M edicine and public policy

Profiting from the paradigm shift in scholarly journal publishing:
The case of predatory publishers
Lyombe Eko PhD, Amy Koerber PhD

In December 2019, the well-known scientific jour-nal Nature published an article entitled, “Predatory
journals: no definition, no defence.”1 The collaborative
effort, which was co-authored by a record 35 authors
from scientific, technical, and medical publishers
around the world, was illustrated by an eye-catchingpiece of art based on the primeval myth of deceptive
appearances­—a sinister-looking wolf in sheep’s clothing. In the illustration, the “clothing” that the wolf uses
as its camouflage is an open academic journal with asheep on its cover. That article raised the alarm abouta phenomenon that the researchers, who represented
fields of research, education, libraries, publishing, andresearch funding, consider a “global threat.”1
Scholarly publication is, like science, a paradigm, or way of seeing, organizing, and representing
reality. Scholarly publishing across the disciplines iscomprised of specialized, self-regulating “fields” ofknowledge production, processing, curation, archiving,
and retrieval.2 Scholarly publication is part of the knowledge production-and-creation paradigm of researchand publication. Predatory journals are considered thetares of this paradigm. Predatory publishers and journals first caught the attention of the scientific community
in 2008 when Jeffrey Beall, a librarian at the Universityof Colorado-Denver, coined the term to characterize asmall number of open access journals and publishers
that he included on a blacklist he had published on hiswebsite. Predatory journals are considered a bane tothe field because they do not care for tried and truepublication standards. They ride roughshod over publication ethics in order to monetize academic publicationand make a quick buck. The term, “predatory journal”
or “predatory publisher” has become a contemptuous,denunciative, and exclusionary epithet that members
Corresponding author: Amy KoerberContact Information: Amy.Koerber@ttu.edu
DOI:of the commercial and academic scholarly publishingindustry have accepted as the appropriate nomenclature for the new category of unorthodox, commercial
publishers that began to enter the scholarly publishingmarket in the early 2000s.
Grudniewicz et al. advanced the following “consensus” definition of predatory journals and publishers:
Predatory journals and publishers are entities thatprioritize self-interest at the expense of scholarship and are characterized by false or misleading information, deviation from best editorial andpublication practices, a lack of transparency, and/or the use of aggressive and indiscriminate solicitation practices.1
Johnson et al. described the modus operandi of
predatory journals, whose business model is to prey on
unsuspecting researchers and professors who, driven
by the “publish or perish” globalized ethos of Americanhigher education, are always on the lookout for publication outlets for their research. These journals “often
promote themselves to potential authors through bulk,
sometimes SPAM emails, frequently have fictitious editorial boards and in many cases use the Gold Open
Access [article publication charge] model to get money
upfront before an author can detect whether their article
has been subjected to any peer review whatsoever.”3
It is estimated that there are more than 9,000 verified
predatory journals generating some $75 million in revenues annually. Furthermore, some predatory publishers have been known to deliberately confuse article
submitters. They do this by hijacking some legitimate
journals and creating fraudulent websites that mimic
the legitimate journal in order to attract submissions
and fraudulently collect article publication charges.3
When Grudniewicz et al. declared that, “Predatory
journals are a global threat,”1 they were not particularlyreferring to the financial impact of these publishers
because from a journal economics and market-size
perspective, the revenues of predatory journals are

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Profiting from the Paradigm Shift in Scholarly Journal Publishing: The Case of Predatory Publishers

miniscule compared to the close to $26 billion dollar revenues of the scientific, technical and medical
publishing industry.3 Rather, the danger that predatory
publishers pose to the scholarly or academic publishing industry is existential because they undermine thefundamental philosophy and ethics of the academic
peer review process. Johnson et al. present an interesting summary of the quality control purpose of peer
review that is being undermined by predatory journals. They state that the fundamental purpose of peer
review is “to ensure that only good science or scholarship gets published, and that work that does not meet
acceptable standards does not enter the journal literature.”3 Scholarly publication has certain frameworks
or “contextual matrixes,” to borrow the expression of
Pierre Legrand4 that shape and structure its modus
operandi. By skipping the scientific publication paradigm, predatory journals have introduced discordantrealities into the scholarly publication process.

Ferment in the field of scholarly
publication and the emergence of
predatory publishers

Predatory publishing is a money-making phenomenon that emerged in the first decade of the 21st century, and took advantage of the internal contradictions,shortcomings, and ferment in the field of scholarly
journal publication. Predatory publishers emerged in
the field of scholarly publication at a time of “radicaldiscontinuities,” to borrow the expression of Corfield5
that had led to a ferment in the field of scholarly publication. These discontinuities included: 1) systemic
flaws and contradictions, hyper competitiveness anddisequilibrium of the academic research paradigm andscholarly publishing industry, 2) the electronic revolution and the resultant digitization and transfer of journalarchives and publications from the physical spaces oflibraries and archives to the Internet and cyberspace,and 3) the emergence of Open Access Publishing with
its lucrative article publication charge business model.
At the end of World War II, the United States was
the undisputed center of higher education and scientificresearch. The scholarly publishing industry took advantage of the post-war economic boom and used different
business and marketing strategies to create demand for2

scholarly publications in science, technology, and medicine as well as in the humanities and the social sciences.6Alberts et al. suggest that generous research funding by
the National Institutes of Health (NIH), National Science
Foundation, and numerous other federal agencies, foundations, and academic institutions led to a “remarkable
outpouring of innovative research from American laboratories.”7 However, these professionals suggest thatthe system that has flourished in the last 60 years is nolonger sustainable and that there is widespread malaise
whose root cause is, “the longstanding assumption thatthe biomedical research system in the United States will
expand indefinitely at a substantial rate.” They believethat the expansion of research and research funding
stalled in the last decade as a result of reduction in federal funding. The result is what they call “hypercompetition for the resources and positions that are required to
conduct science.”7
Some researchers and scientists consciously participate in the activities of predatory journals—therebygiving them a modicum of respectability—under thebelief (often mistaken) that by reviewing for, and publishing in predatory journals, they would be in a position to point out the shortcomings of these journals andthereby improve their standards.1,8 These researchers
see predatory journals, despite their poor reputation,as an alternative to well-funded, elite “Big Science,”“Big Research,” and legacy science, technology, andmedicine publishing, that is getting bigger and bigger, more and more exclusive, and harder for regularresearchers and faculty members to feature in.

The information and communication
technology revolution and transfer ofknowledge curation and retrieval fromreal space to cyberspace

Predatory scholarly publishing emerged during thetransition of scholarly publishing from physical to online
digital spaces. The availability of databases, computers, the Internet and commercial interactive server
applications facilitated the digitization and transfer ofknowledge from physical information storage spaces(libraries and archives) to the dematerialized world ofcyberspace for easy access and retrieval. Federal policy orientations promoted a market-based approach

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Profiting from the Paradigm Shift in Scholarly Journal Publishing: The Case of Predatory Publishers

to the Internet and information and communication
technologies. In 1997, the Clinton-Gore administration
offered the world a vision and framework for the expansion and regulation of global electronic commerceon the fledgling Internet. This was a laissez-faire,
capitalist, free-market, free-flow-of-information framework under which governments were to assume aminimalist regulatory posture towards the Internet.9
In 2004, Google, the world’s largest Internet searchcompany, announced that it had launched The Google
Books Library Project. This was an innovative projectthat would radically transform how human beings create, store, retrieve, and use information. The Google
Books project involved “space-shifting,” the digitizationand transfer of whole books—including bound scholarlyjournals—from the real, physical geographic spacesof libraries and archives to databases and servers incyberspace, where Internet search results would display snippets from these books and journals to readers as part of Google’s commercial search or linguistic
capitalist business model.10,11
As a result, newspaper, magazine and journal
publishers licensed their archives of collective works(periodicals) to electronic databases like Lexis-Nexis,
which digitized these articles and stored them in paywalled interactive databases where they are searchable, retrievable, downloadable, printable, and readable
in a number of digital formats as single entities separated from the original collective periodical volumes
in which they had been published. Digital databases
essentially became another lucrative revenue stream
for both commercial and university journal publishers.11

Paradigm shift in scholarly publishing:
the open access movement

Perhaps the most important development was theadvent of paradigm-shifting “open access” publishing.
Johnson et al. suggest that the proportion of the scientific output published in journals under the ownershipof large commercial publishers has risen steadily overthe past 40 years, and even more so since the adventof the digital era.3 These corporations became bigger
and bigger to the point at which the multi-billion-dollar
scholarly journal publishing industry became highly
skewed and highly concentrated in the hands of a

Eko et al.

few oligopolistic multi-multinational corporations and ahandful of university presses.3 Under this corporate anduniversity publishing model, publishers had a monopolyon the unique collections of articles their scholarly journals published. Brown et al. suggest that due to thesemonopolies, researchers and scientists who needed theinformation contained in journal articles were obliged topay whatever price the journal publishers asked.12
In response to the subscriptions and site-licensing
fee model of the scholarly journal industry, and thethrottling effect of this model on the dissemination ofknowledge and information, in 2000, a number of highprofile American researchers, including Nobel prize
winner, Harold Varmus, sought “to catalyze a revolution in scientific publishing” by proposing a paradigm
shift13 in scholarly journal publication and economics—
an “open access” publication model.12 They stated thatthe “essential rationale of the pay-for-access modelhas disappeared, now that electronic publication andInternet distribution have become routine. Instead, thisbusiness model is what stands in the way of all the benefits of open access.”12 This open access model would
be different from the traditional pay to access businessmodel of scholarly publication. The open access publication model they were proposing was premised on
the idea that everything published “will immediately
be freely available to anyone, anywhere, to download,
print, distribute, read, and use without charge or otherrestrictions, as long as proper attribution of authorshipis maintained.”12They were arguing not for the elimination of thetraditional pay for access journal publishing paradigm;
they were arguing for a paradigm shift in the subscription and licensing model of journal economics. They
argued that the electronic revolution and the Internet
had led to an information society in which whole sectors of the knowledge economy had been digitized andtransferred to cyberspace. Therefore, the traditional
scholarly publishing model of printing and distributing
scientific journals was no longer cost effective or evensustainable.12
This proposed open access publication model
would be grounded on the fact that scientific researchand publication go hand in hand. As such, open accesspublishing would be funded by research funders as part

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Eko et al.

Profiting from the Paradigm Shift in Scholarly Journal Publishing: The Case of Predatory Publishersof research grant budgets. Brown et al. also argued
for a free-market, journal economics approach, statingthat “Open access would eliminate [corporate and university] monopolies over essential published results,
diminishing profit margins and creating a more efficient
market for scientific publishing—a market in which
publishers would compete to provide the best value
to authors (high quality, selectivity, prestige, a large
and appreciative readership) at the best price.”12 They
submitted that the open access model, and especially
its article processing charge component would be sosuccessful that it would revolutionize scholarly journal
publishing. Commercial scholarly journal publishers
initially objected to this model but due to its early success, they ultimately hopped on the bandwagon andoffered both open access journals and open accessbooks. Unfortunately, due to reductions in federal andinstitutional funding, the burden of paying for scholarly
publication under this model soon fell on scholars andauthors desperate to publish to advance their careers.
This development paved the way for the emergenceof predatory journals, which mimic open access publishing and capitalize on its lucrative article publication
charge model. Researchers need to be aware of the
problematic nature of predatory publishers before theysubmit their research and hard earned cash to them.
Keywords: scientific publications, open access,predatory journals
Article citation: Eko L, Koerber A. Profiting from theparadigm shift in scholarly journal publishing: the caseof predatory publishers. The Southwest Respiratory
and Critical Care Chronicles 2020;8(35):1–5
From: College of Media & Communication, Texas Tech
University
Submitted: 5/6/2020
Accepted: 7/7/2020
Conflicts of interest: none
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

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