LETTER - IA de Investigación especializada en el MIT

CARTA

Proscription lists and predatory publishers:
Pointing to careful certifications

Marco Cascella1

, Alessandro De Cassai2

, and Paolo Navalesi3

1Division of Anesthesia and Pain Medicine, Istituto Nazionale Tumori—IRCCS—Fondazione G. Pascale, Nápoles, Italia
2Unit of Anesthesia and Intensive Care, Padua University Hospital, Padua, Italia
3Department of Medicine, University of Padua, Padua, Italia

An article by Macháček and Srholec titled “Predatory publishing in Scopus: evidence on
cross-country differences” was recently withdrawn by the journal Scientometrics (Macháček
& Srholec, 2021). The motivations were the lack of a “control group,” and the restriction of
the analysis “to publications in four languages.” Moreover, a letter from the Frontiers editor-in-
chief largely criticized the use of the famous Jeffrey Beall’s list to identify predatory publishers.

Retracted articles should not be used as a source of information for future research, as they
could present flawed data, possibly leading to unreliable and misleading conclusions (De
Cassai, Geraldini et al., 2022). Sin embargo, this retraction in particular has garnered a lot of
interest and discussion among scientists (Abramo, Aguillo et al., 2023) y, como consecuencia, él
is necessary to solve several difficulties. Despite the inconvenience, the authors were able to
republish their findings in Quantitative Science Studies (Macháček & Srholec, 2022).

Primero, it is necessary to decide whether to use Beall’s list in scientometrics studies and, if so,
cómo. Many centuries have passed since, en 82 BCE, the Roman dictator Lucio Cornelio Silla
published the first Proscription list to make public the names of those citizens deemed to be
“enemies” of Rome: They could be put to death without reprisals. Undoubtedly, Beall’s list is
biased by its subjectivity and not fully transparent methodology. Sin embargo, Ha sido
widely used in scientometric investigations. Because journals and publishers have a code of
ethical conduct and, above all, reference libraries have the tools to verify inclusion require-
mentos, it is time to define the list as an instrument not to be used for scientometric analyses.
The foundation of free information, por otro lado, is that a web page cannot and must not
be erased; nonetheless, writers and readers must carefully assess the accuracy of the material it
includes.

En segundo lugar, the demonization of the open access phenomenon seems to be an excessive
forcing towards an evolutionary process that, by its nature, cannot be stopped. Before the inter-
net era, predatory publishing did not occur, as almost all scholarly journals were print-based
subscription journals (Beall, 2017). Sin embargo, the World Wide Web changed the practical and
economic realities of distributing scientific knowledge and the open access model started to
gain popularity. Several open access models exist, ranging from “article processing charge
models” where authors or their institutions pay a charge in order to make research information
available to readers at no cost (es decir., APC-based gold open access) to models where journals
charge no fee to authors or institutions (es decir., diamond open access). The Berlin Declaration on
Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities, released on October 22, 2003,
articulated the fundamentals of open access (Berlin Declaration, 2003). The declaration stated
that open access is based on two pillars: The authors are the rights holders of the contribution
and grant to all users a free and irrevocable right to access, usar, copy, and distribute their

un acceso abierto

diario

Citación: Cascella, METRO., De Cassai, A., &
Navalesi, PAG. (2023). Proscription lists
and predatory publishers: Pointing to
careful certifications. Quantitative
Science Studies, 4(2), 489–490. https://
doi.org/10.1162/qss_a_00251

DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1162/qss_a_00251

Recibió: 21 December 2022
Aceptado: 15 Febrero 2023

Autor correspondiente:
Alessandro De Cassai
alessandro.decassai@gmail.com

Editor de manejo:
Juego Waltman

Derechos de autor: © 2023 Marco Cascella,
Alessandro De Cassai, and Paolo
Navalesi. Published under a Creative
Commons Attribution 4.0 Internacional
(CC POR 4.0) licencia.

La prensa del MIT

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Proscription lists and predatory publishers

investigación; and a complete version of the work and all supplemental materials should be kept in
at least one online repository in order to grant unrestricted access to all the users (Berlina
Declaration, 2003). In the open access models, there are advantages for both readers, autores,
and publishers. Readers can have immediate access to research without barriers and authors’
work has a wider spread in the scientific community, leading to an increase in citations.
Sin embargo, the open access model has been exploited by dishonest predatory publishers. Semejante
publishers set up websites closely resembling the sites of legitimate publishers to dupe
inexperienced researchers and obtain the open access charge with the promise of fast publi-
catión. Predatory publishers publish journals of questionable and downright low quality. Ellos
use spam emails to solicit manuscript submissions and have a simple or fake peer-review pro-
impuesto. The more manuscripts they accept, the more profit they obtain.

Finalmente, highlighting what we have learned from this story to further improve academic pub-
lishing’s open access process is mandatory. Although predatory publishing exists and largely
exploits the APC-based gold open access mechanism, we should not demonize the whole
open access phenomenon. The scientific community should proceed to safeguard the correct
and serious publishers. In this context, how can a publisher be defined as predatory? jeffrey
Beall used a series of criteria regarding editor and staff (six criteria), integrity (seven criteria),
and other elements (six criteria). Someone should take charge of addressing the problem
through a structured methodology. In our opinion, the proper strategy to achieve this goal is
to establish a third party responsible for certifying open access publishers. This could be a
combination of various stakeholders, including research institutions, libraries, funding agen-
cíes, and scholarly publishers, to ensure a transparent and fair decision-making process and
that the certification criteria reflect the needs and expectations of the academic community.
The third party should also have the necessary resources, including funding and staff, to carry
out its responsibilities effectively, and should be subject to regular review and evaluation to
ensure that it remains relevant and effective over time. The third party should also have the
technical expertise to evaluate and assess the quality of open access publishing processes,
including peer review and editorial policies. Organizations such as Cabells, which are well-
established in the academic publishing industry and have a strong reputation for quality and
impartiality, could be a good fit for this role. Sin embargo, it is important to ensure that the gov-
erning body is representative of all relevant stakeholders, including researchers and authors, a
ensure the transparency and fairness of the certification process. Contrary to those unfortunate
ancient Romans marked on Sulla’s list, the publisher should be guaranteed the possibility to
appeal the decision.

REFERENCIAS

Abramo, GRAMO., Aguillo, I. F., Aksnes, D. w., Boyack, K., Burrell,
q. l., … Waltman, l. (2023). Retraction of Predatory publishing
in Scopus: Evidence on cross-country differences lacks justifica-
ción. cienciometria, 128, 1459–1461. https://doi.org/10.1007
/s11192-022-04565-6

Beall, j. (2017). What I learned from predatory publishers. Biochemia
Medica, 27(2), 273–278. https://doi.org/10.11613/BM.2017.029,
PubMed: 28694718

Berlin Declaration. (2003). Berlin Declaration on open access to
knowledge in the sciences and humanities. Disponible en: https://
openaccess.mpg.de/Berlin-Declaration (accessed December 18,
2022).

De Cassai, A., Geraldini, F., De Pinto, S., Carbonari, I., Cascella,
METRO., … Navalesi, PAG. (2022). Inappropriate citation of retracted arti-
cles in anesthesiology and intensive care medicine publications.
Anestesiología, 137(3), 341–350. https://doi.org/10.1097/ALN
.0000000000004302, PubMed: 35789367

Macháček, v., & Srholec, METRO. (2021). RETRACTED ARTICLE: Preda-
tory publishing in Scopus: Evidence on cross-country differences.
cienciometria, 126(3), 1897–1921. https://doi.org/10.1007
/s11192-020-03852-4, PubMed: 33583977

Macháček, v., & Srholec, METRO. (2022). Predatory publishing in Sco-
pus: Evidence on cross-country differences. Quantitative Science
Estudios, 3(3), 859–887. https://doi.org/10.1162/qss_a_00213

Estudios de ciencias cuantitativas

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