Estimates of the output of these journals have ranged from a high of 450,000 articles as of 2015 (as per the BMC Medicine study) to a low of 135,000 articles (as per research by Walt Crawford).

This suggests that the first very important thing that needs to be done about deceptive publishing is to achieve more widespread recognition of the problem, and something closer to consensus as to its significance.

First, we need to be very careful not to assume fraud where the problem might be inexperience or a lack of resources.

One key to avoiding this is to avoid conflating issues of deception and fraud with issues of journal appearance

Complicating factors

typically misrepresent themselves according to markers of prestige

Deceptive journals are almost invariably funded by author-side article processing charges (APCs),

Creative Commons CC-BY license

Budapest Open Access Initiative (see BOAI website)

Open access (OA) is generally understood to apply primarily to peer reviewed journal literature:

men not

In his anniversary address as President, in November 1832, the Duke of Sussex announced in his presidential address

The main reason that sociologists of science feel that this perspective has not produced the needed encompassing citation theory, is the variety of behavioural characteristics underlying the citation patterns found in the literature. This is, however, the consequence of the semiotic inversion of the reference into the citation. This inversion is asymmetrical: whereas the references have very different characteristics (both textually and behaviourally), citations are all the same. The citation no longer betrays from what type of reference it was produced. This is why one should expect it to be difficult or even impossible to recreate this variety by citation analysis, unless one re-translates the citation to the reference, that is, as is done in reference analysis. This is also why it is impossible to exclusively link the sign citation to a specific behavioural characteristic with respect to citing.

In some respects this appears to be the conclusion reached by Ravetz (1971), who was forced to view citation as an instance of tacit knowledge - a craft skill osmotically acquired.

At the heart of the interpretative rift is the question of unknown motivations. Citation is not a transparent activity: the process is not amenable to scrutiny.

A proper (pluralistic) explanation of what citation entails may mean that we accept aspects of both (or all) perspectives. It may, therefore, be counterproductive to think in terms of ‘competing’ theories or perspectives.

the micro- sociological view is that citations do not exist in uacuo, and that a proper comprehension of the citation phenom- enon and its surface manifestations will only be achieved by moving the critical gaze from the formal communi- cation mechanisms (the superstructure) to the social reality (the infrastructure) which supports the primary communications system.

Edge (1977) has argued that citation analyses of communication patterns in science have to take as their starting point the ‘participants’ perspective’, because every decision (how and what to cite) is particular, and because citation and co-citation analysis, in striving to accumulate and average, destroy the evidence we need to account for individual variation.

Reasons for citing: Weinstock’s list (1971)

The need for more secure epistemological foundations has been touched on by a large number of writers

Support for these findings came from Hagstrom (1971), who correlated citation counts with such variables as quality of graduate faculty and grants awarded to departments.

Metaphorically speaking, citations are frozen footprints on the landscape of scholarly achievement; footprints which bear witness to the passage of ideas. From footprints it is possible to deduce direction; from the configuration and depth of the imprints it should be possible to construct a picture of those who have passed by, whilst the distribution and variety furnish clues as to whether the advance was orderly and purposive.

it is mildly ironic that science, founded on traditions of quanti- fication and verification, should be content with an explanation of citation, an activity central to the scientific process, which emits a whiff of the meta- physical.

Science, as is the case with the profcssions in gcneral, includes disintcrcstcdncss as a Iwsic institutional clcmcnt. Disintcrcsted- ncss if not to be cquatcd \\.it11 ai1i.uisin ;11~l intercstcd aciioii \\it11 cgoism. Such equiva1riicc.s ronfusc institutional and moiiviitioiiiil levels of analysis . . . For once the institution enjoins disin- terested activity, it is to thc interest of scientists to conform on pain of sanctions and, in so far as the norm has been internalized, on pain of psychological conflict.

In Ravetz’s opinion, scientific knowledge is the product of an historical process, and is shaped by the ‘peculiar circumstances’ of its achievement. The aim of this essay is to explore the ‘peculiar circumstances’ of the citation process.

It is quite conceivable that citation would not have emerged as a serious ‘academic’ issue for sociologists and historians of science had not the commercial develop- ment of citation indexing proved so successful (Garfield, 1979; Hall, 1970; Narin, 1976)*

Anecdotal evidence seems to favour the idea that many authors cite in reflexive fashion, without necess- arily dwelling on the implications of the practice.

More specifically, Lcopold ( 1973) identified tlw ‘Citation Index game’ as onc of thc stratagems employcd by scientists to incrcasc thcir visibility among thcir pccrs. The ‘Game’ metaphor has usually been invoked to counter the ‘storybook’ idca of science as an idealised, dispassionate and selfless quest after truth and know- ledge, in which personal feelings and motivations are held in check by institutional imperatives.

Advocacy, which implies

new business models

Strategies for Change

Don’t Measure Merit

Information Overload

reusable scholarly artifacts.