{"id":8747,"date":"2018-05-28T10:48:33","date_gmt":"2018-05-28T14:48:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/?p=8747"},"modified":"2018-05-28T11:48:44","modified_gmt":"2018-05-28T15:48:44","slug":"predatory-journals-big-problem-not-even-funny","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/index.php\/predatory-journals-big-problem-not-even-funny\/2018\/05\/28\/","title":{"rendered":"Predatory Journals Are Such a Big Problem It’s Not Even Funny"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I’ve made fun of academic spam numerous times on this site.<\/p>\n

It’s those emails from dubious “predatory journals,” written in cheerful but awkward prose, with flowery praise and open invitations to submit research on various scientific topics.<\/p>\n

You know, the emails that start:<\/p>\n

Dear Dr. Paul E.
\n<\/em>Greetings for the day!<\/p>\n

Most of my coverage has been on how (unintentionally) funny they are.<\/a>\u00a0By carpet bombing anyone with a scientific or academic affiliation with these emails, their ability to match content areas with the recipients often misses the mark. For example, I receive an inordinate number of invitations\u00a0to submit papers to fish-related journals.\u00a0<\/a>Go figure.<\/p>\n

But there’s a darker side — just like spam of the non-academic variety, the true motivation of these emails is profit. They make their money off publication fees (only revealed after a paper is accepted) and by sponsoring affiliated bogus conferences.<\/p>\n

Dr. Sharon Bloom, Executive Associate Editor at Emerging Infectious Diseases<\/em><\/a>, kindly shared with me a presentation she gave this year on the topic at the European Congress of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases<\/span>.<\/a>\u00a0It outlines in startling detail the pervasiveness of this predatory journal problem, and why it is growing.<\/p>\n

One might wonder why the predatory journals have exploded (by some estimates there are more than 10,000), and what some of the hazards are for academic medicine in general, and ID in particular.<\/p>\n

Part of why they succeed is because they co-opt markers of credibility, to fool people into thinking they\u2019re the real thing.\u00a0Journal titles are carefully crafted to sound similar to established, credible journals. Here are a few ID-related publications (from the Hyderabad-based OMICS Group<\/a> publisher):<\/p>\n