“Common wisdom,” according to the authors of a new piece in Nature, “assumes that the hazard of predatory publishing is restricted mainly to the developing world.” But the authors of the new paper, led by David Moher of the Ottawa Hospital Research Institute, found that more than half — 57% — of the 2,000 articles published in journals they determined were predatory were from high-income countries. In fact, the U.S. was second only to India in number of articles published in such journals. We asked Moher, who founded Ottawa Hospital’s Centre for Journalology in 2015, a few questions about the new work.
The broad topics of this research are familiar: (1) Poor editorial standards across predatory publishers; and (2) The reporting of pharmacological clinical trials can be skewered toward positive results. But there are some new insights here.
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David Moher (DM): I think this is likely the case. While we are now getting data and evidence to better understand some aspects of predatory journals there is much we still do not know. For example, there is almost no research that has interviewed a sample of predatory journal authors to ascertain their motivations for publishing in these journals. Funders really need to step up to the plate and provide funding to researchers to develop a broad range of investigations related to predatory journals. If we are to stop predatory journals we need evidence to guide us.
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