However, some articles from some predatory journals are in fact indexed, both in PubMed (Manca et al. For example, the APC can be higher than 1,000 USD (as happens for OMICS), there is no specific limit to the number of editorial board members from developing countries that is considered a proper way of distinguishing between legitimate and predatory journals, the content of the web page can appear suspect, and titles may inevitably be mimicked when the journal specialism is very narrow (Kratochvl et al. The strategies of any journal are not made public in such a way that their interests and objectives can be objectively evaluated. Finally, the intense proliferation of predatory journals has given rise to predatory/fake conferences, equally pernicious for academia, and the subject of warnings from COPE (2019), as predatory journals and conferences are two sides of the same coin (Cortegiani et al. However, the reality is that this process is by no means simple, as Aromataris and Stern (2020) accurately indicated, particularly because predatory publishers have continued to evolve their undesirable art form into sophisticated operations that appear to be, at face value, legitimate to the point where certain journals and publishers may blatantly exploit gray strategies given that downmarket niches can be lucrative (Siler 2020). As shown in Figure 4, the minimum for most journals (77.35%) was <15 days from submission to the first decision and the maximum was under 22 days. The following analysis addressed the peer-review process. Most patients are diagnosed at advanced stages due to the subtle symptoms of earlier disease and the low rate of regular screening. In fact, high impact factors may merely be due to citation cartels instead of true and legitimate scientific interest (Ioannidis and Thombs 2019). The journal Sustainability has the largest Editorial Board with 1,145 members, while the journal Metabolites has a mere 62 Editorial Board members. Cancer Diagnosis Otto-Loewi Research Center, Pharmacology Section, Medical University of Graz, Graz, Austria, 2 Due to the breadth of MDPI journals assessed in this paper it was not possible to conduct in-depth work to compare each journal. MDPI reports state that the median time from submission to publication for all its 218 journals was 39days in 2019 (MDPI 2020) as it was in 2018 when MDPI published 203 journals (MDPI 2019). (2020), the effect of self-citation and citation cartels may be halted by the use of JIF-without self-cites metric, a simple action that reduces the penalty faced by journals that decide not to manipulate so, in sum, ethical editors are not penalized and manipulative editors are not advantaged (Wilhite et al. Data sources Published studies in Medline from 1 January 2000 to 10 April 2020. Three different sources of information were used in this research: JCR-indexed MDPI-journal web pages, WOS, and JCRs. As Siler (2020) stated since APC-based OA publishing involves remunerating publishers based on how many articles they publish, this can underpin perverse incentives to accept as many articles as possible to maximize revenue, so predatory journals operate in such a manner, eschewing legitimate peer review or other types of quality control (p. 1386) and prompting an excessive publication of articles, often of inferior quality (Siler 2020). ED is often a symptom of another health problem or health-related factor. Clarivate's Journal Citation Reports (JCR), a reference for the assessment of researchers and for grant-making decisions, is used as a standard whitelist, in so far as the selectivity of a JCR-indexed journal adds a legitimacy of sorts to the articles that the journal publishes. These formal criteria, such as unambiguous determination of APC and Publisher, accurate information on the journal metrics, the inclusion of the name of the editor-in-chief, etc. K. D., Bryson, G. L., Cukier, S., Allen, K., Arden, C., Balcom, L., Barros, T., Berger, M., Buitrago Ciro, J., Cugusi, L., Donaldson, M. R., Matthias, E., Graham, I. D., Hodgkinson, M., Khan, K. M., Mabizela, M., Manca, A., Milzow, K., Mouton, J., Muchenje, M., Olijhoek, T., Ommaya, A., Patwardhan, B., Poff, D., Proulx, L., Rodger, M., Severin, A., Strinzel, M., Sylos-Labini, M., Tamblyn, R., van Niekerk, M., Wicherts, J.M., Lalu, G. M. Predatory Journals: No Definition, No Defence, Predatory Publishing: An Emerging Threat to the Medical Literatura, Predatory Publishing Dilutes and Distorts Evidence in Systemactic Reviews, Payouts Push Professors towards Predatory Journals, From Excessive Journal Self-Cites to Citation Stacking: Analysis of Journal Self-Citation Kinetics in Search for Journals, Which Boost Their Scientometric Indicators, A Users Guide to Inflated and Manipulated Impact Factors, European Journal of Clinical Investigation, Article Processing Charge Hyperinflation and Price Insensitivity: An Open Access Sequel to the Serials Crisis, Predatory Journals and Dubious Publishers: How to Avoid Being Their Prey, Compliance with Ethical Rules for Scientific Publishing in Biomedical Open Access Journals Indexed in Journal Citation Reports, Evaluation of Untrustworthy Journals: Transition from Formal Criteria to a Complex View, Predatory Journals Enter Biomedical Databases through Public Funding, Questionning the Efficacy of Predatory Journals Blacklist, PubMed Should Rise the Bar for Journal Inclusin, The Surge of Predatory Open-Access in Neurosciences and Neurology, The Authors Respond to Rigorous Policies Ensure Integrity of NLM Literature Databases. chttps://www.elsevier.com/physical-sciences-and-engineering/mathematics/journals/fast-publication. However, the Principles for Transparency and Best practices in Scholarly Publishing of COPE (2019) may well serve as a reference to evaluate journal behavior, particularly with reference to their disregard of quality assurance. They are, in all, a threat to society as a whole, because whenever the articles that they publish are indexed in selective databases, which is the case of PubMed, the items achieve global exposure and are interpreted by readers, including patients, as trustworthy (Manca et al. Only in that way will the editors decisions be based on editorial reasoning rather than any covert intention to inflate citations artificially. The Swedish childhood tumor biobank: systematic collection and In 1996, 47 articles were published in two journals, since when the number of articles and journals have progressively increased and have undergone exponential growth over recent years. In addition, 181 (96.3%) participants stated that scientific literature influenced their therapeutic/diagnostic decision processes. *, n (%) (n=169), How many publications did you co-author? 2020). Cancer A Bibliomtric Analisis of Citers, How to Avoid Becoming Easy Prey for Predatory, Journals and Why It Matters Comparative Medicine. Department of Thoracic Oncology, Thoraxklinik at Heidelberg University Hospital, Translational Lung Research Centre Heidelberg (TLRC-H), Heidelberg, Germany, 8 An official website of the United States government. (2020)and in Scopus (Hedding 2019; Cortegiani et al. These actions will send out a clear message to researchers to refuse to publish in and to support predatory journals. WebSymptoms of ED include. Cancer Problems and challenges of predatory journals, Growth rates of modern science: a bibliometric analysis based on the number of publications and cited references, A study of innovative features in scholarly open access journals, Authors beware! The COPE/DOAJ/OASPA/WAME Principles for Transparency and Best Practices in Scholarly Publishing stipulate that journal names should not be easily confused with another journal and that journal websites should not guarantee very short peer-review times (as a member of COPE and DOAJ, MDPI could hardly argue that it ignores those Principles). ISSN (Print): 1573-3947. Predatory Journals: Who Publishes in Them and Why? ghttps://www.elsevier.com/physical-sciences-and-engineering/engineering/journals/fast-publication-in-process-and-industrial-engineering. Journal of Cancer Treatment and Diagnosis | Read 70 articles with impact on ResearchGate, the professional network for scientists. Innovative approaches for cancer treatment: current A drug shortage is forcing doctors to reduce doses of chemotherapy. The .gov means its official. FOIA For journals that named a country in the journal title, some journals named a different country in the journal contact information (11/21 (52.38%) predatory; 4/13 (30.77%) open access; 1/31 (3.23%) subscription-based) (Table 3 ). being unable to get an erection at any time. WebCancer Journal (Journal of Cancer Treatment and Diagnosis) is an International peer reviewed open access journal publishing original research, reviews, commentaries, case rep The Editor Ethics 2.0 Code (https://editorethics.uncc.edu/editor-ethics-2-0-code/) sets out an explicit ban on this malpractice in the fields of Industrial/Organizational Psychology and Management. Sophisticated diagnostics, including molecular imaging and genomic expression profiles, enable improved tumor characterization. Furthermore, no less importantly, the analysis showed that a large number of the citations that they receive are from other MDPI-journals. (2020) in the complex evaluation of a journal, to which another two must be added: combining objectively verifiable criteria with analysis of a journals content and knowledge of the journals background (p.1). Additionally, the constant and quite exceptional increase in the number of articles published in MDPI-journals between 2018 and 2019, reinforced by an exponential increase in the number of special issues, which easily outweigh the number of regular publications (above all in view of the previsions for 2020), together with an increase in APC fees could bring into question the status of MDPI as a publisher, at the very least because its APC-based business model alters the economic and scientific incentives in academic publishing (Siler 2020). Current Cancer Therapy Reviews In patients with hormone receptorpositive early-stage breast cancer, adjuvant endocrine treatment administered for up to 5-10 years after diagnosis significantly reduces the risk of recurrence and death. The analysis of journal self-citations is relevant (see Table 2), because the increase in the numerator of the Journal Impact Factor4 boosts it and may be a stratagem to improve the position of a journal in the ranking through coercive citations, online queuing and self-cited editorials (Martin 2016; Wilhite et al. Journal Rankings on Cancer https://publicationethics.org/resources/guidelines-new/principles-transparency-and-best-practice-scholarly-publishing. However, significant differences have been found between large publishers (publishing more than 100 journals) that charge an average fee of 796$ and the publishers of a single journal that charge an average fee of 83$ (Shen and Bjork, 2015). Article, Review, Research Letter, )?, n (%), If yes, how many invitations do you receive each month? *, n (%) (n=170), Why would you publish your work in an open-access journal?, n (%), Promotion of the results over social media, As opportunity to publish negative results, Will not publish anything in an open-access journal, How much would you be willing to pay for a publication in an open access journal?, n (%), Do you know the term predatory journals?, n (%), Do you know how to identify a potentially Predatory Journal?, n (%), How would you characterise a Predatory Journal?, n (%), No editorial board or no real persons at the editorial board, Journal is located in a newly industrialising country, Were you confronted with scientific literature/studies by patients?, n (%), If yes, were any of the articles published in a Predatory Journals? Exceptionally, data on the MDPI-journal self-citation rates were collected on 3 June 2020, to assure data accuracy in relation to the 2019 self-citation rates. The Swedish Childhood Tumor Biobank (BTB) is a nonprofit national infrastructure for collecting tissue samples and genomic data from pediatric patients diagnosed with central nervous system (CNS) and other solid tumors. 2020). A drug shortage is forcing doctors to reduce doses of chemotherapy. The revision times of the 53 journals under analysis were surprisingly similar, regardless of the high variability of the articles published in each journal in 2019 and were, in many cases, very much shorter than time spans that may be considered normal. However, predatory journals and the publishing houses behind certainly try to hide their practices what challenges the identification and thereby avoidance of submitting scientific work. clear search menu. Importantly, the peer-review process is the most important factor to ensure scientific integrity and cannot be assessed externally since the peer-review reports are not made public.12 Only approximately half of the participants indicated a missing impact factor as a hallmark of a predatory journal. It should be pointed out that, despite the significant advance in the definition proposed by Grudniewicz et al. Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Journal of Cancer Science and Clinical Therapeutics WebThe International Journal of Cancer ( IJC) is the official journal of the Union for International Cancer Control (UICC). A two-sided alpha level below 0.05 was considered statistically significant. and transmitted securely. The source of information was scientific literature (n=78, 59.5%), friends/colleagues (n=55, 42.0%), emails (n=59, 45.0%), congresses (n=34, 26.0%) and media (including social media) (n=75, 57.3%). Therefore, we aimed to explore the awareness of predatory journals among oncologists. In conclusion, in the present survey among scientists in the field of medical oncology and haematology, the majority of participants was aware of the concept and potential negative impact of predatory journals on scientific publishing quality and integrity. Unfortunately, there is no information available on the time from submission to the final decision for the 53 journals under analysis, only minimum and maximum times from submission to first decision, as shown in Figure 4. As mentioned above, MDPI reports state that the median time from submission to publication for all its 218 journals was 39days in 2019 (MDPI 2020) as it was in 2018 when MDPI published 203 journals (MDPI 2019). A review of the frequency of special issue publication in the control group was not conducted. Christoph Oing was supported by EMSO with the aid of a grant from Roche. Technology in Cancer Research & Treatment (TCRT) is a peer-reviewed, gold open access journal (featured in SCIE (Web of Science), PMC, and PubMed: MEDLINE) which focuses on the prevention, diagnosis, treatment, and monitoring of cancer. None declared. Elsevier provided a framework to assess time from submission to first decision in relative terms (Table 5). (https://dbh.nsd.uib.no/publiseringskanaler/KanalForlagInfo.action?id=26778andbibsys=false). Numbers in the table represent n (%). The results serve to point out how self-citation rates and intra-MPDI citation rates both followed a rise between 2018 and 2019. JCR-indexed MDPI-journals (edition 2018, released 2019) were selected for the analysis (53 out of 218). A Cross-Sectional Comparison, Predatory Open Access: A Longitudinal Study of Article Volumes and Market Charateristics, Is It Such a Big Deal? Regarding journal names, aforementioned Principles state they shall be unique and not be one that is easily confused with other journal or might mislead potential authors and readers about the journals origin or association with other journals. Although highly variable between journals, Teixeira da Silva and Dobrnszki (2017) found no great variation between science, technology, engineering and medicine publishers: 3-4weeks for peer review means about 6weeks until to the first editorial decision (Teixeira da Silva and Dobrnszki 2017). (2017) have reminded us. For In spite of its important role in science, it was considered too subjective an aspectpartly because, as with journal quality and deceitfulness, it is impossible to assess(Grudniewicz et al. IJC has a global readership and receives over 3,000 submissions a year under a broad scope of topics relevant to experimental and clinical cancer research. Cancer screening. 2017a, b)an alarmingly high number of them in the opinion of Manca et al. Diagnosing cancer at its earliest stages often provides the best chance for a cure. It would be of interest to enlarge the time span for the analysis of these journals and to observe their behavioural patterns with regard to their citation practices. The present survey highlights the need for more educational initiatives to inform scientists on the particular problem of predatory journals and especially how to identify them and avoid the submission. Contributors: All authors contributed to the study designs and acquirement of data. Where an MDPI-journal was ranked in more than one category, the leading journal with a higher impact factor in those categories in 2018 was selected for comparison (Table 2). Awareness of predatory journals and open access among Solomon and Bjork (2012) analysed the APCs of 1,370 journals included in the Open-Access Directory in 2010 and found APCs ranging between 8 and 3,900 USD with an average APC of 904USD. Cukier et al. Disclaimer: Any views, opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this material are those solely of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of ESMO or Roche. 537 Background: Fatigue is one of the most common symptoms of breast cancer (BC) patients who are receiving adjuvant chemotherapy. These lists very soon become outdated and incomplete, especially if the resources to keep them updated are scarce. For full access to this pdf, sign in to an existing account, or purchase an annual subscription. In JCR-indexed MDPI-journals, if the trend of increasing numbers of published articles in all journals continues into 2020 and taking into account the generalized rise in the APC for 2020, MDPI may reasonably expect to see a rise in its income in 2020. Do you read scientific literature (Original Articles, Reviews, )? By 2019, 106,152 articles had been published in its 218 journals, an increase of 64.1% over 2018. n, (%), If yes, which type of media do you use? only free of charge (1), depends on the quantity and quality of the photo material. ), rather than professional editors (as with the journals of Nature Research). Another more sophisticated ruse (along the same lines, although less obvious) consists of collaboration between two or several journals to all cite each other in what have been dubbed citation cartels (Chorus and Waltman 2016). Published by Oxford University Press. A further relevant aspect worth focussing upon is the size of the Journal Editorial Board. *, n (%) (n=169), Are you scientifically active at the moment?, n (%), Which arguments are the most important for you if considering a specific journal for publication of your scientific work?, yes, n (%), Which arguments would you include in the grading of the reliability of a specific scientific journal?, yes, n (%), Indexing of the journal (Pubmed, Web of Science, ), Cooperation with international organisations/societies, Publishing experiences of other colleagues, Further information on the peer-review process, Third party experience (eg, Blog entries/Google entries), Do you know the open-access system?, n (%), If yes, did you publish anything in an open-access journal yet? Disparities in Diagnosis, Treatment Access, and Time to Treatment As with the number of published articles, the number of special issues for all journals between 2018 and 2019 increased, in such an exorbitant manner that the number of special issues in the MDPI-journals under analysis was easily higher, in the majority of cases, than the number of ordinary issues of 53 MDPI journals analysed since 98.11% of 53 analysed journals published 12 or fewer issues per year in 2018 (data from JCR 2019 edition). Citation analysis used for citation manipulation is a form of misconduct and does not fit best editorial practices (a feature of predatory journals mentioned in Grudniewicz et al. As an approximation and with the limitations that it might imply in general terms, that time can be evaluated by comparing it with the review metrics from Nature Research 2019 (https://www.nature.com/nature-research/about/journal-metrics), which show that the average number of days from submission to acceptance fluctuated between 81days (Nature Structural and Molecular Biology) and 258days (Nature Neuroscience). Certainly, the present survey faces a geographical limitation as only medical oncologists from Germany and Austria were invited to participate. In consequence, the scientific community recently initiated a discussion to increase the required prerequisites for a journal to be listed in PubMed.14 The results of the present survey highlight, that a broader education on how to identify predatory journals and proper resources and tools to facilitate this are urgently needed in the oncology scientific community, as there was no difference between the knowledge groups with regard to confrontation with scientific studies by patients. Even so, the identification of predatory journals is still a crucial aspect in the maintenance of quality and scientific integrity. being able to get an erection sometimes, but not every time you want to have sex. In addition, it is highly unusual to have an article accepted without revisions. Advancing Cancer Therapy 2019). Awareness of predatory journals and open access among A review of opinion pieces and experiments, The price of quality: Scholarly publishing business is the primary predictor of citation-based indicators of journal performance in ecology and evolutionary biology. In turn, the publishing house Elsevier reported the average review and production times of its journals in such varied areas as Environmental Science, Computer Science, and Mathematics and Statistics (see Table 4). Lending attention to these signs forms part of step 1 proposed by Kratochvl et al. Note: When a JCR-indexed journal is ranked in more than one category, 1 its highest rank is depicted in column Q; 2 the leading journal for comparison is the one with the highest impact factor (2018) in the category where the MDPI-journal is ranked. sharing sensitive information, make sure youre on a federal Cortegiani et al. *, n (%) (n=186), Do you have scientific experience?, n (%), If yes, in which form? The extent to which predatory journals can harm scientific practice increases as the numbers of such journals expand, in so far as they undermine scientific integrity, quality, and credibility, especially if those journals leak into prestigious databases. WebPrecision medicine is a way health care providers can offer and plan specific care for their patients, based on the particular genes, proteins, and other substances in a persons body. We sought to identify disparities in diagnosis and treatment in Hispanic subpopulations with metastatic prostate cancer (mPCa). This journal offers an open access platform to the authors to publish their research outcome and thus help in promoting Cancer and Oncology research. Symptoms & Causes of Erectile Dysfunction - NIDDK 2019; Strong 2019), because they undermine its integrity (Vogel 2017; Abad-Garca 2019), its quality, and its credibility (Bond et al. 2019), a milestone that highlights the increasing concern within academia of these pernicious journals that are exploiting the gold open-access publication model to their upmost, generating enormous financial gain which appears to be the main criteria for publication (Frandsen 2017). The most prominent and prestigious journals in a scientific field are promoted to Level 2 (publishing 20% of the literature in that field) (https://dbh.nsd.uib.no/publiseringskanaler/VedtakNiva2). Moreover, the Norwegian Register for Scientific Journals, Series, and Publishers downgraded MDPI to 0 in 2019 and later upgraded it to 1 again. being unable to get an erection at any time. WebOnly Open Access Journals Only SciELO Journals Only WoS Journals government site. Stop This Waste of People, Animals and Money, Analysis of Citation Patterns and Impact of Predatory Sources in the Nursing Literature, Ingreasing Awareness about Predatory Publishers, Journal of the American Psychiatric New Association, Readers Beware!