A negative consequence of the rapid growth of scholarly open access publishing funded by article processing charges is the emergence of publishers and journals with highly questionable marketing and peer review practices. These so-called predatory publishers are causing unfounded negative publicity for open access publishing in general. Reports about this branch of e-business have so far mainly concentrated on exposing lacking peer review and scandals involving publishers and journals. There is a lack of comprehensive studies about several aspects of this phenomenon, including extent and regional distribution. After an initial scan of all predatory publishers and journals included in the so-called Beall’s list, a sample of 613 journals was constructed using a stratified sampling method from the total of over 11,000 journals identified. Information about the subject field, country of publisher, article processing charge and article volumes published between 2010 and 2014 were manually collected from the journal websites. For a subset of journals, individual articles were sampled in order to study the country affiliation of authors and the publication delays. Over the studied period, predatory journals have rapidly increased their publication volumes from 53,000 in 2010 to an estimated 420,000 articles in 2014, published by around 8,000 active journals. Early on, publishers with more than 100 journals dominated the market, but since 2012 publishers in the 10–99 journal size category have captured the largest market share. The regional distribution of both the publisher’s country and authorship is highly skewed, in particular Asia and Africa contributed three quarters of authors. Authors paid an average article processing charge of 178 USD per article for articles typically published within 2 to 3 months of submission. Despite a total number of journals and publishing volumes comparable to respectable (indexed by the Directory of Open Access Journals) open access journals, the problem of predatory open access seems highly contained to just a few countries, where the academic evaluation practices strongly favor international publication, but without further quality checks.

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'Predatory' open access: a longitudinal study of article volumes and market characteristics.

Many countries are pursuing innovation-led “smart” growth, which requires long-run strategic investments and public policies that aim to create and shape markets, rather than just “fixing” markets or systems. Market creation has characterized the kind of mission-oriented investments that led to putting a man on the moon and are currently galvanizing green innovation. Mission-oriented innovation has required public agencies to not only “de-risk” the private sector, but also to lead the direct creation of new technological opportunities and market landscapes. This paper considers four key issues that arise from a market-creating framework for policy: (1) decision-making on the direction of change; (2) the nature of (public and private) organizations that can welcome the underlying uncertainty and discovery process; (3) the evaluation of mission-oriented and market-creation policies; and (4) the ways in which both risks and rewards can be shared so that smart growth can also result in inclusive growth.

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From market fixing to market-creating: a new framework for innovation policy

Blood glucose levels are tightly controlled by the coordinated action of at least four cell types constituting pancreatic islets. Changes in the proportion and/or function of these cells are associated with genetic and molecular pathophysiology of monogenic, type 1, and type 2 (T2D) diabetes. Cellular heterogeneity impedes precise understanding of the molecular components of each islet cell type that govern islet (dys)function, particularly the less abundant delta and gamma/pancreatic polypeptide (PP) cells. Here, we report single-cell transcriptomes for 638 cells from nondiabetic (ND) and T2D human islet samples. Analyses of ND single-cell transcriptomes identified distinct alpha, beta, delta, and PP/gamma cell-type signatures. Genes linked to rare and common forms of islet dysfunction and diabetes were expressed in the delta and PP/gamma cell types. Moreover, this study revealed that delta cells specifically express receptors that receive and coordinate systemic cues from the leptin, ghrelin, and dopamine signaling pathways implicating them as integrators of central and peripheral metabolic signals into the pancreatic islet. Finally, single-cell transcriptome profiling revealed genes differentially regulated between T2D and ND alpha, beta, and delta cells that were undetectable in paired whole islet analyses. This study thus identifies fundamental cell-type-specific features of pancreatic islet (dys)function and provides a critical resource for comprehensive understanding of islet biology and diabetes pathogenesis.

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Single-cell transcriptomes identify human islet cell signatures and reveal cell-type-specific expression changes in type 2 diabetes.

STM publishing takes place within the broader system of scholarly communication, which includes both formal and informal elements. Scholarly communication plays different roles at different stages of the research cycle, and (like publishing) is undergoing technology-driven change. Categorising the modes of communication into one-to-one, one-to-many and many-to-many, and then into oral and written, provides a helpful framework for analysing the potential impacts of technology on scholarly communication ( The annual revenues generated from English-language science, technical and medical (STM) journal publishing are estimated at about $10 billion in 2013, (up from $8 billion in 2008), within a broader STM information publishing market worth some $25.2 billion. About 55% of global STM revenues (including non-journal STM products) come from the USA, 28% from Europe/Middle East, 14% from Asia/Pacific and 4% from the rest of the world. The USA continues to dominates the global output of research papers with a share of about 23% but the most dramatic growth has been in China and East Asia. China’s double-digit compound growth for more than 15 years led to its moving into second position, with 17% of global output. It is followed by the United Kingdom (7%), Germany (6%), Japan (6%), and France (4%). The rank order changes for citations, however, with the US strongly in the lead with 36% and China at 11th place with 6%.

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The STM Report: An overview of scientific and scholarly journal publishing

An investigation of user attitudes toward search engines as an information retrieval tool

Journals that exploit the author-pays model damage scholarly publishing and promote unethical behaviour by scientists, argues Jeffrey Beall.

Predatory publishers are corrupting open access

This article is a first-hand account of the author's work identifying and listing predatory publishers from 2012 to 2017. Predatory publishers use the gold (author pays) open access model and aim to generate as much revenue as possible, often foregoing a proper peer review. The paper details how predatory publishers came to exist and shows how they were largely enabled and condoned by the open-access social movement, the scholarly publishing industry, and academic librarians. The author describes tactics predatory publishers used to attempt to be removed from his lists, details the damage predatory journals cause to science, and comments on the future of scholarly publishing.

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What I learned from predatory publishers.

This article examines the ways the gold open-access model is negatively affecting scholarly communication.

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Predatory publishing is just one of the consequences of gold open access

This editorial examines the problem of predatory publishers and how they have negatively affected scholarly communication. Society relies on high-quality, peer-reviewed articles for public policy, legal cases, and improving the public health. Researchers need to be aware of how predatory publishers operate and need to avoid falling into their traps. The editorial examines the recent history of predatory publishers and how they have become prominent in the world of scholarly journals.

Medical Publishing Triage – Chronicling Predatory Open Access Publishers

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Jeffrey Beall

Papers

Predatory publishers are corrupting open access

What I learned from predatory publishers.

Predatory publishing is just one of the consequences of gold open access

Medical Publishing Triage – Chronicling Predatory Open Access Publishers

Predatory journals: Ban predators from the scientific record