From Elite Indices, to Open Access, and Predatory Journals: Why Students Need Training for the Ever-Complicating Global Publishing Landscape

• In Event: Highlighted Session: New Issues on Research and Study Abroad and International Students

Proposal

Relevance
Almost all scholars who attend CIES would likely agree that “Improving Education for a More Equitable World” is a justified theme. Yet the scholarly training in the Global North is not always equitable. There is an intense focus on elite English language journals listed in SSCI, which are housed under for-profit Western publishers (Chou, 2014; Author Redacted). Relying on such distinctions has relegated non-Anglosphere research to a lower international standing (Li & Yang, 2019; Xu, 2019). Further complicating the sector, nefarious actors have attempted to hijack publishing through predatory publishing (Author Redacted). But new journals without connections to corporate publishers or those from outside the West should not simply be labelled “predatory”. International scholars trained in the Global North who return home will face an environment where they will engage with a wide range of publishing outlets. However, they may only see limited sets of Anglo-journals reflected in their academic training (Lim & Huang, 2022). This research proposal argues that we must grapple with a broader publishing spectrum to ensure more equitable scholarly training.

Contexts
The term predatory journal (PJ) was first coined by Beall (2013), defined as those that “abuse the author-pays publishing model for their own profit” with “fake or minimal peer review” (p. 47). These scam outlets are only profit-driven, looking to lure academics with underhanded tactics, such as email spam blasts, and publishing anything for a fee. Those who publish in predatory journals are often young and inexperienced scholars, especially non-Native English speakers (Demir, 2018). Consequently, researchers linked predatory journals to junk science and misinformation surrounding vaccines and COVID-19 (Beall 2016; Author Redacted).

Identifying PJs is not simple. First, not all journals that ask for payment are predatory, as the gold open access model has become popular in recent years with legitimate outlets (Beall, 2016). Second, scholars have warned against simple blacklists such as Beall’s List or Cabells (da Silva & Tsigaris, 2018). In particular, Beall’s List was criticized for discounting knowledge produced in less affluent and non-English speaking nations (da Silva & Kimotho, 2021). In recognition of the expansion of publishing, the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) was founded in 2003 as a repository for open access journals to add legitimacy to new outlets (Grudniewicz et al., 2019).

Inquiry
This work explores the global academic publishing space using comparative and descriptive bibliometrics (see Lee & Haupt, 2020; Kwiek, 2020; Author Redacted). The following questions guided this research:
•How have the number of open access journals grown compared to predatory and elite journals?
•How do the linguistic and geographic characteristics of educational journals in the DOAJ compare to those in SSCI?

The data comes from four journal indices; two blacklists: Beall’s List and Cabells; and two whitelists: DOAJ and SSCI. Beall’s List is the most widely known blacklist, but has been criticized for a lack of transparency and systemic approach to listings (da Silva & Tsigaris, 2018). Cabells provides a systematic and transparent approach to its listings beginning in 2017. However, it is a for-profit, subscription service, limiting its utility. The DOAJ provides a proxy for legitimate open access and new outlets, while the SSCI represents more elite and traditional outlets.

Findings
Displayed in Figure 1, the DOAJ steadily climbed from 1,109 journals in 2004, only dropping to 8,889 in 2016 (following an audit of the index), with the latest year growing to 17,943 journals. The elite SSCI barely grew during this period, adding just over 500 journals since 2012. Beall’s List rapidly grew from just 18 in 2010 to 693 journals in 2015, doubling to 1,511 by 2022. Cabells unveiled the blacklist with 4,000 journals in 2017, quickly quadrupling to 16,539 entries.

Figure 1 Here


The comparison between education journals in DOAJ and SSCI yields global inequality. In Table 1, DOAJ journals are from an assortment of global locales, with Indonesia and Brazil accounting for 27.4% (417) and 16.2% (246) respectively. While the US still accounts for 7% (107) of the DOAJ educational journals, the entire list is diverse and represents locations from around the world. In total, there were 80 different societies that hosted at least one journal in the DOAJ. Meanwhile, SSCI was dominated by Western nations, 90.7% coming from UK, US, and the Netherlands.

Table 1 Here

Linguistically, the DOAJ indexed journals published in 47 different languages; while English is still dominant (957), Indonesian (353), Spanish (351), and Portuguese (314) were all quite represented. Conversely, SSCI is almost exclusively English (316), with only seven other languages appearing once. Table 2 offers a linguistic comparison since 2012, with SSCI consistently over 90% English language journals and DOAJ less than 50% over this period.

Table 2 Here


Contribution
While critics may argue that scholars can play it safe with big publisher indices like SSCI, the DOAJ provides a more equitable outlet for researchers around the world to publish legitimate and valued research. Connecting with the findings and in consideration of more equitable academic training, the Spectrum of Academic Publishing has been visualized in Illustration 1. The gradient shades from darker on the elite side to white on the predatory side. The right side has a narrow band of journals, representing those in the Anglo-centered SSCI, radiating until it fades at its peak. As the illustration moves left, the number of journals rises and greys to illustrate the growing linguistic and geographic diversity in publishing, with the invisible white illustrating how predatory journals hide on the fringe of legitimacy.

Illustration 1 Here

Educators have more impetus to train students for these global challenges in academic publishing. Unlike in other fields, schools of education do not just train future researchers, but also the administrators at the universities who must grapple with these indices for policymaking. The publish or perish space exists in coordination with pressures on both researchers and administrators globally. These complications put the impetus on CIES members to incorporate international contexts of publishing for more equitable scholarly training.

Note: References and Figures have been removed per CIES guidelines.

Author

• Ryan Allen, Soka University of America