A cross-sectional study of predatory publishing emails received by career development grant awardees

OBJECTIVE: To investigate the scope of academic spam emails (ASEs) among career development grant awardees and the factors associated with the amount of time spent addressing them. DESIGN: A cross-sectional survey of career development grant investigators via an anonymous online survey was conducted. In addition to demographic and professional information, we asked investigators to report the number of ASEs received each day, how they determined whether these emails were spam and time they spent per day addressing them. We used bivariate analysis to assess factors associated with the amount of time spent on ASEs. SETTING: An online survey sent via email on three separate occasions between November and December 2016. PARTICIPANTS: All National Institutes of Health career development awardees funded in the 2015 fiscal year. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Factors associated with the amount of time spent addressing ASEs. RESULTS: A total of 3492 surveys were emailed, of which 206 (5.9%) were returned as undeliverable and 96 (2.7%) reported an out-of-office message; our overall response rate was 22.3% (n=733). All respondents reported receiving ASEs, with the majority (54.4%) receiving between 1 and 10 per day and spending between 1 and 10 min each day evaluating them. The amount of time respondents reported spending on ASEs was associated with the number of peer-reviewed journal articles authored (p<0.001), a history of publishing in open access format (p<0.01), the total number of ASEs received (p<0.001) and a feeling of having missed opportunities due to ignoring these emails (p=0.04). CONCLUSIONS: ASEs are a common distraction for career development grantees that may impact faculty productivity. There is an urgent need to mitigate this growing problem

Predatory journals as threats to the academic publishing: a review

Academic publishing has been increasing greatly with the spread of open access journals and the shift to online publishing. However, authors must be aware of predatory journals and publishers while submitting their academic works for publication. Publishing in predatory journals is just a waste of efforts, money, and time as it does not add any scientific merits to the authors. The practice of predatory publishing can also damage the reputation of institutions and funding agencies. Therefore, there is an urgent need for awareness among researchers regarding predatory publishing. Local, national and international regulatory bodies should take stern actions against predatory publications while granting research funds and evaluating the researchers’ performance for job promotion and academic degrees

Predatory Journals: Threat for Academicians

The publication journey for most of the researchers starts from the Ph. D. onwards. University guidelines for the Ph. D. enable the researchers to publish one or two papers in peer-reviewed journals. The inexperienced or young researchers are in a hurry in the process of publishing their articles. They are unaware of the predatory journals and they publish their articles in these predatory journals. The focus of the present paper is to create awareness among the young researchers and offer some basic knowledge so that they can avoid publishing in predatory journals

The storm around Beall’s List: a review of issues raised by Beall’s critics over his criteria of identifying predatory journals and publishers

The issue of substandard, or the predatory journals as they are popularly known, flooding the internet has been one of the biggest challenges to quality and ethical scholarship in modern world. One of the most renowned watchdogs of predatory publishers was Jeffrey Beall, a librarian at the University of Colorado-Denver, who came up with a blacklist of predatory OA publishers and journals. For several years since the publishing of the Beall’s list, there has been increasing concerns about the criteria that Beall used to develop his lists, with some scholars dismissing his lists as inaccurate, misleading and dangerous to academics. A review of literature of studies conducted concerning the predatory journals indicates that there is limited literature on systematic examination of the issues raised by Beall’s critics over these lists of predatory journals and publishers. To address this gap, this study sets out to answer this question: What are the major concerns of the critics of Beall’s list of predatory journals and publishers? Using a descriptive design that exploited qualitative approach, the researcher analysed 30 purposefully sampled publications. The findings indicate that four key issues are often raised by Beall’s critics: methodological flaws; Beall's bias against OA; discrimination against developing economies; and Beall’s lists of predatory publishers as an onslaught to academic freedom.Keywords: Beall’s list, critics, predatory, journals, publisher

Feminist Perspective of Cross-gender Power Relation in Caryl Churchill's Top Girls

Top Girls, one of Caryl Churchill's most popular plays, describes the lives of six female characters coming from different centuries. Each of them has their own story to tell, as they have all been victimized by the patriarchal system in the century when they live and have resisted the system with different strategies. They either employ roles that are traditionally reserved for men or they adopt the archetypically feminine qualities. Despite their resistance and success, they find themselves unhappy and unsatisfied over their achievements. Thus this raises the question of the effectiveness of the feminist movement