Purpose

The academic community has warned that predatory journals may attempt to capitalize on the confusion caused by the COVID-19 pandemic to further publish low quality academic work, eroding the credibility of scholarly publishing.

Design/methodology/approach

This article first chronicles the risks of predatory publishing, especially related to misinformation surrounding health research. Next, the author offers an empirical investigation of how predatory publishing has engaged with COVID-19, with an emphasis on journals related to virology, immunology and epidemiology as identified through Cabells' Predatory Reports, through a content analysis of publishers' websites and a comparison to a sample from DOAJ.

Findings

The empirical findings show that there were 162 titles related to these critical areas from journals listed on Cabells with a range of infractions, but most were defunct and only 39 had published on the pandemic. Compared to a DOAJ comparison group, the predatory journal websites were less likely to mention slowdowns to the peer review process related to the pandemic. Furthermore, another 284 predatory journals with COVID-19 engagement were uncovered from the initial exploration. These uncovered journals mostly centered on medical or biological science fields, while 42 titles came from other broader fields in social science, other STEM or humanities.

Originality/value

This study does not prove that predatory publications have released misinformation pertaining to COVID-19, but rather it exemplifies the potential within a complex academic publishing space. As these outlets have proven to be vectors of misleading science, libraries and the broader educational community need to stay vigilant as information intermediaries of online research.

中文翻译：

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当危险对瘟疫做出反应时：掠夺性期刊与 COVID-19 的互动

目的

学术界警告说，掠夺性期刊可能会试图利用 COVID-19 大流行造成的混乱来进一步发表低质量的学术作品，从而削弱学术出版的可信度。

设计/方法/方法

本文首先记录了掠夺性出版的风险，尤其是与围绕健康研究的错误信息相关的风险。接下来，作者对掠夺性出版如何与 COVID-19 进行了实证调查，重点是通过 Cabells 的掠夺性报告确定的与病毒学、免疫学和流行病学相关的期刊，通过对出版商网站的内容分析和比较到 DOAJ 的样本。

发现

实证结果表明，在 Cabells 上列出的期刊中，有 162 篇与这些关键领域相关的标题存在一系列违规行为，但大多数都已不复存在，只有 39 篇发表了关于大流行的文章。与 DOAJ 对照组相比，掠夺性期刊网站不太可能提到与大流行相关的同行评审过程放缓。此外，在最初的探索中还发现了另外 284 种与 COVID-19 相关的掠夺性期刊。这些未发现的期刊主要集中在医学或生物科学领域，而 42 个标题来自社会科学、其他 STEM 或人文学科的其他更广泛的领域。

原创性/价值

这项研究并未证明掠夺性出版物发布了与 COVID-19 相关的错误信息，而是举例说明了复杂学术出版空间中的潜力。由于这些媒体已被证明是误导科学的载体，图书馆和更广泛的教育界需要保持警惕，作为在线研究的信息中介。