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How Frequently Are Articles in Predatory Open Access Journals Cited

Author

Listed:
  • Bo-Christer Björk

    (Hanken School of Economics, P.O. Box 479, FI-00101 Helsinki, Finland)

  • Sari Kanto-Karvonen

    (Department of Information Studies and Interactive Media, Tampere University, FI-33014 Tampere, Finland)

  • J. Tuomas Harviainen

    (Department of Information Studies and Interactive Media, Tampere University, FI-33014 Tampere, Finland)

Abstract

Predatory journals are Open Access journals of highly questionable scientific quality. Such journals pretend to use peer review for quality assurance, and spam academics with requests for submissions, in order to collect author payments. In recent years predatory journals have received a lot of negative media. While much has been said about the harm that such journals cause to academic publishing in general, an overlooked aspect is how much articles in such journals are actually read and in particular cited, that is if they have any significant impact on the research in their fields. Other studies have already demonstrated that only some of the articles in predatory journals contain faulty and directly harmful results, while a lot of the articles present mediocre and poorly reported studies. We studied citation statistics over a five-year period in Google Scholar for 250 random articles published in such journals in 2014 and found an average of 2.6 citations per article, and that 56% of the articles had no citations at all. For comparison, a random sample of articles published in the approximately 25,000 peer reviewed journals included in the Scopus index had an average of 18, 1 citations in the same period with only 9% receiving no citations. We conclude that articles published in predatory journals have little scientific impact.

Suggested Citation

  • Bo-Christer Björk & Sari Kanto-Karvonen & J. Tuomas Harviainen, 2020. "How Frequently Are Articles in Predatory Open Access Journals Cited," Publications, MDPI, vol. 8(2), pages 1-12, March.
  • Handle: RePEc:gam:jpubli:v:8:y:2020:i:2:p:17-:d:337307
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Martin-Martin, Alberto & Orduna-Malea, Enrique & Harzing, Anne-Wil & Delgado López-Cózar, Emilio, 2017. "Can we use Google Scholar to identify highly-cited documents?," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 11(1), pages 152-163.
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    4. Tove Faber Frandsen, 2017. "Are predatory journals undermining the credibility of science? A bibliometric analysis of citers," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 113(3), pages 1513-1528, December.
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    7. Jingfeng Xia & Jennifer L. Harmon & Kevin G. Connolly & Ryan M. Donnelly & Mary R. Anderson & Heather A. Howard, 2015. "Who publishes in “predatory” journals?," Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 66(7), pages 1406-1417, July.
    8. Kayvan Kousha & Mike Thelwall, 2017. "Are wikipedia citations important evidence of the impact of scholarly articles and books?," Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 68(3), pages 762-779, March.
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    Cited by:

    1. Anna Abalkina, 2021. "Detecting a network of hijacked journals by its archive," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 126(8), pages 7123-7148, August.
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    3. Maria José Sá & Carlos Miguel Ferreira & Ana Isabel Santos & Sandro Serpa, 2020. "Publishing at Any Cost? The Need for the Improvement of the Quality of Scholarly Publications," International Journal of Higher Education, Sciedu Press, vol. 9(3), pages 214-214, June.
    4. Dimity Stephen, 2023. "Medical articles in questionable journals are less impactful than those in non-questionable journals but still extensively cited," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 128(8), pages 4509-4522, August.
    5. Raminta Pranckutė, 2021. "Web of Science (WoS) and Scopus: The Titans of Bibliographic Information in Today’s Academic World," Publications, MDPI, vol. 9(1), pages 1-59, March.
    6. Kendall Faulkner, 2021. "Faculty Use of Open-Access Journals: A Case Study of Faculty Publications and Cited References at a California University," Publications, MDPI, vol. 9(3), pages 1-12, August.
    7. Emanuel Kulczycki & Marek Hołowiecki & Zehra Taşkın & Franciszek Krawczyk, 2021. "Citation patterns between impact-factor and questionable journals," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 126(10), pages 8541-8560, October.

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