A psychological perspective towards understanding the objective and subjective gray zones in predatory publishing

A continued lack of clarity persists because academics, policymakers, and other interested parties are unable to clearly define what is a “predatory” journal or publisher, and a potentially wide gray zone exists there. In this perspective, we argue that journals should be evaluated on a continuum, and not just in two shades, black and white. Since evaluations about what might constitute “predatory” are made by humans, the psychological decision-making system that determines them may induce biases. Considering such human psychological characteristics might shed light on the deterministic criteria that have been used, and continue to be used, to classify a journal or publisher as “predatory”, and perhaps, bring additional clarity to this discussion. Better methods of journal evaluation can be obtained when the factors that polarize journal evaluations are identified. As one example, we need to move away from simply using whitelists and blacklists and educate individual researchers about how to evaluate journals. This paper serves as an educational tool by providing more clarity about the “gray” publishing zone, and argues that currently available qualitative and quantitative systems should be fused to deterministically appreciate the zonation of white, gray and black journals, so as to possibly reduce or eliminate the influence of cognitive or “perception” bias from the “predatory” publishing debate.

Predatory Open Access Journals and Attainment of Educational Sustainable Development Goals in Africa

Putting into consideration the objective of the SDG 4, it would be important to note that the provision, access, and use of information resources such as open access (OA) journals is a sine qua non for quality education in Africa. Despite its importance to the education system, open access journals have been proliferated by predatory journals. Stakeholders in the OA movement and academia claim that predatory publishing is a big problem for scientific communication and could undermine development efforts. Hence, the increasing use of predatory open access journals could affect the attainment of SDGs in Africa; hence, there is the need to raise awareness to enhance the possibility of attaining the SDGs in Africa. This chapter will among others enumerate the possible havocs predatory open access journals can create and the setbacks on the attainment of SDGs in Africa. It will also spell out the necessary prospects of curtailing these havocs and setbacks towards providing quality-based information resources such as open access journals to the education societies in Africa.