Rising reliance on predatory publishing as research expands

More recently there has been significant growth in contributions to international journals by members of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) countries, which some academics have found has been at the cost of quality and greater reliance on publishing in non-peer-reviewed so-called ‘predatory’ journals. A study entitled “Predatory Publishing in Scopus: Evidence on cross-country differences”, by Vít Machácek and Martin Srholec, economists from the Czech Republic, published in February this year found that OIC countries made up 17 of the top 20 countries where academics are publishing in ‘predatory’ journals, a finding that has attracted the attention of academics in those countries seeking to understand the reasons.