Predatory Journals: How Far Can They Go? An In-Depth Look at the Outliers

Abstract

For over a decade, predatory publishers, journals and conferences have continuously menaced the research community, preying on its resources, and diminishing the general trust in science, becoming an important research topic. Previous studies have focused on identifying their characteristics, in order to increase the academic awareness and help researchers not becoming a prey. At the same time, predatory publishers diversified their strategies; the academic community developed disparate reactions, which determined more and diverse predatory strategies, aimed at luring and deceiving the scientists. While the process is still ongoing, the present research is aimed at exposing the most extreme predation strategies, in an effort to make the line separating honest and predatory journals more traceable. The analysis of relevant samples focuses on the language issue, based on the hypothesis according to which the predatory publishers are located in countries where English is rarely spoken. The findings, including inventing English names, advertisements making no sense for the Western world, lack of quality control and a poor graphic language, confirm the hypothesis, and are also able to stand at the core of possible guidelines for exposing predatory publishers based on specific features of their calls.