Page 14 - IDEA Study 2 2017 Predatory journals in Scopus

2008 and 2011. After this, there was a distinct break in the trend, as the share
of predatory documents settled at just under 2.0% for a few years, and even dropped
slightly. Scopus perhaps uncovered their tactics and began tackling the problem. Jeffrey
Beall may also have played a role, as he launched his blog just at this time, and thus
raised awareness of the issue. Nevertheless, 2015 saw another significant growth again.
It is worth noting the differences between the results based on Beall's list of standalone
journals (red columns) and journals found using Beall's list of publishers (blue columns).
The standalone journals make up a small share of the predatory documents. For most
of the period, about four fifths of all the predatory documents come from the list
of publishers. Although growth in the number of documents from standalone predatory
journals has slowed down substantially over the last few years, growth in the documents
from predatory publishers continues apace. The overall growth in predatory documents
over the last three years has been almost entirely from the list of publishers.
Overall, these results confirm that the problem of predatory publishing worsened
considerably only recently. Their share of almost 3% of the total indexed results
in Scopus still does not look like a particularly high number, and that all the more so
given that the vast majority of them come from Beall's list of publishers, which – as we
discussed earlier – could result in an overestimation of the true “predators”. What is
undoubtedly alarming, however, is the growth trend in their infiltration into Scopus,
which is once again gaining strength after a few weaker years. Furthermore, it is possible
that in some countries this problem is far more serious than it is on a global level, which
is the question that we focus on now.

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