El próximo 20 de octubre hablaremos con nuestros colegas del departamento de Comunicación Audiovisual y Publicidad de la Universidad de Sevilla, entre otras cosas, sobre venta de revistas, y revistas vendidas

Truly grateful by the interest our presentation on stealth journal takeovers generated at the STI in Bristol last week. Thanks to everyone who approached me to discuss it during the conference! @stienid2025.bsky.social read the whole story at zenodo.org/records/1476... and zenodo.org/records/1521...

First thing after the summer break: getting ready for Bristol, where I’ll present our work on stealth journal takeovers and their telltale signs at @stienid2025.bsky.social. Already available at doi.org/10.5281/zeno...

In a new Crossref Community post, I outline the unusual DOI management of the journal Profesional de la Información: despite being sold to OAText in late 2023, DOIs for its articles are still being registered by the former publisher. community.crossref.org/t/concerns-r...

Highly relevant article by @reeserichardson.bsky.social et al., once again providing evidence that fraudulent publication practices are becoming increasingly sophisticated and coordinated. Publishing fraud is no longer just a "bad apple" issue, but a market that moves millions of $€£.

First they clone themselves (Nature X...), now they clone MDPI. The goal is to offer a tiered journal system that does not let manuscripts escape to other publishers' offerings. That would be like leaving money on the table.

A trickle of articles from the 36 journals analyzed in our Invasion of the Journal Snatchers study continues to be indexed in Scopus each week, despite their official statement claiming these titles had been discontinued www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Question. I see a lot of papers with the same design of a Figure (see the picture). Is there a specific software for drawing this kind of figure? I wonder why there are similar figures from different authors that are not connected with each other.

TH: @albertomartin.bsky.social

This piece from @forbetterscience.bsky.social is gold: it reveals how paper mills operate from the inside. Apparently, long non-coding RNAs are a recurring topic in paper mills. Interestingly, that’s the focus of a recent article in Profesional de la Información: forbetterscience.com/2025/05/19/a...

In April, Scopus announced it would discontinue coverage of the 36 journals analysed in our Invasion of the Journal Snatchers study. www.nature.com/articles/d41... doi.org/10.5281/zeno...

New blog post in which I: 📈 detail a new citations-for-sale scheme in Google Scholar 🧻 make the 395 fake papers generated through this scheme available as a dataset 💤 chastise Google for failing to maintain the most widely used academic search engine Enjoy! reeserichardson.blog/2025/05/06/g...

In the same way a meta analysis can be like a CDO (packing crap assets together to make a 'better' equity and selling it), these journal acquisitions are weirdly similar to the asset stripping tactics of private equity.

La revista Profesional de la Información (PI) es de las pocas revistas analizadas en “Invasion of the journal snatchers” que siguió generando DOI tras ser transferida a una editorial cuestionable a finales de 2023. Esto parece positivo, pero analicemos el caso. 🧵👇 doi.org/10.5281/zeno...

My mother would like a word.

Nature highlights our study "Invasion of the Journal Snatchers" www.nature.com/articles/d41... Our study: doi.org/10.5281/zeno... Below, a few comments on the reactions from editors and bibliographic database managers regarding the issue 👇🧵

Invasion of the ‘journal snatchers’: journals that adopt predatory practices after being acquired — My latest for @nature.com: www.nature.com/articles/d41... @abalkina.bsky.social, @albertomartin.bsky.social, @smutclyde.bsky.social

One consequence of questionable publishers starting to use fake DOIs in the journals they acquire is that it prevents readers from commenting on those papers through platforms like PubPeer (which relies on DOIs), making it harder to flag other issues the articles might have. doi.org/10.5281/zeno...

💡 New study! Tell-tale signs of stealth journal takeovers: A bibliometric approach to detecting questionable publisher acquisitions doi.org/10.5281/zeno...

Parece que la revista Profesional de la Información se ha sumado a la práctica de mostrar DOI falsos (no registrados) y propagar esta información a bases de datos bibliográficas (Scopus): doi.org/10.3145/epi.... doi.org/10.3145/epi....

Torrentes de bibliometría

I just published a blog post arguing that the reform movements for research assessment and scientific publishing need to better align their agendas. This is crucial for the success of both movements. www.leidenmadtrics.nl/articles/ass... @leidenmadtrics.bsky.social

The proposals presented here to combat image manipulation in scholarly publications strongly remind me of records management.

Interesting phenomenon! I haven’t read the paper yet, but a legitimate reason for self-citation could be when a paper cites its own previous version. This might be relevant, for example, when preprints influence real-world changes that are later referenced in an updated version of the paper

Ayer se confirmaba la salida de la Web of Science de 5 revistas (originalmente) españolas, ahora vendidas a editoriales con prácticas anómalas de publicación. Hablaremos de estos casos, entre otros, el próximo 3 de abril en Carmona www.upo.es/formacionper... @bibupo.upo.es @amdelvaz.bsky.social

The monthly changes file confirms these journals have been delisted from WoS, along with REVISTA ELECTRONICA DE LEEME, and EUROPEAN JOURNAL FOR PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION (which display similar anomalous publication patterns)

These journals no longer appear in WoS's Master Journal List: 🔴Profesional de la Información 🔴Artseduca 🔴Revista Internacional de Medicina y Ciencias de la Actividad Física y del Deporte 🔴Fonseca Journal of Communication 🔴American Journal of Health Behavior 🔴Eurasian Journal of Educational Research

Many scholarly journals have decided (or are expressly created) to prioritize the financial interests of their owners rather than the needs of academic communities. I'm glad to see that this aligns in many respects with what we presented last year in our work The profit route in scholarly publishing

China’s top court says businesses that write bogus manuscripts for payment should be punished https://go.nature.com/4brVt2T

I'm not convinced that the way a generation engages with information in childhood or adolescence should necessarily dictate how a professional activity should evolve when they enter the workforce.

Los días 2 y 3 de abril celebramos en la sede de la #UPO en Carmona unas jornadas técnicas con el objetivo de analizar la actualidad de los comportamientos de los investigadores en el plano ético en relación a la publicación y la evaluación científica https://buff.ly/43dvSs4

El 2 y 3 de abril estaré en la Universidad Pablo de Olavide en unas jornadas sobre ética en la investigación científica. Junto a Emilio Delgado, analizaremos patrones anómalos y malas prácticas en la publicación académica. Un double feature con casos reales y mucho que debatir.

Must-read from the founders of @retractionwatch.com - about 85% of science is research waste, less than 50% of preclinical cancer research is replicable, and predatory publishers thrive: science has a serious quality control problem, and we're all in trouble. www.theatlantic.com/science/arch...

Si te interesan o trabajas con temas relacionados con #ética e #integridad científica, vete reservando los días 2 y 3 de abril. Estamos preparando unas jornadas en la sede de la #Olavide en #Carmona con un montón de gente interesante con temas muuuuuuy actuales. + info en breve

I wrote a thing for @thetransmitter.bsky.social. The attack on scientific infrastructure happening in the US shows that relying on any one country is not a good option for science. We need to start supporting and building international, decentralised infrastructure for science.

"I thought I was fairly cynical about the kinds of misconduct that goes on, but it turns out I am not cynical enough." A Q&A with sleuth @nhwise.bsky.social, now working at a publisher.

We are now exploring options to update and expand our Invasion of the Journal Snatchers study. In line with Publish-Review-Curate, we invite colleagues to contribute a review via PREreview: prereview.org/preprints/do... or through any other means that work for you.

Today's eldiario.es piece reveals a striking detail: OAText explicitly instructed that its name not appear on the website of one of the journals it acquired. This contradicts fundamental publishing standards, including those of COPE and Web of Science's Initial Triage for journal inclusion.

Cómo 'robar' una revista española de prestigio por unos miles de euros: “Nos engañaron y se la han cargado del todo”

The plot thickens: Until last month, Oxbridge Publishing House described itself as a "leading independent international publisher of academic and professional journals," but now claims it "does not act as a publisher" and only provides "support services to help journals manage their operations".

Comunicar and four other journals analyzed in our Invasion of the Journal Snatchers study have now been marked as "Inactive" in the latest Scopus source list (January 2025), whereas they were still listed as active in the December 2024 edition. Our study: doi.org/10.5281/zeno...

In 2020 the editor of IIER rejected an acquisition offer from OAText, stating: "it is immediately and conclusively apparent that you are conducting a predatory journal operation on a large scale." See more cases of journals resisting or succumbing to such buyouts in our study doi.org/10.5281/zeno...

Bajo el título "La invasión de los ladrones de revistas" se describe cómo empresas compran revistas académicas con alto factor de impacto para luego lucrarse subiendo las APC y rebajando los estándares de publicación, haciendo así que se conviertan en granjas de recibir artículos.

Web of Science takes action: Profesional de la Información, Artseduca, and four other journals analyzed in our Invasion of the Journal Snatchers study are now marked as "On Hold" in the Master Journal List. Notably, four of them were originally Spanish journals. Our study: doi.org/10.5281/zeno...

'The group is buying up long-standing publications and converting them into fast-money machines by increasing the price they charge researchers for publishing, in addition to increasing the number of studies published with little regard to their quality.' english.elpais.com/science-tech...

Weekend reads: ‘Invasion of the journal snatchers;’ our paper mill investigation; highly cited, highly retracted Featuring @joelving.bsky.social @us.theconversation.com @gcabanac.cpesr.fr @crossref.bsky.social and more

Ah, qué buena noticia saber que una revista en la que publicaste el año pasado a los pocos días del cambio de manos, pero con el proceso entero hecho antes de la movida descrita, está en el punto de mira y tienes méritos en riesgo 🫠

El País' coverage of our Invasion of the journals snatchers study, now in English (by @manuelansede.bsky.social) english.elpais.com/science-tech...

Un oscuro entramado empresarial, manejado desde un caserón a las afueras de Birmingham, ha asaltado el mercado de las revistas científicas españolas. La red está comprando cabeceras históricas para convertirlas en máquinas de ganar dinero rápido

Una serie de empresas fantasma compra prestigiosas revistas científicas para lucrarse publicando artículos dudosos