Predatory journals seep in Scopus and Pubmed

Predatory publication has created a headache for the academic community worldwide. I have been asked by a newspaper in Vietnam to comment on the issue, and I have done a bit of research and found out that many journals indexed in Scopus and Pubmed may be ‘predatory’. The presence of these bogus journals masqueraded as legitimate academic journals has seriously compromised the criteria of professorship promotion in developing countries.

In Vietnam, the State Council for Professorship is charged with the responsibility of assessing candidates for professorship promotion nationally. Peer-reviewed publication is one of the key criteria for promotion. However, it has recently become clear that many candidates have published their work in predatory outlets, and this practice has compromised the evaluation process.

The matter is boiled down to differentiating predatory journals from legitimate ones. Last week, in the wake of Professor Nguyen Ngoc Chau’s call for a total review of professorial candidates’ publication records [1], the Council has convened a meeting to sort out the problem. After a rather quick deliberation, the Council has decided that papers published in journals indexed by Web of Science (WoS), Scopus, Pubmed and Emerging Sources Citation Index (ESCI) are considered legitimate publications [2].