2016/02/23 by Mehdi Dadkhah, Glenn Borchardt · 2 citations
Decision Sciences · Medicine · #scientometrics and bibliometrics research #Publishing #Impact factor #Publication #Library science #Internet privacy #Medicine #Computer science #Political science #Law
paper · pdf · doi:10.1093/asj/sjw026
openalex publication_date 2016/02/23 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/30
Much has been written about the problem of predatory journals, which encourage would-be authors to publish in unknown, poorly reviewed journals—for a price.1,2 There are websites that list such “journals,” offering a quick check on reliability.3 Mostly, these journals are distinguished by a lack of peer review and large volumes of publishing. Predatory journals also have extremely high acceptance rates and article publication charges. They usually have nonexistent impact factors because they are not indexed by Thomson Reuters. This is because, by not offering much useful information, such nondescript journals are seldom cited. Now, a new, even more pernicious scam has entered the realm of scholarly publication: hijacked journals. Hijacked journals are fake websites of authentic ones, utilizing the title and ISSNs of reputable journals.4 Compared with predatory journals, hijacked journals are more likely to receive papers from authors, because they mimic reputable journals, generally claiming the impact factors that those journals have earned from Thomson Reuters. Predatory journals often claim to have impact factors, but they usually have bogus metrics such as Universal Impact Factor, Global Impact Factor, and so on. If we want to present a correlation between hijacked journals and predatory ones, we can say that article broker companies provide papers for both hijacked journals and predatory publishers. Table 1 compares the URLs of some authentic journals with those of the corresponding websites of the hijacked journals. Each of these are medical journals, including Emergencias (an emergency medicine journal from Spain), the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), Vitae (the Official Publication of the Faculty of Pharmaceutical Chemistry at the University of Antioquia, Colombia), Terapevticheskii Arkhiv (from Russia), Kardiologiya (from Russia), and Revue Scientifique et Technique (published by the World Organization for Animal Health).5 Hijackers try to hijack journals for which it is hard for researchers to find the authentic website; thus, non-English journals published by small publishers can be a good option for them. Authentic and Hijacked Websites of Selected Medical Journals N/A1 This journal does not have an Impact Factor; N/A2 This journal does not have a website. Authentic and Hijacked Websites of Selected Medical Journals N/A1 This journal does not have an Impact Factor; N/A2 This journal does not have a website. Most predatory journals do not have reputable indexing, and thus only naïve authors are likely to submit papers to them. On the other hand, hijacked journals abuse the name and ISSNs of reputable journals, such as the journals indexed by Thomson Reuters, promising quick publication. Young researchers may be especially honored to receive an invitation to publish in what seems to be a prestigious journal. All scientists need to be aware of the possibility that the website through which they are submitting their work could actually be the hijacked imitation of the real website for the journal. As previously mentioned, there already has been much discussion about the problem of predatory publishers, who invent new journals that are expensive, poorly reviewed, and seldom read, but there are only a few papers about hijacked journals.3,6 Hijackers are catching up with predatory publishers by improving their techniques for creating hijacked journals. Recent research shows that hijackers have registered expired domains of reputable journals to launch new hijacked journals.7 Number of published papers about hijacked journals and predatory journals in five scientific databases. DOAJ, the Directory of Open Access Journals. Our recent observations show that the hijacking problem is startlingly significant (Supplementary Data, available online at www.aestheticsurgeryjournal.com). In only 10 hijacked journals, we found 2442 papers that scientists thought they had “published” during the first five months of 2015. We arrived at this number by inspecting these hijacked journals' websites and counting the numbers of published papers in their issues. In addition, there are many unknown hijacked journals, because authentic websites are easy to copy. Forgers seem to create a new hijacked journal every day, cheating more authors who may be unaware of this latest challenge to legitimate publication. Some journals stop publishing, and hijackers have been known to continue publishing in their name.7 Our observations are as follows: Most authentic journals have reputable indexing. The hijacked versions often copy their websites along with their Impact Factors. In addition, like predatory journals, the hijacked versions often promise quick publication, mostly because peer review is light or nonexistent. The upshot is a reduction in the number of papers published in legitimate journals. Hijacked journals publish so many papers because they usually do not respect the aim and scope of the original authentic journal. Thus, papers claiming to be in the “medical and surgical” field may not be at all. Published papers in hijacked journals may be junk science, with their claims being especially dangerous for the fields of medicine and surgery. Papers in predatory journals still may be available for other researchers, but hijacked journals are available for only a short period—until the real journal threatens legal action. Unless authors go through the publication process all over again, which they may not take the time to do, much science will be lost. As previously mentioned, hijacked journals, being only fake websites mimicking authentic journals, will not have their contents indexed in databases such as Scopus or Web of Science. As a result, other researchers are unlikely to be aware of the work, even if it is not junk science. Our observations show that there has been no resolution for most of the legal remedies taken by legitimate journals and by authors who have been cheated. Hijackers utilize hidden techniques and they have knowledge about hacking, so finding them will be hard. Knowledgeable researchers advise others about predatory publishers, but may not be aware of hijacked journals. All scientists should be aware of the new list of hijacked journals,8 as well as the old list of predatory journals,3 created by Jeffrey Beall, a research librarian at the University of Colorado Denver and one of the foremost authorities on this topic. We need to discover and expose these scams as soon as they arise. Foremost, we must remember that communications ostensibly from journals in reputable indices with high Impact Factors may not be legitimate. We find many journals mentioned in standard indices that also are in Beall's list of predatory journals, such as Scopus or Thomson Reuters.3 Researchers who utilize only Impact Factors as the metric for evaluating journal quality also will be considering hijacked journals. Today's scientific endeavors seem to require two investigations, one for the original research and one for publication in a legitimate journal. One of the best methods for exposing the domains of hijacked journals is by utilizing Google page ranking (http://www.whatsmypr.net) and the WHOIS (http://whois.domaintools.com) database. Our observations show that the domains of most hijacked journals were registered in the last 2 years and have page rankings lower than 4. Thus, most of them are detectable. Also, websites of legitimate journals are available in scientific databases such as Thomson Reuters, although those of hijacked journals are not. Supplementary Data. The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and publication of this article. The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship, and publication of this article.