blog

Could health research funders do more to help authors avoid publishing in predatory journals? We spoke to Larissa Shamseer, a postdoctoral fellow at the Li Ka Shing Knowledge Institute, to discuss her latest study on what guidance is available for authors, gatekeeping in scholarly publishing, and future directions for research. 

First things first, please introduce yourself. 

I am Larissa Shamseer, a postdoctoral fellow at the Li Ka Shing Knowledge Institute of St. Michael’s Hospital, Toronto. I trained as an epidemiologist at the University of Ottawa and the Ottawa Hospital Research Institute. Much of my research to date has focused on optimizing the transparency of research and scholarly publishing to reduce research waste. I am currently studying equity in academic reward systems and scientific publishing. 

Could you tell us more about your previous work on predatory publishing? 

During my Ph.D., I carried out research investigating predatory journals with the Centre for Journalology. Predatory journals have both distinct and overlapping characteristics with journals presumed to be legitimate. They publish low-quality research and lack transparency regarding their operations. Most notably, they are characterized by poor or absent scholarly practices, such as robust peer review, long-term preservation of content, and editorial services.    

In one of my Ph.D. studies, we analyzed almost 2000 biomedical articles in predatory journals and found that more than half of authors were from upper-middle or high-income countries. 17% of the studies received external funding—most commonly from the US National Institutes of Health (NIH). These findings were shocking. They did not fit the narrative of previous research on predatory publishing as being geographically limited to low-income countries and their researchers. Later research provided one possible explanation: early career researchers with few publications were more likely to publish in predatory journals (both intentionally or not) than more experienced faculty.  

What are the implications of this research? 

These examples highlight the detrimental role of publication-based academic reward in incentivizing researchers with little to no publishing experience to publish in predatory journals.  

Notably, valid research contributions from well-intentioned researchers may be buried among untrustworthy content in predatory journals. Additionally, since predatory journals are not widely indexed in bibliographic databases, their content is unlikely to contribute to the scholarly record. If you buy the prior argument that not all research in them is low-quality, then this is highly problematic.  

What inspired you to explore health research funders’ guidance on selecting journals for funded research? 

After learning that some major health research funders had funded research published in predatory journals, I wondered whether funders provided guidance on where research outputs ought to be published. Did any funders require authors to publish in journals meeting certain standards? This seems a reasonable expectation given that many funders now have policies mandating open access (OA) of funded research through journals, repositories, or platforms.  

What’s more, there’s some evidence that researchers adhere to policies set by their funders. So, whether within or outside of OA policies, any specific information on what constitutes a journal or recommendations for selecting one was of interest to me.  

Did you find evidence of health research funders attempting to prevent authors from publishing in predatory journals? 

For the purpose of our study, we identified 46 of the largest, non-commercial, health research funders (by expenditure), as well as four public funders from lower-middle-income countries from a list compiled by healthresearchfunders.org.  

We found that only 38 organizations had publicly available recommendations regarding sharing research findings. Of these 38, only 36 specifically mentioned journals as a mechanism of sharing. Two-thirds of funders did not have any information on how to select a journal. Of the 13 that did, only 6 outlined features that credible publishing journals should have.  

Additionally, we found that: 

• Only one funder, the Canadian International Development Research Council, provided guidance on how to avoid “questionable journals” within their open access policy.  
• The NIH was the only funder to define a journal. 
• The German Research Foundation (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft) linked to a resource aimed at facilitating the selection of credible journals. 
• 2 UK funders, the Wellcome Trust and Cancer Research UK made article processing charge (APC) funding contingent on researchers selecting journals meeting listed requirements. 
• Perhaps the most effective policy for ensuring funded research is published in an appropriate journal came from The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Research funded by the foundation must be submitted through a submission system, called Chronos, which enables submission only to preselected open access journals.  

Overall, only a minority of funders provided guidance on what constitutes a credible outlet for publishing funded research. Of those that did, many policies and recommendations were quite detailed. The prevention of predatory publishing relies, at least in part, on funders’ obligation to ensure that funded research meets specified requirements about how research should be shared. 

What challenges or unanswered questions remain around predatory journals?  

There are still many avenues for future research in this area. For instance, are researchers including publications in predatory journals on their resumes in funding applications? Do they know the publications are deemed predatory? 

Do grant peer reviewers notice these publications in any way? Are such researchers successful in winning funding?  

Funders are just one ‘gatekeeper’ of scholarly publishing and a downstream one at that. What are other stakeholders doing? Do academic institutions provide guidance for researchers on where to publish?  

Finally, to understand how much weight is placed on publications, we must consider how academic merit is assessed. Only then can we explore how to reduce this emphasis. Researchers could approach these questions similarly to this study. For example, they could perform an audit or examination of submitted funding applications or of university policies.  

---

Read the full, peer-reviewed research article, Top health research funders’ guidance on selecting journals for funded research, on F1000Research today. 

Interested to learn more about how the publishing community can tackle the problem of predatory journals? Look out Larissa’s next blog post, where she’ll be discussing the possibilities of a multi-stakeholder solution and the importance of open research in this area.