April 30, 2021

NEW: Predatory journal alerts from Edifix + Cabells

There’s a new tool in the Edifix toolbox! Starting today, we’re introducing the Cabells Reference Checking feature—and during our six-month open beta period, Edifix users can try it out on any and every Edifix job at no additional cost! 

What’s at stake

Predatory, fraudulent, or unscrupulous journal publishing practices have been a topic of conversation among stakeholders in scholarly communications for many years.

“Predatory publishing” has been extensively discussed on the Scholarly Kitchen, including recent perspectives from both Russia and India as well as two of 2019’s most-read posts, which addressed “citation contamination” and reviewed the Cabells Predatory Reports database. 

It’s the subject of scholarly research, including this study of the Scopus database, this PhD dissertation on predatory publishing in biomedical fields, and this colloquium paper in PNAS.

Sometimes it can even be funny … but not when it happens to you. No one wants to unwittingly submit their research to a predatory, illegitimate, or questionably ethical journal, and no one wants to discover after their work is published that some of their citations may be unreliable. 

→ Not an Edifix user? You can sign up here for a free trial to try it out!

Why it’s complicated

Cabells Predatory Reports aims to shine a light on the deceptive practices that threaten to undermine quality research. Extensively researched and documented based on 60+ behavioral indicators, this database of over 14,000 publications is the go-to source for information on journals that engage in predatory, deceptive, and unethical publishing practices. The detailed reports provided for each journal give authors the information they need to make decisions about sources in your reference lists.

Accurately identifying these journals in reference lists is tricky for editors, since manuscripts may use abbreviated or non-standard journal names, while predatory publishers deliberately choose titles that resemble those of reputable journals. But by using Inera’s sophisticated technology for automatic journal name identification, Edifix can catch the journals included on the Cabells list regardless of how they are formatted in reference lists.

What you can do about it 

You need good information on the legitimacy of the sources you’re citing, but you don’t have time to individually search every journal title in your bibliography in Cabells Predatory Reports! 

That’s where Edifix comes in. With Cabells Reference Checking enabled, we’ll check every journal title in your reference list against the Cabells Predatory Reports database and report the results when the job is finished. 

If a journal title in one of your references is flagged, just click the link to go straight to the journal’s entry in Cabells Predatory Reports, where you’ll find title info and the list of violations that earned its place in the database. 

→ What does Cabells look for in evaluating journals for Predatory Reports? We’re glad you asked!

What you do next is up to you! Whether Edifix reports a correction, a retraction, or a predatory journal title, our goal is to give you good data to make informed decisions about your references.

Try it now! During the six-month open beta, Edifix subscribers can access full details on every flagged journal title from Cabells Predatory Reports at no additional cost. We’re eager to hear your feedback, so keep an eye out for the results in the Edifix UI, and we encourage you to reach out to us about your experiences using this important new tool.     

What happens after the beta period? We’ll be collecting data on Cabells Reference Checking and refining the tool during this open trial period. Edifix customers who like the feature and want to continue getting the full results after the beta period closes will need a subscription to Cabells Predatory Reports; more information is available from the Cabells website.

Want to learn more about our partnership with Cabells? Check out the SSP Sponsored Session we presented in October 2020 on addressing “citation contamination” through our technology integration.