Predatory journals and publishers: Characteristics and impact of academic spam to researchers in educational sciences

Abstract

This study focuses on the phenomenon of presumed predatory scientific publications in the field of Educational Sciences, and the utilization of email by editors to request manuscripts. It examined, using content analysis methods, 210 emails received by three professors of the field of Education, at a Spanish university with different research profiles over a period of 3 months. Through analysis of the unsolicited emails a total of 139 journals and 37 publishers were identified and examined using: (a) the two main predatory journal inventories (Beall's list and Cabells' Predatory Reports), and (b) six of the major scientific bibliographic databases. The publishers and their websites were also analyzed, as well as the basic aspects of the emails' content. The majority of the unsolicited emails were from predatory journals or publishers and half of the article requests did not match the field of the recipient. In addition, it is relevant to note that more than half of the domains of predatory publishers analysed have untrustworthy security levels. The data provided relevant information on the phenomenon of predation in scientific publications in the field of Education and, most importantly, provided evidence for developing training and preventive strategies to tackle it.