A walk on the wild side: 'Predatory' journals and information asymmetries in scientific evaluations
A walk on the wild side: 'Predatory' journals and information asymmetries in scientific evaluations
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DOI：
10.1016/j.respol.2018.04.013
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发表时间：
2019-03-01
期刊：
影响因子：
7.2
通讯作者：
Zinovyeva, Natalia
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Bagues, Manuel;Sylos-Labini, Mauro;Zinovyeva, Natalia
近年来，学术界目睹了虚假地假装是合法学术渠道的期刊如雨后春笋般涌现。我们使用来自46，000名在意大利学术界寻求晋升的研究人员的信息来研究这一现象。其中约5%的人在学术图书馆员杰弗里·比尔（Jeffrey Beall）详细阐述的“潜在、可能或可能的掠夺性期刊”黑名单中的期刊上发表过文章。我们对这些研究人员进行的一项调查数据证实，至少有三分之一的期刊不提供同行评议，或者从事其他类型的不规范编辑实践。我们确定了两个可能促使在可疑期刊上发表文章的因素。首先，这些期刊中的一些已经成功地被收录在引用索引中，如Scopus，许多机构认为这是质量的保证。其次，我们发现，在这些期刊上发表文章的作者在由缺乏研究专业知识的（随机选择的）委员会成员进行评估时，更有可能获得积极的评价。总体而言，我们的分析表明，掠夺性期刊的扩散反映了科学评价中存在严重的信息不对称。
In recent years the academic world has witnessed the mushrooming of journals that falsely pretend to be legitimate academic outlets. We study this phenomenon using information from 46,000 researchers seeking promotion in Italian academia. About 5% of them have published in journals included in the blacklist of 'potential, possible, or probable predatory journals' elaborated by the scholarly librarian Jeffrey Beall. Data from a survey that we conducted among these researchers confirms that at least one third of these journals do not provide peer review or they engage in some other type of irregular editorial practice. We identify two factors that may have spurred publications in dubious journals. First, some of these journals have managed to be included in citation indexes such as Scopus that many institutions consider as a guarantee of quality. Second, we show that authors who publish in these journals are more likely to receive positive assessments when they are evaluated by (randomly selected) committee members who lack research expertise. Overall, our analysis suggests that the proliferation of predatory journals reflects the existence of severe information asymmetries in scientific evaluations.