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The Fight Against Predatory Journals is Perhaps a War We Can Never Win

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Table of Contents

Introduction

In the ever-expanding universe of academic publishing, predatory journals are the black holes—unseen, deceptive, and capable of sucking the legitimacy out of scholarly communication. They offer the illusion of peer review, the pretense of credibility, and the worst part? They’re multiplying like bacteria in a poorly sterilized lab.

Despite years of efforts by watchdogs, universities, policymakers, and researchers to combat predatory publishing, the problem is far from solved. If anything, it’s gotten sneakier. Just as one outlet is exposed and shamed, another emerges, slicker and more convincing. Unlike traditional fraud, predatory publishing thrives under the protection of open access ideals and the relentless pressure to publish or perish. Is the fight against predatory journals a futile endeavor?

This isn’t just a problem—it’s a crisis of integrity, of trust, and of global proportions. The fight against predatory journals is also, arguably, a war we can never truly win. Not because solutions don’t exist, but because the ecosystem that feeds predatory journals shows no sign of dying out.

The Rise of Predatory Publishing

Predatory journals are not a new phenomenon. Librarian Jeffrey Beall coined the term in the early 2010s, and his infamous “Beall’s List” became the go-to blacklist for identifying rogue journals that prioritized profit over scholarly rigor. Beall’s criteria focused on journals with deceptive practices, such as fake editorial boards, nonexistent peer review, and aggressive solicitation of manuscripts.

Since then, the numbers have exploded. A study in BMC Medicine estimated that over 400,000 articles had been published in predatory journals between 2010 and 2014. By 2023, estimates from Cabells Scholarly Analytics placed the number of active predatory journals at over 15,000 worldwide. And these are just the known ones.

Why the exponential growth? The internet dramatically lowered the barriers to entry. Setting up a website that mimics a reputable journal takes hours, not weeks. A convincing name and a template-based design are all it takes to appear legitimate, especially to early-career researchers or scholars in regions with limited publishing infrastructure.

The incentives for bad actors are clear: fast money. Article processing charges (APCs) range from $100 to over $5,000, and with minimal overhead, the profit margins are grotesquely high. For every underfunded academic desperate to publish, there’s a predatory journal ready to pounce.

Profit Margins: The Gold Rush That Never Ended

Let’s pause and ask: why has predatory publishing become so appealing as a business model? The answer lies partially in the staggering profits of legitimate commercial publishers. The biggest names in scholarly publishing—Elsevier, Springer Nature, Wiley, Taylor & Francis—aren’t just surviving. They are thriving, year after year.

Elsevier’s parent company, RELX, consistently reports operating profit margins of over 30%. That’s higher than Apple, Google, or most investment banks. These numbers are not a fluke. In 2024, Elsevier reportedly generated over $3 billion in revenue from its science and technology division alone. Much of that came from selling access to publicly funded research, and in some cases, from charging authors fees to publish in open access journals.

This is the part that stings: the research is free, the peer review is free (done by academics), the editing is increasingly automated—and yet the returns are enormous. When aspiring grifters look at those figures, they see a model that requires minimal input for maximum profit. Just replace rigorous peer review with a sham review process, slap a $1000 APC on it, and watch the money roll in.

Predatory journals are drawn to these margins like ants to sugar. The publishing oligopoly has effectively demonstrated that science can be a very lucrative business, as long as you own the infrastructure. It’s hard not to wonder: have the big players inadvertently paved the way for the bottom-feeders by showing just how much can be extracted from the scholarly ecosystem?

In this light, the gatekeepers of academic legitimacy are part of the problem. The more they raise prices, the more alternatives (legitimate or not) emerge to fill the affordability gap. Predatory journals simply saw the opening and pounced.

The Global Dimensions of the Problem

Predatory journals disproportionately affect scholars in the Global South, particularly in Africa, South Asia, and parts of Eastern Europe. A 2018 article in Nature reported that authors from India accounted for a substantial share of submissions to predatory journals, while other studies have also identified Nigeria as a significant contributor. These regions often lack robust regulatory mechanisms, and researchers face intense institutional pressure to publish for promotion, funding, and reputation.

In many cases, predatory journals masquerade as inclusive, democratizing forces. They target non-native English speakers, promising fast-track publication and global visibility. But the result is academic marginalization. Work published in these outlets is often ignored or discredited by mainstream academia, and the authors—far from gaining recognition—are tainted by association.

The linguistic and financial inequities of global publishing feed this vicious cycle. Pay-to-publish models favor the privileged; predatory journals exploit the rest. They turn desperation into a revenue stream, academic aspiration into a marketplace.

Why Efforts to Stop Them Keep Falling Short

Despite international awareness and numerous interventions, the tide of predatory publishing hasn’t turned. Here’s why efforts often fall short:

1. Blacklists and Whitelists Are Blunt Instruments

Beall’s List was a start, but it was criticized for its opaque criteria and potential bias. It was eventually taken down, though archived versions persist. Cabells’ two lists—“Whitelist” (legitimate journals) and “Blacklist” (suspect ones)—are subscription-based, limiting access.

Whitelists like the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) or Scopus inclusion offer some quality control, but they’re not foolproof. Journals evolve. A once-legitimate journal may deteriorate, while others straddle a murky line between predatory and low-quality.

Most importantly, predatory publishers don’t care. If they’re excluded from a whitelist or land on a blacklist, they simply rebrand—changing the journal name, switching URLs, and repeating.

In theory, fraudulent publishing is a legal issue. In practice, enforcement is nearly nonexistent. These journals operate across borders, often from countries with lax enforcement. Legal pursuits are expensive, complex, and rarely result in lasting consequences. The U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) fined the OMICS Group over $50 million in 2019 for deceptive practices. But OMICS is still in operation, publishing, and charging APCs.

One lawsuit doesn’t make a dent in a system designed to resist regulation.

3. The Academia-Industry Complex is Complicit

Ironically, academia’s own metrics culture fuels the beast. Hiring committees, funding agencies, and promotion boards often rely on quantity over quality. The infamous “publish or perish” doctrine rewards output, regardless of where it’s published. In some countries, publications in any journal, predatory or not, count toward professional advancement.

Universities that fail to vet where their researchers publish become unwitting enablers. Academic databases that don’t thoroughly screen for quality allow predatory journals to slip through. Even citation indexes have been found listing questionable outlets, giving them unearned legitimacy.

The publishing industry, too, shares blame. With legitimate APCs ranging from $1,000 to $9,000, many researchers simply can’t afford to publish in top-tier open access journals. The vacuum left by unaffordable Open Access is precisely where predatory journals flourish.

The Blurred Lines: When is a Journal Truly Predatory?

Here’s where things get really messy: the term “predatory journal” lacks a universally agreed-upon definition. Some journals are obviously fraudulent. Others exist in a grey zone—offering mediocre peer review, inflated editorial boards, or deceptive impact claims, but technically meeting minimal scholarly standards.

This grey area matters because researchers sometimes knowingly publish in these journals. Not out of naivety, but necessity. A tight deadline, a grant requirement, an institutional mandate—and suddenly a “fast publication” becomes irresistible.

And then there’s the growing problem of predatory conferences, organized by the same publishers behind the journals. They mimic scientific symposiums, lure researchers with promises of keynote slots, and deliver nothing more than empty rooms and worthless proceedings.

The AI Factor: A Double-Edged Sword

As if the situation weren’t bad enough, artificial intelligence has entered the scene—and it’s complicating things.

On the one hand, AI tools can help detect fraudulent journals. Pattern recognition software can flag suspicious websites, detect identical peer review letters, and track editorial board duplication across journals.

On the other hand, predatory publishers are using AI too. Generative text tools like ChatGPT can now create passable abstracts, responses to peer reviews, and even entire articles. Fake names, AI-generated photos for editorial boards, and bot-assisted submission systems are being employed to scale the racket.

An investigation by Retraction Watch revealed that several AI-generated research papers had passed peer review—some in predatory journals, others in supposedly legitimate outlets. The distinction is blurring fast.

Can We Educate Our Way Out?

Many well-meaning institutions have turned to education as a shield: teaching early-career researchers how to recognize red flags, offering publishing workshops, and requiring quality assurance training.

And yes, this helps. Awareness is up. Researchers today are more cautious and more skeptical.

But let’s be brutally honest: even seasoned academics get duped. The scams are more sophisticated, and the impersonations are more convincing. And in environments where time is scarce and pressure is immense, vigilance isn’t always possible.

Moreover, education can’t dismantle the systemic incentives that make predatory publishing viable. You can’t teach your way out of a system that punishes slow publication and rewards numerical output.

What Would Real Solutions Look Like?

To make real progress, we need structural change. Here are a few bold (and somewhat utopian) ideas:

  • Reform academic evaluation metrics. Stop rewarding sheer quantity. Focus on quality, replication, and impact, not journal titles alone.
  • Subsidize legitimate Open Access publishing. Governments and funders must ensure that reputable outlets are affordable, or even free, to authors from under-resourced regions.
  • Establish international watchdogs. A coordinated, global body that publicly names and investigates predatory publishers could act as a deterrent, at least symbolically.
  • Mandate transparency. Journals should disclose APCs, peer review timelines, editorial board affiliations, and retraction policies in standardized formats. Lack of transparency should be a red flag by default.
  • Pressure indexers to clean up. Databases like Scopus and Web of Science should publish transparent retraction histories and swiftly de-list journals when violations are found.

Are these easy to implement? Of course not. But doing nothing is worse.

Conclusion: A War of Attrition, Not Annihilation

Here’s the uncomfortable truth: the fight against predatory journals is not one we can “win” in the traditional sense. There will always be scammers where there’s money to be made, and in academic publishing, the money is real.

We can contain the damage and minimize the casualties. Educate, yes, but also regulate, subsidize, and restructure the systems that allow predators to thrive.

And maybe—just maybe—it’s time to hold the major publishers accountable too. Because when billion-dollar corporations normalize extreme profit margins in the name of science, they aren’t just feeding their shareholders. They’re feeding a model. One that smaller predators are only too eager to copy.

Perhaps this isn’t a war we’ll ever win outright—but it is a battle worth fighting. Every article saved from a scam is a win for science. Every researcher who steers away from a trap is a win for integrity. In the long run, it’s not about total victory. It’s about refusing to surrender.

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