TL;DR It’s annoying to be plagiarised, but what I’ve come to worry about more is how pay-to-publish predatory journals forgo peer review in order to prey on fellow academics and rob them of learning opportunities. Even if you know better than to publish in them, they are a symptom of the collective action problem that plagues much of academic publishing. The good news is that every small contribution towards solving this problem —for instance by moving towards scholar-led diamond open access publishing— also takes oxygen out of the room for predatory publishers.
Some years ago a Google Scholar alert on a topic I follow pointed me to a new paper in “International Journal of Humanities, Social Sciences and Education” published by ARC Journals. Always happy to learn of new work in areas I frequent, I started reading — and soon recognised verbatim phrases from my own (uncited) work. There were also multiple long passages not identified as quotes and lifted verbatim from sources that were cited at other points in the ms — these passages were presented as the author’s own words. I show some of the problems in a low-resolution figure here because I don’t want to throw the author under the bus: my beef is with the publisher, ARC Journals.
This was a straightforward case of plagiarism, even by the journal’s own definition; and had they followed their own policies it would certainly have been discovered prior to publication. It also looked very much like what I see —and correct— in students’ essays all the time.
I was mindful that this author might be an early career researcher and/or not have had access to the best examples; and I surmised from their choice of publication venue that they might not be aware of how predatory publishers like ARC Journals work, so I wrote a gentle letter to editor and author. I indicated the problems, but also pointed out the paper probably did not undergo peer review or a plagiarism check as advertised — so I suggested that if ARC Journals retracted, they should also pay back the article processing fee. As I wrote:
I attach a PDF in which I have annotated problems of plagiarism in the first two pages only. In those pages, over 50% of the text is copied from uncited sources. This is a grave violation of international scholarly standards, and even of your own journal’s standards. I have NOT checked any pages beyond the first two, because that is not my job as a reader. Instead I trust that you will review the matter promptly (…)
Based on the state of the article, there is reason to suspect the article has not undergone any peer review at all, and so it might be prudent to pay back the article processing fee to the author.
It took three weeks and multiple reminders before an anonymous “editor” told me they were looking into it. None of the editors ever revealed any real names or affilations.
Meanwhile I’d already heard from the author, who was apologetic and quite professional about it. They regretted this had happened and wanted to set things right; they had not received any indications of problems before. They had submitted their work to a journal with a relevant-sounding title that didn’t ask a prohibitively large “article processing charge”, and the review procedure had been smooth sailing.
What peer review looks like in a predatory journal
I was quite curious to learn about review process at a journal like this, so I asked the author about the publication process. Turns out THIS was the sum total of feedback the author received:
I would fail a 1st year undergrad for producing such drivel, yet at ARC Journals it counts for peer review and led to outright acceptance: “The paper, a unique study on Linguistics, is accepted.”
This is now a few years ago. Today I am sure the review procedures have only become more streamlined, aided by bullshit generators to produce senseless recommendations that helps the publisher pocket those sweet article processing fees.
When APC revenue is on the line, SpringerNature is no better than ARC Journals.
Indeed just last week, the Springer-Nature journal Humanities and Social Sciences Communications published an article that was such a blatant case of AI slop that it was roundly ridiculed online. In the ensuing hilarity, one of the responses I found most telling was from Ethan Kutlu, a clear-eyed early career researcher who had withdrawn a manuscript from this same journal after getting what sounded to them like AI-generated reviews, and “no actual feedback on our science”. The difference with the review above is only in the mode of production, not in the content. When APC revenue is on the line, SpringerNature is no better than ARC Journals.
What saddens me most is that colleagues (often, as in my plagiarism case, from the global south) are robbed of opportunities to get meaningful feedback on their work from actual peers. Instead, predatory journals take their money and “publish” the work without any review and with no regard whatsoever for scholarly standards or scientific quality. And the so-called “AI revolution” is only accelarating this process, both on the production and on the reviewing sides. Already, status-seeking academics are prompting LLMs to submit manuscripts whose editors are prompting LLMs to review them. The real victim is actual scholarship of the hard-won human kind.
Back to that minor plagiarism case. In the end, the author requested the journal to withdraw the article. Did the journal offer to place a corrected version? No. Did they record a retraction notice? No. Did they get their money back? Also no.
The only public sign any of this ever happened is a weird 12-page gap in the page numbers of the offending journal issue.
The privilege of having alternatives
I think a lot about this. In the past decade or two, predatory publishers have built a parallel universe of publication opportunities preying on the least privileged & most vulnerable of our colleagues. Robbed of good examples, real feedback, and conscientious publishers, folks are trapped. We can blame them for plagiarism, but the real problem are publishers like ARC Journals and other pay-to-publish pushers.
So what seemed an open-and-shut case of plagiarism turned out to be symptomatic of a much more worrying issue: the runaway influence predatory publishers have on declining scholarly standards.
It’s easy to steer clear from predatory publishers if you’re at a privileged institution where librarians know their stuff and peers & mentors help you navigate the publishing world, and advice is never more than an email or an office door away. But there are many colleagues in global academia who don’t have that same set of privileges.
Predatory publishers run a pyramid scheme in which they’ve convinced enough folks this is how it works, and having bought into the system those folks keep convincing others — all while the bad actors scoop up APCs. This is an ugly feedback loop that can only serve to exacerbate existing structural inequalities in academia.
Academic publishing still comes across as an ivory tower enterprise, especially to collaegues in the global south. Reviews can be unforgiving and desk rejections swift. Given this, it is so easy to give in to the pull of pay-to-publish journals.
Big words about open access from funders aren’t helping: the predatory industry greatly benefits from the fact that more established for-profit publishers also have no problems asking hefty article processing fees — and that some funders have no qualms paying them (looking at you, Max Planck Society, for blithely paying a ransom of up to 12.000 euro for each Nature Publishing Group article just to make the work of your already-privileged researchers even more accessible!).
Be a part of the solution
There are no easy solutions here, but I do see a few ways in which we can at least make constructive contributions. I write as someone based in the global north, with ties to some of the most privileged institutions and a commensurate responsibility to work towards solutions. Ignoring this problem won’t make it go away; for-profit publishers and the predatory empires that follow in their wake are eating away at the very foundations of scholarly publishing.
Most importantly, we want everyone to be able to find alternatives for these garbage publishers. And I think diamond open access publishing is a key part of the solution here. This is the publishing model where neither authors nor readers pay. Often, diamond open access journals and presses are relatively small scale and supported by scholarly societies or libraries. They tend to have good and topically relevant editorial boards. In my own field, Glossa, Open Mind and Language Science Press are shining examples. These outlets deserve our submissions and our support much more than predatory or predatory-adjacent publishers like ARC journals, MDPI or Frontiers. These are the venues we should be looking up to, publishing in, and recommending to our colleagues.
Merely advertising alternatives is not enough: these alternatives need to be alive, and the only way to do so is to put your money (or your time and effort) where your mouth is. Funders should be rolling out preferential support for sustainable publishing practices. Universities should ask themselves whether they want to continue to bankroll Elsevier or whether they should invest in good old scholarly presses, ready for the age of digital and open access publication (as MIT does with MIT Press, and my own university with Radboud University Press).
While organisations and systems must be part of the solution, we individual researchers also have opportunities for meaningful action. In the spirit of Ellul —think global, act local— individual scholars can make a big difference here. We have a lot of choices in how we apportion our time and how we set our priorities. Here are some simple steps we can all take:
- Vote with your feet: commit to submit a growing chunk of your work to journals that support sustainable scholarly publishing. See Free Our Knowledge for one form of collective action you can join.
- Make it work: Prioritize these same journals in your reviewing and editing. I share some of the publishers I prioritise on my site; maybe you can, too.
- Explain yourself: When you decline to carry out expert consultancy for the big for-profit publishers, be vocal about it and explain your reasoning.
The predatory publishers that poison the well of scholarly publishing deserve all our scorn. But authors who fall prey to them deserve grace and understanding — and above all, they deserve alternatives that work. Ultimately, viable scholar-led diamond open access venues are better for us all.