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Abstract
ResearchGate has been regarded as one of the most
attractive academic social networking site for scientific
community. It has been trying to improve user-centered
interfaces to gain more attractiveness to scientists around the
world. Display of journal related scietometric measures (such
as impact factor, 5-year impact, cited half-life, eigenfactor) is
an important feature in ResearchGate. Open access
publishing has added more to increased visibility of research
work and easy access to information related to research.
Moreover, scientific community has been much interested in
promoting their work and exhibiting its impact to others
through reliable scientometric measures. However, with the
growing market of publications and improvements in the
field of research, this community has been victimized by the
cybercrime in the form of ghost journals, fake publishers and
magical impact measures. Particularly, ResearchGate more
recently, has been lenient in its policies against this dark side
of academic writing. Therefore, this communication aims to
discuss concerns associated with leniency in ResearchGate
policies and its impact of scientific community.
Keywords: Impact factor, Journal, Open access
publishing, Ethics in publishing, Research misconduct.
Introduction
Social networking playsa very eminentrole in the modernera
of globalization. By its introduction to scientific community
through academic networking sites like ResearchGate,
Academia.edu and Mendeley; researchers around the globe
have been attracted more to it and have been able to display
and share their research work. Open access publishing has
added more to increased visibility of research work and easy
access to information related to research, and scientists have
been highly inspired by this, with reputable organizations
taking initiatives and getting involved in developing the
scenario further in a better way. However, there has also been
a dark side to academic writing due to emergence of fake
publishers, magical scientific indicators (that do not really
exist in real terms in the research world) and bogus websites.
The researchers almostalways feel proud and eager to display
their scientometric indicators to the scientific community but
this notion has been blurred by introduction of academic
pollution (in the form of predatory journals and fake impact
organizations) in research world particularly, if this pollution is
able to find a space in platforms like the ResearchGate. This
communication aims to discuss concerns associated with
leniency in ResearchGate policies and its impact on the
scientific community.
ResearchGate
ResearchGate was initiated in 2008 as an academic social
networking site aiming to help researchers cooperate,
communicate and share information.1An important feature
of ResearchGate is social network support, which helps
effective scientific communication among its members.1It
ensures that the publications are visible and accessible to
the scientific community.2Recently, Bill Gates and others
have invested 35 million US$ in ResearchGate.3This reflects
a significant interest in social networking tools in the field of
scientific communication. Currently, ResearchGate reports
over 8 million users and it appears to be the most popular
social networking site. The substantial contribution comes
from fields of medicine, life and physical sciences. Moreover,
social sciences and humanities are less represented in it.1
ResearchGate leads over the other academic networking
sites like Academia.edu and Mendeley by providing various
user-centric interfaces to scientific audience resembling
Facebook and LinkedIn.1,3 ResearchGate is free, and it allows
its members to upload or list their publications on their
profile page with their brief information.1Metadata on
publications, article level metrics and the recent initiative
"RG score" is also available for each member.1,3 On the
journal level, ResearchGate displays current impact factor of
journals and other scientometric indicators.
Open Access Publishing and Ghost Journals
With the goal to accelerate research and remove barriers in
accessingresearch,open access publishing officially started in
2002 and gained immense popularity.4Presently, there are
over 10,000 journals registered in the Directory of Open
Access Journals (DOAJ) receiving significant contribution
from researchers around the world.4These journals are freely
accessible to readers, with varying range of article processing
Vol. 66, No. 12, December 2016
1643
SHORT COMMUNICATION
ResearchGate is no longer reliable: leniency towards ghost journals may
decrease its impact on the scientific community
Aamir Raoof Memon
Institute of Physiotherapy and Rehabilitation Sciences, Peoples University of
Medical & Health Sciences for Women, Nawabshah, Sindh, Pakistan.
Correspondence: Email: dpt.aamir@gmail.com
charges (APCs), supported by associations and organizations,
and flexible to authors from low or middle-income countries.
Over the last few years, research community has been a
victim of cybercrime-the dark side of scientific writing. This
"academic pollution" had targeted many scientists after the
emergence of predatory and hijacked journals. Jeffery Beall
in 2010 presented the term predatory journals to the
research world with 20 predatory publishers in his first list
which has risen to over 700 in 2015 (Beall's List of Standalone
Journals: https://scholarlyoa.com/individual-journals/).5
Predatory journals exhibit questionable academic quality
and unprofessionally exploit the open access model.4,6
Another term "hijacked journals" was coined by Mehrdad
Jalalian in 2012.7These journals mislead the researchers by
abusing the name and ISSN of reputable journals. They have
grown from 3 to 90 titles from 2011 to 2015
at a growth rate of 9000%.8Most of these
journals are managed in low and middle
income countries like India, Pakistan, and
Nigeria with addresses from UK and USA
claimed by them.9Predatory and hijacked
journals, I call them "ghost journals", are
primarily focused on money making with
little to no peer-review system and editorial
board with poor or no established academic
credibility.9Moreover, they claim being
indexed in many non-scientific sites like
Docstoc and Scribd.6Hijacked journals are
more likely to receive contributions than
predatory journals because of their titles
mimicking reputable journals.10 In most of
the cases, non-English journals and those
journals with difficult to find website are
good options for hijackers. Moreover, they
are present temporarily (after being
threatened for legal action by original
journal) unlike predatory journals.10 These
ghost journals and publishers are not
registered legally by any agency or
institution however, most of the predatory
journals even display impact factor on their
websites and claim to have been listed in
well-known agencies like SCOPUS and Web
of Knowledge where they in fact, never
appeared.8,9 The menace of predatory
journals is evident from increasing number
of spams and emails received by members
of scientific community.9Most often, young
and inexperienced researchers who are
anxious to get recognized by the scientific
community and expand the list of their
research papers, get invitations by ghost
journals to publish their work and are the common victims of
these ghost journals.9Moreover, the authors victimized by
ghost journals mostly are from developing countries such as
India, Pakistan, Nigeria and some African and Middle Eastern
countries.11The main reason behind this is the low-standard
submission acceptance and quick and easy publishing
model used by these journals. There have been significant
contribution by Jeffrey Beall to the recognition of predatory
journals and Jalalian on the topic of hijacked journals
through compilation of the list of such journals.7,12
Magical Impact Agencies
Recent appearance of questionable agencies and
websites is a serious consequence of predatory journals
(Table-1). These websites claim to measure the impact of
scientific journals by providing bogus magical impact
J Pak Med Assoc
1644 A. R. Memon
Figure-1: A predatory journal with Impact Factor displayed on ResearchGate.
Figure-2: A predatory journal given space to publicize itself on ResearchGate.
factor.6,9 They typically misguide the researchers by using
similar names to the reputed scientometrics and misuse
the expression "Impact Factor".6
ResearhGate and Academic Pollution
In the recent years, ResearchGate has been lenient in its
policies and has created a space for predatory journals to
enter the website. Some of the journals displaying fake
impact factor on their website (previously mentioned) are
available in ResearchGate with an impact factor-a misleading
point for scientists who rely on ResarchGate. One reason for
this may be related to the researchers who are unaware of
the quality of the journal of their published work (either it is
reputable and genuine journal or a fake/ghost one), readily
sharing their work on ResearchGate for increasingits visibility
to their peers. Particularly, articles published in predatory
journals are equally visible on ResearchGate as that of
reputable journals. Another reason, that I suspect in this case,
is absence of policies by ResearchGate on accepting
manuscripts — they probably do not check or filter the
uploaded content. This may be part of the explanation for
the problem of identifying ghost journals and their content
on ResearchGate. Moreover, journals listedin the Beall's list of
predatory publishers can also be found on ResearchGate
with an impact factor (Figure-1 and 2).
Some of the examples of ghost journals found on
ResearchGate are mentioned in Table-2. This may possibly
Vol. 66, No. 12, December 2016
ResearchGate is no longer reliable: leniency towards ghost journals may decrease its impact on scientific community 1645
Table-1: Websites providing magical impact factor.*
Scientific Journal Impact Factor (SJIF) http://www.sjifactor.inno-space.net/or http://sjifactor.com/
CiteFactor? http://www.citefactor.org
African Quality Centre for Journals http://aqcj.org/index.html
International Scientific Institute (ISI)-journal impact factor (IF) http://www.scijournal.org
American Standards for Journals and Research (ASJR) http://www.journal-metrics.com/
Institute for Science Information (ISI)? http://isi-thosonreuters.com and http://www.isithomsonreuters.org/
Directory of Journal Quality Factor (now called Quality Factor) http://www.qualityfactor.org/index.html
Global Impact& Quality Factor (GIF) http://globalimpactfactor.com
International Institute of Organized Research (I2OR) http://www.i2or.com/
Scientific Indexing Services (SIS) http://sindexs.org
Eurasian Scientific Journal Index (ESJI) http://esjindex.org/index.php
Open Academic Journals Index http://oaji.net
Advanced Science Index http://journal-index.org
International Services for Impact Factor and Indexing (ISIFI) http://www.journalimpactfactor.in/
International Impact Factor Services http://impactfactorservice.com
IndexCopernicus http://journals.indexcopernicus.com/?page=10&id_lang=3
Journals Impact Factor (JIFACTOR) http://www.jifactor.org/
Infobase Index http://www.infobaseindex.com/
International Society for Research Activity (ISRA)-Journal Impact Factor? http://www.israjif.org
Impact Factor Services for International Journals (I.F.S.I.J.) http://ifsij.com/
Journal Influence Factor (JIF) http://www.journalsconsortium.org
Directory of Indexing and Impact Factor (DIIF) http://www.diif.org
International Journal Impact Factor (IJIF) http://www.internationaljournalimpactfactor.com/
The Global Institute for Scientific Information (GISI) Journal Impact Factor (JIF) http://www.jifactor.com
International Institute for Research-Impact Factor Journals (IFJ) http://www.impactfactorjournals.com/
International Scientific Indexing (ISI) http://isindexing.com
Jour Informatics http://www.jourinfo.com/
Einstein Institute for Scientific Information (EISI) http://journalimpactfactor.co.in
General Impact Factor (GIF) http://generalimpactfactor.com
Science Impact Factor (SIF) http://scienceimpactfactor.com/
Council for Innovative Research (CIR) http://cirworld.org
Pubicon Science Index** http://www.pubicon.org/#
Universal Impact Factor http://www.uifactor.org
Technical Impact Factor (TIF) http://www.timpactfactor.com/index.html
Directory of Research Journal Indexing (DRJI) http://www.drji.org
*The details have been extracted from the following sources:
1. Misleading Metricshttps://scholarlyoa.com/other-pages/misleading-metrics/[Accessed on 3rdDecember 2015 and 5th April 2016]
2. Gutierrez FR, Beall J, Forero DA.S purious alternative impact factors: The scale of the problem from an academic perspective. Bioessays.2015;37(5):474-6.
**These websiteshave been inactive now.
lead to a suspicion that ResearchGate is no longer reliable to
scientific community and in fact, is giving room to ghost
journals to get recognized as reliable and good quality
journals. If it persists longer, ResearchGate is soon going to
lose its attractiveness and impact on the scientific
community. It is worth saying that more researchers will be
victims of these ghost journals if this is done-a point to step
forward and take action. The necessary actions can be taken
at both levels i.e. by the researchers and by those responsible
for ResearchGate. Authors should be cautious before
submitting their work to any journal. All the members of
scientific community should be aware of the Beall's list of
predatory journals and Jalalian's list of hijacked journals.
Secondly, journal selection should not be solely based on the
J Pak Med Assoc
1646 A. R. Memon
Table-2: Some ghost journals available on ResearchGate with an impact factor.#
Journal* Hyperlinks
International Journal of Scientific and Engineering Research (IJSER) http://www.ijser.org/
https://www.researchgate.net/journal/2229-
5518_International_Journal_of_Scientific_and_Engineering_Research
Global Journal of Engineering Science and Research Management (GJESRM) http://www.gjesrm.com/index.html
https://www.researchgate.net/journal/2349-
4506_Global_Journal_of_Engineering_Science_and_Research_Management
International Journal of Applied Research & Studies (iJARS) http://www.ijars.ijarsgroup.com/
https://www.researchgate.net/journal/2278-
9480_International_Journal_of_Applied_Research_and_Studies
Asian Journal of Chemistry http://www.asianjournalofchemistry.co.in/Home.aspx
https://www.researchgate.net/journal/0970-7077_Asian_Journal_of_Chemistry
Asian Journal of Empirical Research‡ http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5004
(AESS publishers) https://www.researchgate.net/journal/2224-4425_Asian_Journal_of_Empirical_Research
International Journal of Advances in Pharmaceutical Research http://www.ijapronline.org/index.php
https://www.researchgate.net/journal/2249-7226_INTERNATIONAL_JOURNAL
_OF_ADVANCES_IN_PHARMACEUTICAL_RESEARCH
International Journal of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences http://www.ijppsjournal.com/
https://www.researchgate.net/journal/0975-1491_International
_Journal_of_Pharmacy_and_Pharmaceutical_Sciences
International Journal of Pharmacognosy and Phytochemical Research (IJPPR) http://ijppr.com/
https://www.researchgate.net/journal/0975-4873_International
_Journal_of_Pharmacognosy_and_Phytochemical_Research
International Journal of Pharmaceutical Sciences and Research (IJPSR) http://ijpsr.com/
https://www.researchgate.net/journal/0975-8232_International_
Journal_of_Pharmaceutical_Sciences_and_Research
International Journal of Physiotherapy (IJPHY) https://www.ijphy.org/index.php
https://www.researchgate.net/journal/2348-8336_International_Journal_of_Physiotherapy
World Applied Sciences Journal http://www.wasj.org/
https://www.researchgate.net/journal/1818-4952_World_Applied_Sciences_Journal
International Journal of Civil Engineering and Technology (IJCIET)‡ http://www.iaeme.com/ijciet.asp
(IAEME publishers) https://www.researchgate.net/journal/0976-6308_International_Journal
_of_Civil_Engineering_and_Technology
Acta Medica International http://www.actamedicainternational.com/
https://www.researchgate.net/journal/2349-0578_Acta_Medica_International
Jökull† http://www.jokulljournal.is
https://www.researchgate.net/journal/0449-0576_Jokull
Bothalia- African Biodiversity & Conservation† http://www.abcjournal.org/index.php/ABC/index
https://www.researchgate.net/journal/0006-8241_Bothalia-African
_Biodiversity_and_Conservation
#All webpages were accessedbetween4th-6thApril 2016
* I omit many ghost journals that have been added to ResearchGate without an impact factor.
† Hijacked Journals
‡Journals that are not listed in Beall's list of predatory publishers but I suspect them being predatory because their publishers have been included in Beall's list of predatory publishers.
The information in this table has been compared with details in Beall's list of predatory journals and publishers, available at: https://scholarlyoa.com/individual-journals/and
https://scholarlyoa.com/publishers/[See the supplementary material for additional information].
impact factor as it is not the sole criteria for assessing journal
quality, other factors like acceptance rate, editorial board,
quality of articles published, publisher, and APCs of the
journal should also be taken into consideration. "Be
iNFORMEd: Checklist" by Duke University is an important
resource in this context (http://guides.mclibrary.duke.edu/
beinformed). It is important to mention that the impact
factor has been misused to assess the quality of journals
since it was meant to be used by libraries to select which
journals to purchase and which not to. This metric should not
be presented on the first page of reputable journals as it may
be misleading to inexperienced researchers to distinguish
between the scientific and ghost journals. Finally, authors
may also try for journal selection resources like Think Check
Submit Guide (http://thinkchecksubmit.org/), Edanz Journal
Selector (https://www.edanzediting.com/journal-selector),
Elsevier Journal Finder (http://journalfinder.elsevier.com/),
Find the right journal - BioMed Central
(http://www.biomedcentral.com/submissions/find-the-
right-journal), Springer journal selector
(http://www.springer.com/ gp/authors-editors/journal-
author/journal-author-helpdesk/preparation/1276),
JournalGuide by Research Square
(https://www.journalguide.com/), JANE-journal author name
estimator (http://jane.biosemantics.org/), and EndNote Web
Match (https://www.myendnoteweb.com/
EndNoteWeb.html?func=journalDetails&cat=details&).
Moreover, experienced researchers and supervisors should
inform and teach young researchers on this issue. On the
other hand, those responsible for ResearchGate should set
some policy and parameters for quality check of uploaded
content based on the Beall's list of predatory journals,
Jalalian's list of hijacked journals and Journal Citation Reports
of Thomson and Reuters (http://wokinfo.com/
products_tools/analytical/jcr/). Meanwhile, ResearchGate
officials should block the content of ghost journals
mentioned in Beall's list and Jalalian's list and not listed in JCR
of Thomson & Reuters.
Conclusive Remarks
Scientific community and networking platforms like
ResearchGate should take a serious note of the fact that
considerations given to ghost journals and putting them
in the row of reliable and quality journals might create an
alarming situation in future. This dark side of academic
writing should be hampered, before it finds more space
and prevails, as it would not only affect the scientists only
but also the community as a whole.
Conflict of Interest: Nil.
Disclosure: Nil.
Funding: Nil.
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