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Toronto, India is the top country globally to get low-quality research published in ‘predatory’ journals, according to a study which found that it contributed 27 per cent of the scientific studies in bogus publications.
The investigation, published in the journal Nature, also showed that majority of papers in suspected biomedical predatory journals (57 per cent) are from high or upper middle income countries, with many coming from prestigious institutions, including the Harvard University in the US.
Largely unknown a decade ago, there are now an estimated 8,000 predatory journals collectively publishing more than 400,000 research studies each year. These journals offer to quickly publish research findings, typically at a lower cost than legitimate journals, but do not provide quality controls such as peer review.
Predatory journals are also difficult to search, meaning that health-care providers and researchers can rarely learn from the data in these journals. Researchers from The Ottawa Hospital and the University of Ottawa in Canada analysed 1,907 research papers published in 220 suspected biomedical predatory journals.
The journals were randomly selected from well-known but controversial lists compiled by University of Colorado librarian Jeffrey Beall.
Researchers found that the top countries publishing in these journals were India (27 per cent), the US (15 per cent), Nigeria (5 per cent), Iran (4 per cent) and Japan (4 per cent).
The US National Institutes of Health was the most frequent funder mentioned among the very few articles that credited one.
“Our research debunks the common belief that predatory journals are only a problem in low income countries,” said David Moher, a senior scientist at The Ottawa Hospital and associate professor at the University of Ottawa.
