Ten (Bad) reasons researchers publish their papers in hijacked journals

Every researcher and academic must now be aware of ‘predatory journals and conferences’. There is a voluminous literature on predatory journals and publishers, but another dangerous and unethical phenomena in academic publishing are ‘hijacked journals’. This term was coined by Dr. Mehrdad Jalalian, an Iranian editor, to describe fake websites that mimic authentic journals to attract submissions (Jalalian & Dadkhah, 2015). Hijacked journals are often more difficult to detect than other publishing predators. That is because their fake websites are often very sophisticated and detection may require an advanced level of information technology (IT) knowledge. There are some computer-based solutions for detecting hijacked journals (Shahri et al., 2018), but these solutions require advanced IT knowledge. Clark and Thompson (2017) describe five bad reasons people offer for publishing in predatory journals (Clark & Thompson, 2017). This paper inspired us to present ten (bad) reasons researchers proffer for publishing in hijacked journals. Victims of hijacked journals do not usually have advanced IT knowledge. The hijacked journal scam uses a realistic website posing as the authentic site of a legitimate journal. Advanced IT users can normally spot the fakes, but they can dupe the unwary. Because hijacked journals are like phishing attacks, people who can detect phishing websites can detect hijacked journals too. Both attacks are becoming increasingly sophisticated. Writers must treat every journal website as potentially suspicious until they have double-checked that it is legitimate. Often an email inquiry to the editor or publisher will confirm that a website URL is either genuine or fake. Perpetrators usually hijack journals that are indexed in scientific databases (Shahri et al., 2018). Journals with especially reputable indexing, such as Scopus, PubMed, Medline and Web of Science (WOS), are good targets for hijackers. In addition, hijackers prefer journals in which authors must pay for publication. Career advancement generally depends on publication in indexed journals, but intended or unintended publishing in a hijacked journal defeats that purpose. A fake journal website will naturally claim ‘indexing’ as part of the scam, as their desire is to appear as reputable as possible. Nothing on a hijacked journal website can be deemed to be honest. The sole purpose of these websites is to take authors’ money. They do indeed. This is how they entice the unwary and dishonest to pay for publication. Good peer review requires good reviewers, which takes time. Publishing in the most prestigious journals usually takes extra time, with rejection and revisions rates being especially high. Finding an indexed journal with fast review and quick publication is attractive to unaware authors. ‘If it looks too good to be true. Then it is too good to be true’ remains wise advice. If a journal is offering rapid review times and almost guaranteed acceptance, this should ring alarm bells with any author. Every academic and author must now have an email box full of spam ‘invitations’, to publish, present and join ‘esteemed’ journal editorial boards. It is almost unbelievable that anyone could imagine that such ‘bot-driven flattery’ is genuine. Researchers should be able to distinguish between a genuine ‘call for papers’ from a bona-fide journal and spam flattery. Today's authors and researchers need ‘detectors’ that inoculate them against believing any of the ‘honourable invitations’ that appear in their email. Their default position must be that all such ‘invitations’ are as fake as the journals and conferences that they come from. Unfortunately, some hijacked journals, along with their fake URLs, may be indexed in scientific databases (Dadkhah, 2016). Authors who use those scientific databases may not notice the fake URLs, choosing the hijacked version of what was expected to be authentic. Once again, unless authors have verified and satisfied themselves that a journal website is genuine, no ‘metrics’ on a hijacked journal fake website can be accepted. Many researchers do not know what hijacked journals are. They may be unaware that an individual can create decoy websites, passing them off as genuine journal websites. Hijackers should never be underestimated or dismissed as ‘stupid’. These are accomplished, expert, cybercriminals for whom creating a realistic hijacked journal website poses little challenge. Many of these hijacked journals are extremely difficult to detect. Unfortunately, the number of published papers about hijacked journals is limited and an updated, comprehensive list of them is not readily available. Their profits, however, depend upon authors undertaking no checks and merely submitting their work to a journal that ‘looks OK’. Researchers and all academics can no longer be so naïve or trusting when it comes to publishing their work. Of course they did. The hijackers would not be making millions of dollars with a shoddy or unconvincing product. Some authentic journals do not maintain their websites well. Often, a search for the journal name fails to find them. The journals with low page ranking are special targets of hijackers. The hijackers then improve SEO (search engine optimisation) for the fake website, causing it to be returned as the first result in search engines (Dadkhah et al., 2017). So, an unaware author is likely to click on the fake website instead of authentic site of the authentic journal, which might not even be on the first page of the search. Never equate ‘good looking’ with authentic in relation to journal websites. Because the detection of hijacked journals is difficult and many supervisors also are unaware of them, some dishonest researchers intentionally publish in them. Such publication can help those so inclined to boost their CV. If you do this, intentionally supporting hijackers, you are guilty of academic fraud. It is now that simple. Sometimes hijacked journals target known researchers and hire them as editorial board members. Such researchers may be completely unaware of the hijacked nature of such journals. This can mislead other researchers into trusting such a journal and submitting their papers. Also, some researchers might even recommend a hijacked journal to others who regret the slow pace of legitimate journals. Other academics have found their images and details lifted from other websites and used in hijacked journals without their knowledge. They may be listed as ‘Editor-in Chief’ of some fake journal with absolutely no knowledge of this identity theft. As hijacked journals are fraudulent, dealing with them can be especially difficult for any authors entrapped by them. Researchers who submit papers by mistake will find the withdrawal process to be impossible. Hijacked journals may even publish papers without the usual exorbitant publication charge when they need to fill their issues with papers that look like those in the legitimate journal. Some authors have often been charged excessive sums to have their papers ‘withdrawn’. Naturally, when dealing with fraudsters, there is no guarantee that such withdrawal will ever occur, even after payment. In brief, a hijacked journal is a replica fake website mimicking an authentic, reputable indexed journal. Hijackers receive publication charges and may actually post the prospective author's papers on the fake website—for a while. Hijackers use the ISSN and name of the original journal in their fake website (or sometimes by doing small changes in the name of original journal) (Jalalian & Dadkhah, 2015). Exposing hijacked journals is not possible without developing good information technology solutions and an educational plan. The educational plan is necessary for both authors and editors. Authors need to know how to detect the hijacked version of a journal and editors need to know how to protect their journals from being hijacked. Figure 1 shows that the detection of hijacked journals is not possible by simply viewing a website. A comprehensive list of hijacked journals is not available, nor do we even know how many there are. There has been some research on detection, with a few new ones being exposed (Abalkina, 2021). Academics and potential authors can no longer consider publishing from a basis of naïve trust. Cybercriminals with their fake and hijacked journals are too ubiquitous to ignore. All prospective authors should be aware that journal websites may be fake. What used to be the search for reputable journals, now becomes a search for their authentic websites as well. Now, we need to assume there may be multiple websites for a journal, with only one being legitimate. We cannot be too careful or undertake too many checks and validations as we publish our work. The care and critical thinking that researchers devoted to their statistics, interpretations, methodologies and presented arguments, now need to be devoted to selecting and verifying their chosen journals. None. The authors declare no conflict of interest.