If you have recently presented at a national or international conference, chances are you have been inundated with invitations to submit your work for publication in any number of "new" open-access online journals flooding the market. Not only are the invitations overly complementary, you may also be invited to serve on the journal's editorial board, to edit a special issue, or better yet, to assume the role of Editor in Chief! Although such invitations may be a boost to your ego, I would encourage you to proceed with caution. Some of these email solicitations cluttering your inbox are easily cast away as spam, because of their generic nature, their grammatically incorrect prose, and the fact that you may be invited to submit a paper to a journal completely unrelated to your specialty within your discipline. Unfortunately, predatory publishers are becoming much savvier, and their email invitations are becoming much more convincing. Recent "invitations" not only refer to me by my full name but also my recent presentations and related publications. Couple this with journal titles that sound familiar to reputable peer- reviewed journals, complete with publishers' logos that are definitively similar to well-known conventional publishers, and what appears to be a prestigious editorial board, it is no wonder that some unsuspecting authors have fallen prey to unscrupulous open-access publishers, better known as predatory publishers.
I first learned of predatory publishers a few years ago when serving on a committee at my university whose purpose was to support the scholarly and creative works of faculty. To our surprise, some faculty members were requesting funds to pay for the author processing charges to journals of questionable scholarly bona fides. Last summer, at the International Academy of Nursing Editors (INANE) annual conference, I had the pleasure of hearing University of olorado Denver, Associate Professor and Scholarly Communications Librarian, Jeffrey Beall speak about predatory publishers, a phenomenon he coined in 2010. Described as "corrupting open access" (Beall, 2012, p. 179), predatory publishers are defined as "those that unprofessionally abuse the author-pays publishing model for their own profit" (Beall, 2013a, p. 47).
To understand this more fully, the move to open-access publishing in the last decade has inadvertently created the conditions whereby predatory publishers can flourish. Open access is commonly understood as the free, unrestricted online access to digital scientific scholarly material by any user, anywhere. As Beall (2013a) notes, all that is required is a computer and an Internet connection. In an effort to make research results readily available, many granting bodies have not only advocated for unrestricted access, they have also funded author processing charges, which can range from a few hundred dollars up to a few thousand dollars. Herein lies the problem; clearly, the more papers a journal or a publisher accepts, the more money they make in turn (Beall, 2013b). Reputable open-access publishers engage in rigorous scholarly peer-review processes that contribute to the science of a discipline, and author processing charges are only collected after acceptance. Regrettably, the literature is rife with examples of bogus papers being accepted for publication. For example, take the case of a newspaper reporter whose fake science paper was not only accepted for publication but who was also asked to serve as a peer reviewer and guest editor, and when he confessed that he was not a doctor but a reporter, was asked to complete the review nonetheless (Spears, 2014). Thomas Long (2014), Associate Professor-in-Residence in the School of Nursing at the University of Connecticut, refers to an article published by Margaret Simpson and Edna Krapabella of the cartoon sitcom "The Simpsons" on his blog "Nursing Writing." Worse yet, concerns regarding plagiarized research and theses and other forms of academic misconduct also prevail
Given the severity of the issues surrounding predatory publishing, there was a general consensus among nursing editors in attendance at the INANE meeting that there was a need to inform our respective readership of the potential perils of publishing with predatory journals or publishers. As a result, the INANE "Predatory Publishing Practices" Collaborative (2014) was formed. Its first task, to inform other nursing editors, resulted in a publication in the September issue of the Nurse Author & Editor newsletter entitled "Predatory Publishing: What Editors Need to Know." As a result of my participation in this collaborative, this editorial in the Journal of Forensic Nursing represents my commitment to raising awareness of this phenomenon among readers and authors and perhaps preventing unsuspecting authors from inadvertently submitting manuscripts to such questionable publishers in the first place. While some authors may believe that traditional journals like the Journal of Forensic Nursing are simply trying to protect their status and ensure their longevity, both traditional and reputable open-access journals alike have a mandate to contribute to science. We do so by engaging in rigorous peer-review processes by experts who possess related clinical, educational, theoretical, research, and administrative knowledge and expertise.
Determining Reputable Journals and Publishers
The path to publication is more complex than ever before. So how does one wade through the complexities of contemporary publishing? How does one decide among the various models that are available? If one is required by funders to publish results in an open-access journal, how does one determine which open-access publications is reputable and which is a sham?
1. Refer to Beall's list of potential, possible, or probable publishers and stand-alone journals at Scholarly Open Access (http://scholarlyoa.com/).
2. Consult the Directory of Nursing Journals (http://nursingeditors.com/journals-directory/) for a listing of nursing journals that have been evaluated by INANE and Nurse Author & Editor.
3. Sign up for Thomas Long's blog "Nursing Writing" (https://nursingwriting.wordpress.com/), dedicated to scholarly and professional writing, complete with blog posts regarding predatory publishing and partner conference scams. I will save the latter for another day!
4. Review the Directory of Open Access Journals (http://doaj.org/), an online directory that purports to index open-access journals through a new and more rigorous vetting process (INANE "Predatory Publishing Collaborative, 2014).
Finally, authors should fine-tune their critical thinking skills, or in Beall's (2013a) words, acquire the skill of "scholarly publishing literacy" (p. 48). Remember, if something appears too good to be true, it likely is. Following these suggested strategies and reviewing the guidelines for evaluating the integrity of a journal (refer to Table 1) should put you in good stead and enhance your scholarly publishing literacy. However, if you are still uncertain, please consult a more experienced colleague, mentor, professor, or friend.
There are no fees attached to publishing in the Journal of Forensic Nursing. We publish four issues a year. All articles are sent out for peer review, and once articles are accepted and proof pages have been finalized, they are published online ahead of print, before being assigned to a specific issue. Members of the International Association of Forensic Nurses and all other subscribers have unlimited access to past and current articles as well as those published ahead of print. At this time, the Journal of Forensic Nursing is not officially certified for open access; however, if and when we are, we will likely adopt a hybrid approach, whereby we will continue to operate from a traditional model with writers having the option for open access after acceptance and payment of the author processing charge. Finally, if you receive an email from me or one of the Associate Editors or members of the Editorial Board, inviting you to write for the Journal of Forensic Nursing, do know we are genuinely interested in your work.
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