The widely used academic database Scopus hosts papers from more than 300 potentially ‘predatory’ journals that have questionable publishing practices, an analysis has found.  Their presence on Scopus and other popular research databases raises concerns that poor-quality studies could mislead scientists and pollute the scientific literature. Scopus has stopped adding content from most of the flagged titles for re-evaluation. But an analysis titled Predatory publishing in Scopus: evidence on cross-country differences published in Scientometrics highlights how poor-quality science is infiltrating literature. The authors of this study conclude that Scopus needs to find a way to fact-check whether the journal adheres to the declared editorial practices, including most prominently how the peer-review process is performed in practice.

The journal brand has proven to be the great intangible asset of the scholarly publisher. It signals trust and authority to authors and readers alike. Nevertheless, looking ahead, there are real tensions emerging in how the scholarly record will be structured and who will have ownership and control over it. What are the opportunities and challenges as publishers seek to extend the reach — and value — of their journal brands by supporting research materials beyond the version of record? Digging into the evolving context of preprints and research data offers valuable clues.

In scholarly publishing, blacklists aim to register fraudulent or deceptive journals and publishers, also known as “predatory”, to minimise the spread of unreliable research and the growing of fake publishing outlets. However, blacklisting remains a very controversial activity for several reasons. Cabell’s paywalled blacklist service attempts to review fraudulent journals on the basis of transparent criteria and to provide allegedly up-to-date information at the journal entry level. A team of academic librarians  tested Cabell’s blacklist to analyse whether or not it could be adopted as a reliable tool by stakeholders in scholarly communication. They expose their methodology and conclude with recommendations and suggestions that could help improve Cabell’s blacklist service.

This new and unique tool aims to help the scientific community to better understand the problem of fake journals and fake publishers. Compass to publish makes it possible to assess the authenticity of Open Access journals by answering a series of questions.

The Passport For Open Science is a guide designed to accompany PhD students at every step of their research career, whatever their disciplinary field. It provides a set of tools and good practices that can be directly implemented.

As a result of an increasing number of reports that show fake scientific news is on the rise, the scholarly publishing trade body STM is calling on the research community to be ever more vigilant.

Scholastica released a first report on “The State of Journal Production and Access“ among scholarly society and university publishers. The report details the results of a global survey of 63 individuals working with scholarly society and university publishers that manage and produce academic journals independently (i.e., not outsourced to a separate publisher) about how they are currently approaching journal production and access and their future priorities. The goal of this survey report is to provide generative insights around these aspects of publishing to gauge where the digital journal landscape is moving. Read the report.

This collection of essays, arranged in five thematic sections, is intended to take the pulse of institutional repositories—to see how they have matured and what can be expected from them, as well as introduce what may be the future role of the institutional repository. By noting trends and potentialities, the final section, authored by Executive Director of SPARC Heather Joseph, makes future predictions and helps managers position institutional repositories to be responsive to change and even shape the evolution of scholarly communication.

The authors analyse a relatively recent commercial strategy adopted by the major scientific publishers, which consists in exploiting the brand image of their most prestigious journals. By transferring the symbolic capital of a prestigious journal to spin-off journals, publishers capture part of this prestige by carrying the brand of the original journal in their titles, thus transforming it into new economic capital. Through manuscript transfer mechanisms, publishers also use some of the articles rejected by their highly selective flagship journals to recycle and monetize them in the lower-impact or open access spin-off journals on their list. Download the article.