African researchers warned to watch out for predatory journals

Researchers are likely to fall victim to the deceptive ways of publishers who often operate as commercial and rarely as academic enterprises, much to the detriment of scholarly publishing and the advancement of knowledge.

If left unchallenged, the predatory market will have far-reaching effects, including undermining research enterprise, fuelling misinformation in public policy, and even worse, widening the research gap between high- and low-income countries, said Susan Veldsman, director of the Scholarly Publication Unit at the Academy of Science of South Africa (ASSAf).

She spoke at the AfricArXiv Open Science Webinar Series co-organised by UbuntuNet Alliance and Access 2 Perspectives, and supported by the African Open Science Platform, on 27 March 2025.

All researchers are vulnerable

Citing findings of a global survey on combating predatory academic journals and conferences conducted by the InterAcademy Partnership (IAP), she explained that researchers at all career stages need to be cautious, as they are all vulnerable to predation. However, those in low- and middle-income countries are more vulnerable, Veldsman said.

The survey, involving 1,872 respondents from 112 countries, found some disciplines to be more vulnerable than others, with those in arts and humanities more likely to fall victim to predatory journals. On the contrary, those in transdisciplinary and engineering sciences largely tended to fall victim to predatory conference offerings.

Predatory journals are driven and rooted in the increased monetisation and commercialisation of the research sector, including an academic publishing system of which “proprietary and commercial interests may lead to conflict with research integrity”. This is especially so with the author-pays model which is more prone to abuse. The emphasis on quantity over quality research evaluation systems, together with the institutional drivers and incentives that shape the behaviour of individual academics, were also to blame.

Money-making racket

The journals are characterised by a lack of transparency about whether a publication is fully open, anonymised or hybrid in the peer-review process, which is exacerbated by poor training, capacity and recognition of peer reviewers. They are also driven by the desire for profit over contribution to scholarship, with some deliberately deceiving authors by either hiding or not disclosing fees, including handling, and fast-tracking fees, and omitting revenue-related information, Veldsman said.

In addition, they tended to simultaneously launch many journals, Veldsman cautioned. To identify a predatory publication, researchers need to be on the lookout for things such as misrepresentation of abstracting, indexing and metrics, false claims of indexing.

They also need to be wary of claims of inclusion in databases of companies that provide fake and misleading services, as well as claims and listing of fake indexing and other organisations, Veldsman said in her presentation, ‘Building a Trustworthy Research Environment: Challenges and solutions to predatory publishing’.

Strategies raise red flags

Researchers should be sceptical of publishers who engage in aggressive advertising and solicit articles, including daily indiscriminate e-mails to prospective authors. “If a journal employs aggressive ways of moneymaking, current publishing practices and growth rates may shift them to the predatory category. This is so even when they are publishing good articles, but use questionable strategies,” Veldsman warned. “Increasingly familiar and flattering language, and the general use of business marketing language such as the offer to submit two articles and pay for one should be cause for alarm.”

In some cases, the publications charged fees if one wanted to withdraw a manuscript, at times as high as 50% of publishing fees.

Researchers must also be on the lookout for inappropriate journal titles and scope, a broader disciplinary scope, or those that combine scientific disciplines with very little in common. Equally concerning are incidents where journals copied titles of acclaimed publications, such as Science and Nature, she said.

For authors, supervisors and mentors, it is always prudent to practise due diligence to minimise risk. Also, use available resources such as “spectrums as meta-level navigation tools”. They should also get to know the common and most reliable characteristics and traits of predatory journals.

Authors cautioned to check

“If a journal purports to be indexed in a reputable index such as Scopus or Web of Science, for example, check personally and, if found untrue, avoid them,” she advised. “It is also important to check if a journal is listed in the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ). If it is, the journal is less likely to be problematic because it has been vetted,” Veldsman added.

Similarly, it is wise to check if a journal is a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and adheres to COPE’s publication standards. If a researcher’s institution has its own list of acceptable and unacceptable journals or subscribes to an online resource such as Cabells Predatory Reports, to use them with caution and cross-check with other resources as well. Veldsman also advised that researchers talk to informed mentors, supervisors and librarians.

“If we have to be whistleblowers for these journals, we have to be very alert and also be sticklers for the rules,” Veldsman said.

“Researchers should familiarise themselves with peer-review best practices and offer their services as peer reviewers to help build capacity. They should actively participate in committees and other platforms to advocate for quality, not quantity, evaluation. They should use journals and indexing services, universities and academies as platforms for change, in other words, become activists to help effect change.”

Publish-review-curate model planned

While predator journals remain a menace, many good African journals struggle to be indexed, owing to quality or other, unknown, reasons – despite hard work by editors. This exposed researchers to crooked publishers running profit-only journals, explained Jo Havemann, co-founder and lead coordinator of the digital archive for African research items, AfricArXiv.

AfricArXiv always advised researchers to consult online resources and check if a journal they intended to place their work with was indexed with African Journals Online (AJOL), besides DOAJ, the indexing platform of quality African-published scholarly journals, Havemann said.

They could also identify trustworthy journals by consulting education entities. In South Africa, for example, the Department of Higher Education and Training maintained a list of accredited journals, she said.

“We are planning to integrate journal-independent peer review to the repository platform as a type of low- or no-cost scholarly publishing, also known as the publish-review-curate model,” she said. “If you are a journal editor and struggle with sustaining your journal, do reach out so we can explore feasible ways forward.”

Open-source model blessing and curse

According to the UbuntuNet Alliance, publishing and evaluation with peer review at its core are essential components of the scientific endeavour. Despite these traditional academic publishing models, research evaluation and peer-review systems have never been entirely immune from exploitation and malpractice, with the risk of compromising the integrity of research and making the scholarly communication system vulnerable to overt commercial predation.

While digitisation of scholarly communication and ongoing development of open-access models have undoubtedly revolutionised many aspects of scientific endeavour, creating exciting new avenues for access, dissemination and production of knowledge, they have also in several ways exacerbated predation.