonstrably attractive to international students from around the world. Additionally, research and innovation outcomes are excellent for the investment of public and private money. Universities play a major role in national life and have a positive impact in communities across the country. So far, so great.
This success of higher education could also be said about other systems. When I visit institutions across Southeast Asia, North America or Europe, leaders there also tell stories of ambition, growth, and success. Globally, we see enormous demand for higher education and graduates can find interesting and engaging jobs. Our universities are also the sites of amazing discoveries, cultural progress and new knowledge.
If universities are so successful, what’s the problem?
For many students and graduates who I talk to, higher education is, disappointingly, an impersonal and uninspiring experience. Yes, they have found friends and experienced intellectual growth, but they describe the experience in terms which suggest that this was in spite of the university, not because of it. There are persistent complaints about the variability of the teaching experience, inadequate student support, and technologies which inhibit rather than enable learning.
There is a particular dissonance for the experience at large research-intensive, high prestige, universities. Here, the institutional incentives for research dominate and educational experiences are often a comparatively low priority. In some institutions, there is a lingering attitude that students should be grateful for having been admitted, positioning them without power to seek better than that which is offered. While this is a broad-brush description, the issues are raised so regularly that it feels like there’s a pattern and not just my sampling bias.
"It is far too common that universities are places where bullying and harassment are well known but not addressed."
The challenge is perhaps even more acute when speaking to faculty and professional staff. Workloads are high, the pressure to hit performance metrics is intense, and where universities have sought to be more efficient, staff are asked to do more with less. My work takes me to the UK regularly where I see these issues most starkly. In England, there is massive pressure on institutional budgets from eroding fee levels and increasing costs. Aside from the economics of higher education, the national political discourse positions universities as ‘part of the problem’, not the creators of solutions.
Academic staff in England are taking industrial action including a marking boycott which will see thousands of students’ graduations delayed. This is the latest in a wave of strikes over recent years, including among professional staff, which have demonstrated dissatisfaction with levels of pay, casualisation of the academic workforce, precarious career pathways, and worsening pension provision.
How do we know when there’s a big problem?
It could be fairly easy to dismiss the issues in contemporary higher education as the same experienced by every generation. Staff and students want more from their institutions than it’s possible to give. Students will always want better facilities, teaching, and support whatever the absolute level they actually receive. Staff will always want higher pay, lighter workloads, and more financial security in retirement. The pandemic disrupted organisational lives as well as personal ones: universities are still dealing with changes from health requirements, new learning modes, and the financial implications from a difficult few years.
While it’s possible to dismiss complaints with a focus on all the good which universities do, I think that there’s another way to come at this question. I think that there is a big problem, but it’s not one specific to any of the issues I’ve touched on. Our universities’ incentives and measures of success focus too much on the aggregate and too little on the individual. This is the structural problem which means that we’re not going to fix the experience such that everyone in the university community is enabled to find their own success.
What’s joy got to do with it?
I recently wrote an essay about the need for joy in universities. This was in response to a question inviting respondents to identify one aspect of higher education institutions to improve and how to go about it. I’ve been talking about joyful universities for a while as a prompt for reflection and discussion among senior leaders. It’s a term which usually gets people to stop and think.
Joy is a provocative term. It’s generally not a word used in workplaces. Joy is personal and intimate, the antithesis of corporate. And that’s why it’s powerful. It turns out that asking people to reflect on emotional responses to the world around them generates a different sort of discussion from the norm.
The core of my argument is that universities are too focused on efficiency, on being measured against performance targets which homogenise the experience of thousands of staff and students. This process of aggregating experiences eliminates that which is personal about learning in, or working at, a university.
Joy should be a route to high performance
Each time I’ve discussed trying to make universities into more joyful places, I hear a difficult story. While it varies a little by context, it usually goes like this: there’s an academic who is a star researcher, the leader in their field, who is known to have difficult and unpleasant behaviours but who is unchallenged because of their research reputation. It is far too common that universities are places where bullying and harassment are well known but not addressed. As academic staff come up through these environments, they learn that anything goes so long as you are among the best in research.
This isn’t good enough. Staff leave toxic working environments, and they may leave academia all together. Universities, and particular departments and groups within institutions, gain reputations for making lives miserable. What if this pattern could be reversed? What if institutions were known to be safe and respectful environments in which people were able to do their best work?
My proposal for a joyful university may sound reasonable in abstract: if the workplace is one where people are able to find personal satisfaction, the aggregate experience will be better. However, as with the issues of student experience and teaching quality, there is an enormous challenge in large and complex institutions of finding ways to enable colleagues to find joy in their work.
Systemic joy requires a human touch
Achieving joyful higher education institutions requires an understanding and acceptance that access to joy is inequitably distributed. For joy to be genuinely experienced by everyone, senior leaders must appreciate the realities of life at all levels of the institution. The solution will not come from appointing a Chief Joy Officer, but about ensuring that every leader seeks joy within their portfolios and cascades this approach throughout the organisation.
Such an approach requires building a common language for joy. This will necessitate extensive engagement with staff to comprehend the opportunities in their respective roles and how to live out that joy. Human-centred design principles are useful, where personal experiences are the starting point and everything else builds upon them. This will involve more listening than talking.
If we prioritise each person for their humanity, we will tackle the barriers to joy. Whether it's about giving everyone the chance to celebrate success, enabling colleagues to give and received empathetic feedback, dealing with bullies, or ensuring adequate resources for staff in need, institutions can take many actions to remove hurdles on the path to joy. A proactive approach to promoting joy will not only create a more desirable and effective place to work and study but should also improve the reputation of the institution.
If we make the pursuit of joy tangible, we can create a genuine positive difference in the lives of staff and students. Pursuing a world where each individual is empowered, where everyone has the conditions for success, means thinking differently about what performance means. This should lead to benefits beyond traditional measures of output, positively impacting the wider communities served by universities. With the myriad challenges facing our institutions, the pursuit of systemic and ongoing joy is not only desirable but, arguably, essential. We can no longer accept success in aggregate at the expense of the individual: it’s time to give different approaches a try.
The British government has set its sights on becoming a scientific powerhouse. Off the back of recent successes in spinning out university-backed startups, the opportunity is there for the taking for the country. By Seb Murray, Contributing Writer
“UK spinouts tend to be under-capitalized and don’t go on to scale as well."
"[Global challenges] require solutions that build on fundamental science and engineering."
Earlier this year, Cranfield Aerospace Solutions, initially spun-out of Cranfield University in the late 1990s, began discussions to secure £30 million for the development of a hydrogen-powered electric aircraft, with the goal of launching it as early as 2026.
The company, which has worked on aircraft modification and design with leading British companies like Airbus and Rolls-Royce, is leading the way in utilising sustainable aviation fuels to reduce carbon emissions in the aerospace industry.
The fundraising highlights the efforts of UK universities such as Cranfield to commercialise their intellectual capital through “spinout” companies. These universities invest millions of pounds each year in activities such as patenting, technology licensing and supporting academics, students and alumni involved in startups.
Spinouts in sectors like clean energy, healthcare and materials technology are seen as a way to leverage the UK’s research capabilities to solve business and societal challenges.
The UK government also recognises spinouts as a means to drive innovation and economic growth, as part of its mission to transform the nation into a science powerhouse, with a dedicated committee focused on research commercialisation setup earlier this year.
That followed a significant growth in equity investment for university spinouts, reaching £2.54 billion in 2021 from £405 million in 2011, according to consultancy Beauhurst.
“The UK is in the perfect position to become a global spinout success like we have seen with the US,” says Ana Bakshi, who founded entrepreneurship centres at the University of Oxford and King’s College London.
“The UK is home to phenomenal universities undertaking cutting-edge work, a vast and growing entrepreneurial community, and strong policies supporting entrepreneurship and innovation – investment schemes, tax credits, innovation zones and more.”
However, critics argue that the UK underperforms in spinout success due to higher equity stakes and control demands from universities, which can impede growth. A survey of 143 spinouts by venture capital firm Air Street Capital, revealed that average equity stakes in UK spinouts (19.8 percent) are higher compared to American (5.9 percent) and European (7.3 percent) counterparts.
“UK spinouts tend to be under-capitalized and don’t go on to scale as well,” says Ramana Nanda, the Academic Lead at the Institute for Deep Tech Entrepreneurship at Imperial College London. Among other reasons, “it is clear that universities can be bureaucratic”.
Northern powerhouse
Despite the challenges, UK universities are actively investing in building entrepreneurial ecosystems. The Northern Accelerator is a partnership between six universities – Durham, Newcastle, Northumbria, Sunderland, Teesside and York – to boost research commercialisation and help address regional imbalance. When the accelerator was launched in 2018, the Northeast had the lowest business density in England.
The programme expects to have a substantial impact on the region’s economy by offering training, funding and connecting academics with experienced business leaders to facilitate the management of spinout companies.
According to an independent assessment by Ekos, a consultancy, the Northern Accelerator is projected to generate £76.3 million in additional economic value between 2018 and 2028. “Northern Accelerator is an example of good practice in regional collaboration at scale. It has resulted in the quadrupling of spinout activity over the past six years,” says Tim Hammond, Durham University’s Director of Economic Development and Commercialisation, who leads the Northern Accelerator.
“To date we have created 47 businesses, awarded £4.2 million to over 100 proof of concept projects, invested £1.8 million from a seed investment fund, and recruited 47 experienced business executives into leadership positions with spinouts,” Hammond adds.
Tackling global challenges
Similar efforts are underway at Imperial College, which runs three accelerators in collaboration with other institutions: MedTech SuperConnector (focused on healthcare), The Greenhouse (climate tech) and DIANA (defence innovation).
“To some extent, all of these are motivated by the fact that global challenges related to climate change, human health and security cannot be solved by information technology alone; they require solutions that build on fundamental science and engineering,” says Imperial's Nanda, adding that private corporations have pulled back from research, with universities filling the gap.
Imperial's accelerators prioritize customer discovery, scientific talent upskilling through workshops and mentoring, and also provide financial support in some cases.
According to Nada, universities can play a crucial role in bridging the gap between research and commercial development. “They can provide access to technical equipment for teams at a marginal cost, rather than having to buy it all themselves,” he says. “This is similar to the role of Amazon Web Services, which allows renting rather than having to buy servers.”
Oxford’s standout success
Oxford stands out with successful spinouts raising £956 million in external investment last year, according to its technology transfer office (Oxford University Innovation, OUI). That is an estimated 45 percent of the UK total. A notable Oxford spinout is Vaccitech, which owns the technology used in the Oxford/AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine.
However, concerns remain. Thomas Hellmann, Professor of Entrepreneurship and Innovation at Oxford’s Saïd Business School, is “worried” about the performance of spinouts across the UK.
“There are a variety of bottlenecks at the growth stage that need to be tackled,” he says. “I’m particularly concerned about the scale-ups having not enough access to talent – not just technical talent but managerial talent. There’s a big shortage of people who can grow companies.”
Also of concern for him are funding holes in the ecosystem. “There remains a gap after Series A and Series B,” he adds, pointing to a lack of high-quality investors. “What is particularly worrisome is the new generation of startups coming out of universities have larger capital requirements and longer time horizons, especially in deep tech and climate tech.”
Despite these funding and human capital challenges, efforts are still underway to build robust entrepreneurial ecosystems at UK universities. With continued support and addressing key concerns such as higher equity stakes and control demands from universities, the UK has the potential to become a global leader in spinout success, ultimately driving economic growth and innovation – such as an electric aircraft powered by hydrogen.