Collective profile of questionable publishing

In this paper, we quantitatively gauge the collective profile of questionable publishing with massive citation and publication data. The citation source reveals the self-favorable citation within the publisher that increase its academic impact. The country of questionable publications shows that large amount of questionable publications are produced by authors in academic center. Moreover, the distribution of country’s publications in the journal reveal that only a small amount of questionable journals are dominated by a single country, and authors in diverse countries publish in large amount of questionable journals.

This study of massive trend provides the warning of questionable journals that a small case study may omit. The results show the overall trend of questionable publishing, but not highlight the individual behavior of predatory journals. For instance, our study reveal that the dominance of one country arose in a small number of journals but these questionable behavior should not be omitted. Constructing the comparive journals will provide a sophistigated comparison but may contains potentially questionable journals. Also, additional analysis with other massive dataset and lists will provide a more information on dynamics of questionable publishing.

Questionable publishing has become an increasing problem in academia. The publication trajectory clearly reveal that more and more publications are produced by questionable publishing system, not only for the authors in low GDP countries, but also for authors in high GDP countries. Under the suspicion of unqualified publications from their poor peer review, the incremental of questionable publishing should be aware. Moreover, the high citation exchange in questionable journals makes the journals seem legitimate comprised with the authority. More sophisticated study to reveal their mechanism on how they survive from indexing services is left for a further study.