Rise of the Predators: How to Identify & Avoid Predatory Journals and Conferences
In this 1.5 hour workshop, Dr Emily Choynowski (Head of Research Development and Dissemination at Knowledge E), will discuss how to identify these predatory publishers and predatory conference organisers, and give some useful tips on how to avoid them.
The shift to open access publishing has produced a profound change in scholarly communications ecosystems. Formerly, journal publishers made revenues from subscriptions so it was in their best interests to only publish the highest quality research. However, with the rise of open access publishing, business models changed; with open access content free to readers, publishers had to find alternative sources of revenue – the authors. This ‘pay to publish’ trend attracted a large number of fake, predatory publishers who charge inflated fees and provide low quality publishing services in low quality journals. A similar trend is also apparent in the conference sector, with predatory organisers demanding high fees for poor-quality or even completely fake events.
“The Rise of the Predators” highlights the threat posed by the predators who have emerged as the transition of scholarly communications to more open practices, and give tips on how to identify and avoid them.
- Participants will learn about how the open access movement gave rise to predatory practices, and how these predators can harm individual researchers and threaten the wider academic community
- Participants will gain valuable insights into how predatory publishers operate, and how to identify fake journals
- Participants will discover the different types of predatory conference practises, and learn how to identify a fake event
