Reliability of Hijacked Journal Detection Based on Scientometrics, Altmetric Tools, and Web Informatics: A Case Report Using Google Scholar, Web of Science, and Scopus

Abstract

This paper presents a case report on detecting hijacked journals. Towards identification of a fake journal website and preventing a hijacked paper, we can use different tools including Google Scholar and Web of Science (WoS) and Scopus (both as scientometric databases) to distinguish a fake website from a legal journal website. Our evaluation shows that analysis of a doubtful website for a targeted journal based on Google Scholar is not reliable. In fact, the use of scientometric tools for tracking prior publications of the targeted journal is compulsory. Another result of this study is that in some uncommon cases, fake websites (clone versions) may sometimes convince a scientometric database in order to be fully/partially indexed along with an abstracting of their hijacked papers while these websites steal identity of the legal journals. Therefore, as a result, we should check both of WoS and Scopus at the same time for verifying a fake website to obtain more reliability.