Review of Research on Predatory Scientific Publications from Scopus Database between 2012 and 2022

Abstract

Since the emergence of the internet and open science in the 1990s, “predatory journals,” or “predatory publishing,” have attracted the increasing attention of scholars. Research on the topic has grown at a rapid rate, particularly in the last five years. This article serves as the first bibliometric review on the topic of “predators in the scientific publication” and draws on 869 published articles from the Scopus database between 2012 and 30 March 2022. These papers were produced by a total of 1586 authors, coming from 101 countries, representing 1538 organizations, and published in 501 journals. Research disciplines mostly covered the fields of medicine, social sciences, and nursing. This study also reveals the complexity of issues and research trends around the topic of predatory scientific publications, including the review process for scientific journals, publication fees and article processing charges, open science and open-access publications, and the like and related topics such as the impact on scholars in developing countries and academic ethics. Finally, this article provides several recommendations, namely, the need for more efficient criteria to evaluate the quality of scientific journals, more public communication on the importance of ethics in research and publication, and a greater awareness among scholars and organizations of the implications of the “predator” issue in scientific publishing.