Predatory Journals; be aware of the spectrum!

Academia the world over, are encouraged or coerced to conduct research in their fields as the new knowledge is instrumental and essential for the world to move ahead. The pressure for academics and researchers to author research publications is indicated by the popular aphorism ‘publish or perish’. In some countries, like Sri Lanka, a monthly allowance is added to their salary as incentive if they have published at least one research paper within the relevant year modifying the above aphorism to ‘publish as pay-off’. Such enforcements/incentives for research were strengthened throughout the world in the recent past. In parallel to the above enforcements for research, a new threat to the honesty of research publications has emerged. It has become a global outbreak with a rising trend; it was initially named as predatory publications. Now there are many synonyms for the term ‘Predatory’ as ‘bogus’, ‘deceptive’, ‘dubious’, ‘illegitimate’ ‘fake’, ‘fraudulent’, ‘parasitic’, ‘pseudo’, ‘questionable’ etc. However, the term predatory is still widely used. The lack of a standard peer review process and the absence of good editorial services are the primary features of predatory Open Access (OA) journals. ..................