Predatory journals: Perception, impact and use of Beall's list by the scientific community-A bibliometric big data study.
Beall's list is widely used to identify potentially predatory journals. With this study, we aim to investigate the impact of Beall's list on the perception of listed journals as well as on the publication and citation behavior of the scientific community. We performed comprehensive bibliom...
| Main Authors: | , , , , , , , |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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Public Library of Science (PLoS)
2023-01-01
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| Series: | PLoS ONE |
| Online Access: | https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0287547&type=printable |
| _version_ | 1797366510755250176 |
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| author | Georg Richtig Marina Berger Max Koeller Markus Richtig Erika Richtig Jörg Scheffel Marcus Maurer Frank Siebenhaar |
| author_facet | Georg Richtig Marina Berger Max Koeller Markus Richtig Erika Richtig Jörg Scheffel Marcus Maurer Frank Siebenhaar |
| author_sort | Georg Richtig |
| collection | DOAJ |
| description | Beall's list is widely used to identify potentially predatory journals. With this study, we aim to investigate the impact of Beall's list on the perception of listed journals as well as on the publication and citation behavior of the scientific community. We performed comprehensive bibliometric analyses of data extracted from the ISSN database, PubMed, PubMed Central (PMC), Crossref, Scopus and Web of Science. Citation analysis was performed by data extracted from the Crossref Cited-by database. At the time of analysis, Beall's list consisted of 1,289 standalone journals and 1,162 publishers, which corresponds to 21,735 individual journals. Of these, 3,206 (38.8%) were located in the United States, 2,484 in India (30.0%), and 585 in United Kingdom (7.1%). The majority of journals were listed in the ISSN database (n = 8,266), Crossref (n = 5,155), PubMed (n = 1,139), Scopus (n = 570), DOAJ (n = 224), PMC (n = 135) or Web of Science (n = 50). The number of articles published by journals on Beall's list as well as on the DOAJ continuously increased from 2011 to 2017. In 2018, the number of articles published by journals on Beall's list decreased. Journals on Beall's list were more often cited when listed in Web of Science (CI 95% 5.5 to 21.5; OR = 10.7) and PMC (CI 95% 6.3 to 14.1; OR = 9.4). It seems that the importance of Beall's list for the scientific community is overestimated. In contrast, journals are more likely to be selected for publication or citation when indexed by commonly used and renowned databases. Thus, the providers of these databases must be aware of their impact and verify that good publication practice standards are being applied by the journals listed. |
| first_indexed | 2024-03-08T17:05:12Z |
| format | Article |
| id | doaj.art-abe839fc2cf642c59d449ee760bf2537 |
| institution | Directory Open Access Journal |
| issn | 1932-6203 |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2024-03-08T17:05:12Z |
| publishDate | 2023-01-01 |
| publisher | Public Library of Science (PLoS) |
| record_format | Article |
| series | PLoS ONE |
| spelling | doaj.art-abe839fc2cf642c59d449ee760bf25372024-01-04T05:31:43ZengPublic Library of Science (PLoS)PLoS ONE1932-62032023-01-01187e028754710.1371/journal.pone.0287547Predatory journals: Perception, impact and use of Beall's list by the scientific community-A bibliometric big data study.Georg RichtigMarina BergerMax KoellerMarkus RichtigErika RichtigJörg ScheffelMarcus MaurerFrank SiebenhaarBeall's list is widely used to identify potentially predatory journals. With this study, we aim to investigate the impact of Beall's list on the perception of listed journals as well as on the publication and citation behavior of the scientific community. We performed comprehensive bibliometric analyses of data extracted from the ISSN database, PubMed, PubMed Central (PMC), Crossref, Scopus and Web of Science. Citation analysis was performed by data extracted from the Crossref Cited-by database. At the time of analysis, Beall's list consisted of 1,289 standalone journals and 1,162 publishers, which corresponds to 21,735 individual journals. Of these, 3,206 (38.8%) were located in the United States, 2,484 in India (30.0%), and 585 in United Kingdom (7.1%). The majority of journals were listed in the ISSN database (n = 8,266), Crossref (n = 5,155), PubMed (n = 1,139), Scopus (n = 570), DOAJ (n = 224), PMC (n = 135) or Web of Science (n = 50). The number of articles published by journals on Beall's list as well as on the DOAJ continuously increased from 2011 to 2017. In 2018, the number of articles published by journals on Beall's list decreased. Journals on Beall's list were more often cited when listed in Web of Science (CI 95% 5.5 to 21.5; OR = 10.7) and PMC (CI 95% 6.3 to 14.1; OR = 9.4). It seems that the importance of Beall's list for the scientific community is overestimated. In contrast, journals are more likely to be selected for publication or citation when indexed by commonly used and renowned databases. Thus, the providers of these databases must be aware of their impact and verify that good publication practice standards are being applied by the journals listed.https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0287547&type=printable |
| spellingShingle | Georg Richtig Marina Berger Max Koeller Markus Richtig Erika Richtig Jörg Scheffel Marcus Maurer Frank Siebenhaar Predatory journals: Perception, impact and use of Beall's list by the scientific community-A bibliometric big data study. PLoS ONE |
| title | Predatory journals: Perception, impact and use of Beall's list by the scientific community-A bibliometric big data study. |
| title_full | Predatory journals: Perception, impact and use of Beall's list by the scientific community-A bibliometric big data study. |
| title_fullStr | Predatory journals: Perception, impact and use of Beall's list by the scientific community-A bibliometric big data study. |
| title_full_unstemmed | Predatory journals: Perception, impact and use of Beall's list by the scientific community-A bibliometric big data study. |
| title_short | Predatory journals: Perception, impact and use of Beall's list by the scientific community-A bibliometric big data study. |
| title_sort | predatory journals perception impact and use of beall s list by the scientific community a bibliometric big data study |
| url | https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0287547&type=printable |
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