Medical articles in questionable journals are less impactful but still extensively cited in non-questionable journals

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Medical articles in questionable journals are less impactful than those in non-questionable

journals but still extensively cited

Dimity Stephen

German Centre for Higher Education Research and Science Studies (DZHW), Schützenstrasse 6A, Berlin, Germany

stephen@dzhw.eu, ORCID: 0000-0002-7787-6081

A key feature of questionable journals is a lack of adequate peer review of their articles. Content of thus unknown

quality may be utilised by unsuspecting practitioners or incorporated into peer-reviewed research, becoming

legitimised. It is therefore necessary to examine the citation patterns of articles in questionable journals to understand

the impact and reach of research in questionable journals. Similar research has tended to focus on authors from low-

and middle-income countries. As such, this study investigates the profile and impact of research in questionable

journals by authors in Germany. Questionable journals were identified by matching journals with articles by authors

at German institutions from Dimensions to Cabell’s Predatory Reports. Metadata for these articles and a comparative

sample of articles in non-questionable journals were extracted from Dimensions and the 3 year citations, self-citations,

uncited rate, profile of co-authoring and citing countries, and institution type of authors were compared between

groups. Nearly 600 articles in 88 questionable journals were published by German authors in 2010-2020. Three-

quarters were in the medical and health sciences. Medical articles in questionable journals received significantly fewer

citations than similar articles in non-questionable journals. However, articles in questionable journals were still

extensively cited in 1,736 primarily non-questionable journals. Self-citations accounted for only 12% of these

citations. Authors from non-university medical facilities were over-represented in articles in questionable journals.

System-level changes are necessary to eliminate questionable journals and shift high-quality research into reputable

venues.

Key words: questionable journals; questionable publishing; predatory publishing; research integrity; citation analysis

Statements and Declarations

Funding information:

No funding was received for conducting this study.

Competing interests:

The author has no relevant financial or non-financial interests to disclose.

Introduction

Developments in publishing practices and academic culture have brought with them new challenges. The “publish or

perish” culture exerts pressure on academics, particularly those early in their careers, to regularly publish their research

in order to be competitive in obtaining funding and perform well in evaluations (Kurt, 2018; Richtig et al., 2018).

Consequently there is high demand for publishing outlets, particularly those offering fast publishing times.

Simultaneously, technological advancements and cultural shifts towards greater inclusivity in research have

introduced the Open Access (OA) publishing model (Richtig et al., 2018). In OA publishing, instead of publishers

being financed by subscriptions to their journals, authors or their institutions pay the publishers Article Processing

Charges (APCs) to publish their papers as freely available online content (Björk et al., 2020; Richtig et al., 2018). OA

publishing is fundamentally a positive movement toward inclusivity in academia, facilitating legal access to research

for anyone with an internet connection. However, the combined effects of the publish or perish culture and OA

publishing has allowed questionable journals to flourish in recent years (Richtig et al., 2018).

Questionable journals, also known as predatory journals, are journals that demonstrate “dishonest tendencies, lack

scientific rigor, and function primarily for financial gain” (Kurt, 2018). Under the guise of OA, publishers of

questionable journals may charge authors APCs, and sometimes additional or exorbitant fees (Kurt, 2018), to publish

in their journals. The short times to publication typically offered by these journals appeal to researchers under pressure

to produce (Kurt, 2018). However, these journals do not afford researchers the benefits of publishing in a reputable

journal, such as effective peer review and visibility to a relevant audience. Instead, questionable publishers have been

observed to spam researchers for submissions and editorial positions, falsely claim impact metrics and/or indexation

in respected databases, and list individuals as editorial staff without their knowledge or consent (Björk et al., 2020;

Bohannon, 2013; Kurt, 2018). However, perhaps most disconcertingly, questionable publishers typically do not

conduct adequate peer review. This has been highlighted by so-called “sting operations” in which bogus articles are

submitted to potentially questionable journals to see if they are accepted. The quality of the articles is intentionally so

poor that acceptance can only mean that ineffective peer review was conducted. For instance, Bohannon (2013)

submitted 304 versions of a falsified medical science manuscript to 255 OA journals, of which 157 accepted the paper,

despite its “experiments [being] so hopelessly flawed that the results are meaningless”. Sixty percent of the journals

made a publishing decision without any evidence of peer review being undertaken, and 16 manuscripts were accepted

in contradiction to the direct advice of peer reviewers (Bohannon, 2013). Evidently, ineffective peer review is a notable

concern with questionable journals.

Publishing in questionable journals is thus damaging for both the authors – content is typically not indexed in reputable

databases thereby potentially reducing its impact and squandering funding spent on APCs – and the broader

community as unreviewed research becomes publically available with credibility lent by its publication in an

apparently academic journal. Spurred by events such as the COVID-19 pandemic and the anti-vaccine movement,

there has recently been more interest from the general public in scholarly articles. While such consumption should be

encouraged, individuals without the necessary experience to assess a publishing venue or an article’s content can

access and perpetuate potentially damaging information published in questionable journals. For instance, in one study

74% of oncologists reported being challenged by their patients with scientific literature, 14% of which was from

questionable journals (Richtig et al., 2019). However, even training may not be sufficient to prevent the uptake of

such content: the same study found that 30% of surveyed oncologists in Germany and Austria were unaware of the

concept of predatory journals, and around half felt they could not identify one (Richtig et al., 2019). This is particularly

concerning as over 95% of the practitioners reported using journal articles to inform their clinical treatment decisions

(Richtig et al., 2019) and 5% of nursing studies in questionable journals contained findings that could be potentially

harmful to patients (Oermann et al., 2018). More indirectly, articles that have not undergone adequate peer review can

be cited by articles in non-questionable journals and become legitimised. Consequently, research that, for example,

does not adhere to medical research reporting guidelines, adequately describe methods, consider risks of bias, review

relevant literature, or receive approval from an ethics committee for human or animal research (Moher et al., 2017;

Oermann et al., 2018) can enter mainstream academia. It is therefore necessary to examine the citation patterns of

articles in questionable journals and the characteristics of those citations to understand the impact and reach of research

questionable journals.

Previous studies have found substantial variation in the average citations of articles in questionable journals. For

example, Bagues et al. (2019) examined citations for the 5,798 articles from Beall’s list journals they identified in

Italian researchers’ CVs. The articles’ median citations were low at 3 and 23% had never been cited, which increased

to 33% when self-citations were excluded. However, the 10% most cited articles received 20 or more citations each

and one article was cited 399 times, indicating some articles in questionable journals can draw substantial attention.

Similar average citation levels were observed by Ezinwa Nwagwu & Ojemeni (2015), who found an average of 2.3

citations per paper for 5,601 articles in 32 questionable biomedical journals from two Nigerian publishers, while Björk

et al. (2020) observed an average of 2.6 citations within 5 years of publication of 250 articles in questionable journals.

Moussa (2020) observed higher rates of a mean of 6.2 citations per paper for a sample from ten questionable marketing

journals that had mimicked the names of reputable journals, and the most cited articles received 40-217 citations.

However, a sample of 3,427 articles published in the questionable journals from Turkey received on average fewer

than 0.5 citations per article (Akça & Akbulut, 2021) and in a random sample of 124 journals from Beall’s list,

Frandsen (2017) observed 1,295 citations within 3 years of publication, giving an average citation rate of just 0.04

citations per article.

A small number of studies have compared the citations of articles in questionable journals against relevant control

groups. These studies have tended to find that articles in questionable journals typically remained uncited more often

and received substantially fewer citations than similar articles in non-questionable journals (Akça & Akbulut, 2021;

Björk et al., 2020; Moussa, 2020). For instance, 250 articles in questionable journals received an average 2.6 citations

and 56% remained uncited compared to 18.1 citations on average and 9% uncited rate for a sample of 1,000 articles

from Scopus-indexed journals (Björk et al., 2020). The 10,935 citations garnered by 1,246 articles in questionable

marketing journals constituted only 3-7% of the citations obtained by articles in the equivalent reputable journal, while

the 0.5 citations per article observed for questionable journals from Turkey was lower than non-questionable journals

in the same fields (Akça & Akbulut, 2021). In another study, 58 questionable accounting journals received on average

3.8 citations per article, placing them equivalent to the 11th percentile of 61 Scopus-indexed journals. However, the

eight most cited journals were cited similarly to the control group of Scopus journals (Walters, 2022). The citation-

based impact of articles in questionable journals varies depending on the characteristics of the sample, such as field

and country, but overall, citation rates tend to be relatively low and typically less than similar articles in non-

questionable journals. However, some articles and journals achieve high citations and are cited similarly to non-

questionable journals.

In terms of reach, studies have often found researchers in Africa, South Asia and South-East Asia to constitute both

the majority of authors and citing authors of articles in questionable journals (Ezinwa Nwagwu & Ojemeni, 2015;

Frandsen, 2017; Kulczycki et al., 2021). Frandsen (2017) determined that citing authors were often inexperienced,

with around half having no previous publications or citations in Scopus themselves. However, citing authors from

Europe and North America were more experienced researchers in terms of prior publications and citations than citers

from Africa, South and South-East Asia. Also, researchers in the USA, Sweden, and Australia most frequently both

authored articles in questionable nursing journals and also cited these articles from non-questionable journals in

Scopus (Oermann et al., 2019), demonstrating both the global reach of articles in questionable journals and their

penetration of mainstream, peer-reviewed research channels. Another study found that nearly 90% of 68 reputable

marketing journals had been “contaminated” by citations to articles in four questionable journals (Moussa, 2021). R.

Anderson (2019) also examined the citations of seven questionable medical journals and found there was a relatively

low rate of citations at just 1-40 citations in Web of Science (WoS) or ScienceDirect articles to five of the journals.

However, this represented up to 37% of the questionable journals’ articles being reflected in mainstream literature.

Similarly, Ross-White et al. (2019), Kulczycki et al. (2021), and Oermann et al. (2019) found that, although only

portions of their respective samples of biomedical, social science, and nursing articles in questionable journals had

been cited, these citations represented penetration into 157 systematic reviews, 2,338 WoS-indexed journals, and 141

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1Medicalarticlesinquestionablejournalsarelessimpactfulthanthoseinnon-questionablejournalsbutstillextensivelycitedDimityStephenGermanCentreforHigherEducationResearchandScienceStudies(DZHW),Schützenstrasse6A,Berlin,Germanystephen@dzhw.eu,ORCID:0000-0002-7787-6081Akeyfeatureofquestionablejournalsisalac...

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Medical articles in questionable journals are less impactful but still extensively cited in non-questionable journals

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