The rise of ‘predatory’ publishing

By Carmino de Souza

Imagem: tocco earth by Unsplash.

This is an extremely important and highly disturbing issue for academics who practice science correctly and seek to publish their work in the best and most ethical national and/or international scientific journals. I will reproduce here, in large part, what was published by Zeppelini Editorial¹ on October 6, 2025, and I also express my concern about this issue here. In the last two decades, scientific publishing has undergone a technological and economic transformation that has opened the door to more unorthodox models, and, unfortunately, to predatory practices.

Predatory publishing refers to journals and publishers that charge authors (very high fees) to publish, claim peer review and indexing practices that do not exist or are fraudulent, and prioritize quick revenue over scientific quality. The phenomenon is not marginal: studies and surveys indicate exponential growth of the volume of articles published by questionable outlets since 2010, with estimates pointing to a jump from tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of articles in a short period of time.

The modus operandi of these journals is relatively standardized. They employ solicitation tactics such as mass spamming of researchers (emails promising rapid peer review), journal names that mimic established titles, falsification of information about editorial boards and indexes, promises of non-existent impact factors, and makeshift submission portals or even submission by email. After quick acceptance, often within days, an Article Processing Charge (APC) invoice is issued, sometimes with hidden fees or abusive clauses.

These practices have been well documented by guides and analyses that describe everything from initial contact to publication without substantive review. The ethical and social impacts are multiple and disturbing.

First, there is an erosion of public trust in science: when fragile or fabricated results circulate freely, especially when they reach the media or decision-making bodies, the public tends to question the value of scientific knowledge as a whole. The proliferation of papers with no or inadequate peer review fuels doubts about medical interventions, public policies, and technical recommendations, a problem that has gained attention as hundreds and thousands of suspicious articles and retractions have been documented by databases and specialized journalists.

Secondly, it weighs heavily on young researchers and institutions with fewer resources: postdoctoral researchers and authors from developing countries often face pressure to publish (assessments, career progression, securing grants) and can be easy targets for promises of rapid publication.

Publishing in predatory journals can taint a researcher’s academic record, waste resources (payment of APCs, working hours), and undermine institutional evaluations that rely on innocuous metrics.

International studies and surveys indicate that a significant proportion of authors have published, intentionally or unintentionally, in questionable outlets, a problem that escalates when multiplied by scientific evaluations that ignore the journal’s quality. In addition to the “classic” scenario of predatory publishing, related practices are emerging that exacerbate the credibility crisis: manipulation of peer review (such as fake reviewers or stolen identities), improper authorship or “guest authorship,” salami slicing, and, more recently, the irresponsible use of artificial intelligence to generate unverified texts and data.

The result is chain contamination: many false or poorly validated articles are cited by systematic reviews, integrated into evidence databases, and ultimately replicated in policies or journalistic output, multiplying the damage.

Recent investigations into paper mills have exposed how well-organized fraudsters manage to infiltrate reputable journals and dramatically increase the number of retractions. Faced with this emergency, various initiatives and actors have been working to mitigate the problem.

Editorial ethics organizations such as the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) have produced guidelines to identify and prevent predatory behavior and to help publishers and institutions strengthen editorial governance standards. The Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) has revised and tightened its indexing criteria to serve as a “whitelist” of reliable open access journals.

Regional databases and networks, such as SciELO, have strengthened curation and editorial training policies in Latin American countries, while commercial services (such as Cabell’s) and independent initiatives maintain lists and reports that help libraries and researchers check for risks.

Institutional guidelines and recommendations for research administrations have also emerged on how to train researchers to identify risks and avoid wasting resources.

Despite these efforts, there are limits and risks: blacklists can be wrong or stigmatize journals that are in the process of improving; criteria applied in global northern contexts do not always fit the editorial realities of other regions; and the speed with which paper mills and sophisticated techniques (including AI tools) evolve often outpace defenses.

Therefore, experts point out that the response must be integrated: education and training in scientific integrity for students and faculty; institutional policies that value quality over quantity in evaluations; editorial transparency (review data, conflict of interest policies, editor identities); automatic screening tools (plagiarism detection, statistical analysis of suspicious series); and cooperation between libraries, funding agencies, and indexers.

In short, the rise of predatory publishing is a symptom of a flawed chain of incentives: the attention market, simplistic metrics, and pressure for productivity.

Addressing the problem requires a combination of vigilance (reliable lists and curators), training (scientific and editorial literacy), and reform of academic evaluation practices. Without these practices, there is a risk that science, whose authority is based on rigorous and verifiable processes, will lose its trust that allows it to guide public and private decisions. The response is therefore technical and ethical—and it needs to be collective, transparent, and adaptive, because the agents of editorial fraud also change tactics quickly.

Note

1. A ascensão do predatory publishing: quando a publicação científica vira negócio. Zeppelini Publishers. 2025, [viewed 23 January 2026]. Available from: https://zeppelini.https://zeppelini.com.br/a-ascensao-do-predatory-publishing-quando-a-publicacao-cientifica-vira-negocio-et-al-341/↩

References

A ascensão das publicações ‘predatórias’. Hora de Campinas. 2026. [viewed 23 January 2026]. Available from: https://horacampinas.com.br/a-ascensao-das-publicacoes-predatorias-por-carmino-de-souza/

A ascensão do predatory publishing: quando a publicação científica vira negócio. Zeppelini Publishers. 2025, [viewed 23 January 2026]. Available from: https://zeppelini.https://zeppelini.com.br/a-ascensao-do-predatory-publishing-quando-a-publicacao-cientifica-vira-negocio-et-al-341/

Original article in Portuguese

A ascensão das publicações ‘predatórias’

About Carmino Antonio De Souza

Carmino Antonio De Souza is a full professor at Unicamp. He was Health Secretary for the state of São Paulo in the 1990s (1993-1994) and for the city of Campinas between 2013 and 2020. He was Executive Secretary of the Special Secretariat for Science, Research, and Development in Health of the state Government of São Paulo in 2022 and current Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Butantan Foundation. He is currently Scientific Director of the Brazilian Association of Hematology, Hemotherapy, and Cell Therapy (ABHH) and Principal investigator for CEPID-CancerThera, supported by FAPESP.

Translated from the original in Portuguese by Lilian Nassi-Calò.