Malignant Growth of Cancer Journals - SERMO

"Solicitations from predatory journals are not just spam—they’re malicious. They pose as legitimate journals to attract researchers and academics. For a fee, they will provide you with a citation but no readership. We discuss the experience of one oncologist and convey some tips on how to recognize predatory journals, why they’re bad, and ponder why the only site that listed them has mysteriously vanished.

Going Meta on Open Access

Many predatory journals tout that they are open access as if that alone bestowed some legitimacy, a sort of ‘reverse snobbery’ perhaps, since early-on, open access publication was regarded as ‘less than’. This is no longer the case, as exemplified by such publications as The Oncologist, the very journal in which appears the article and editorial of interest here(1,2). Or consider Public Library of Science (PLOS), a stalking horse for quality open access papers(3). So, if open access is not a distinguishing feature of predatory journals. What is then?

Vanity of vanities

Linguistic clues betray solicitations as those from predatory journals. The main theme is appeal to vanity. The actual transaction is designed to separate authors from their money in exchange for a citation on their resume. The fact that these journals have no meaningful audience or impact is ignored."