Issue #80
by Michael Seadle
Anna Abalkina wrote in the Retraction Watch Blog (2024): “I’ve cataloged 67 cases since 2013 of hijacked journals penetrating the [Scopus] database. I found 23 profiles of journals that contained links to a cloned version, and 33 cases of content from the cloned version of a journal that had not been peer reviewed appearing in the profile of the legitimate journal, while 11 did both.”¹ This represents only one example of the availability of hijacked journals in trusted databases. “Last December, Elsevier’s Scopus index deleted all links to journal homepages in response to the widespread issue of journal hijacking … .”¹ Despite the deletions, there is an ongoing problem. “Now, we have evidence [that] hijacked journals remain in the database and continue to infiltrate it.”¹ Abalkina continues: “Later, unauthorized content from a cloned Pakistan Heart Journal appeared in Scopus, such as a paper titled “A new strategy for the genetic therapy of oral cancer: an update.” This title doesn’t correspond to the journal’s specialization in heart diseases, a mismatch typical for hijacked journals.”¹
Sometimes the links appear to be legitimate, but the publisher may have changed or ceased. In the case of the journal Obstetrics & Gynaecology Forum (ISSN 1029-1962), the publisher “... did not respond to [Abalkina’s] queries about whether the journal had been transferred to another publisher. Neither the editor-in-chief nor the senior editors replied to my requests for information.”¹
This example makes the aggressiveness and persistence of hijacked journals clear, and combating the economic incentives for hijacking journals is hard in a world where scholars (especially untenured junior scholars) are prepared to pay substantial fees for publication in a Scopus-listed journal. Universities could undercut the economic incentive by giving up their reliance on indexes and on rankings as a key factor in rating the quality of their faculty. The best and most highly respected universities still rely strictly on reading and evaluating articles themselves. The time and effort incentive for trusting rankings and indexes is clear, but until institutions end the economic incentive for faculty to pay to publish in Scopus-indexed journals, the problem will persist.
1: Portions of this Story Feature were drawn from my forthcoming book “Information Science: History, Ideas, Applications” (Facet, 2025)
2: Abalkina, Anna. “Journal Hijackers Still Infiltrate Scopus despite Its Efforts.” Retraction Watch (blog), June 18, 2024. Link: https://retractionwatch.com/2024/06/18/journal-hijackers-still-infiltrate-scopus-despite-its-efforts/.
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