Predatory journals have been part of the scholarly publishing discussion for a number of years now and numerous efforts have been made to develop training resources and tools to help potential authors establish whether or not a journal they are considering submitting a manuscript to is reputable or not.
Not surprisingly, as consumers are becoming more aware of the existence and threat of predatory publishing, the predators are adapting to this new reality and becoming more sophisticated – or rather – more downright sneaky in their ways. Which brings us to “Hijacked Journals”.
What is a “Hijacked Journal”?
A hijacked journal is basically a predatory journal that is not just trying to mimic another established journal by adopting a similar title and “look” to their publication, but rather is actually using a legitimate journal’s exact title, ISSN information, and other meta-data. This scam can happen to current titles published by larger publishers, but likely is more easily carried out successfully using journal titles that may have been recently ceased or to smaller society or university publications.
What can you do to protect yourself?
The usual strategies for avoiding predatory publishers still apply to avoiding hijacked journals. That said – taking extra steps to investigate whether or not a publication has ceased or has had a change in publisher is highly recommended as this step will help to determine if even more scrutiny of the journal is warranted. Tools like the NLM Catalog and Ulrichs can be used to verify this information.
Furthermore, to help authors not fall victim to this hijacking scam, the diligent folks at Retraction Watch have begun compiling a spreadsheet of journal titles that they have classified as “hijacked” in their new Retraction Watch Hijacked Journal Checker. Learn more by reading their recent blog post announcing this new tool.
Additional reading:
- Dadkhah M, Rahimnia F, Darbyshire P, Borchardt G. Ten (Bad) reasons researchers publish their papers in hijacked journals. J Clin Nurs. 2021 Oct;30(19-20):e60-e63. doi: 10.1111/jocn.15947. Epub 2021 Jul 27. PMID: 34318552.
- Hijacked journals: what they are and how to avoid them (Clarivate, Dr. Varun G Menon, JANUARY 14, 2019)
- What you need to know about hijacked journals (Editage, Sunaina Singh, Nov 17, 2021)
- Chapter 9. Hijacked Journals – (Advanced Library Skills for Physics Research by Lauren Stieglitz)
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