Unveiling the Predators: Contemporary Approaches to Identifying Illegitimate Open Access Journals in the Academic Publishing Ecosystem

Abstract

Predatory journals pose a significant challenge to the integrity of the Open Access (OA) publishing model by exploiting its framework for financial gain while bypassing essential editorial and peer-review standards. This study critically evaluates existing methodologies for identifying such journals, ranging from manual blacklist checks to advanced automated approaches utilizing machine learning. The analysis highlights critical limitations, including the lack of a universally accepted definition of predatory journals, over-reliance on binary classification systems (e.g., blacklists and whitelists), and issues with scalability, reliability and interpretability. To address these shortcomings, this paper introduces a novel methodology based on multivariate graph analysis. By modeling the academic publishing ecosystem as a network of interconnected entities (such as authors, articles, journals, and publishers), this approach provides broader insights into the dynamics of scholarly communication and could help identify illegitimate publishing practices by utilizing graph algorithms like centrality measures, community detection, and anomaly detection. The proposed framework aims to enhance the accuracy, scalability, and transparency of detection of illegitimate journals and publishing practices while fostering a more comprehensive understanding of the academic publishing landscape.