The surge of predatory open-access in neurosciences and neurology.

Predatory open access is a controversial publishing business model that exploits
the open-access system by charging publication fees in the absence of transparent
editorial services. The credibility of academic publishing is now seriously
threatened by predatory journals, whose articles are accorded real citations and
thus contaminate the genuine scientific records of legitimate journals. This is
of particular concern for public health since clinical practice relies on the
findings generated by scholarly articles. Aim of this study was to compile a list
of predatory journals targeting the neurosciences and neurology disciplines and
to analyze the magnitude and geographical distribution of the phenomenon in these
fields. Eighty-seven predatory journals operate in neurosciences and 101 in
neurology, for a total of 2404 and 3134 articles issued, respectively.
Publication fees range 521-637 USD, much less than those charged by genuine
open-access journals. The country of origin of 26.0-37.0% of the publishers was
impossible to determine due to poor websites or provision of vague or
non-credible locations. Of the rest 35.3-42.0% reported their headquarters in the
USA, 19.0-39.2% in India, 3.0-9.8% in other countries. Although calling
themselves "open-access", none of the journals retrieved was listed in the
Directory of Open Access Journals. However, 14.9-24.7% of them were found to be
indexed in PubMed and PubMed Central, which raises concerns on the criteria for
inclusion of journals and publishers imposed by these popular databases. Scholars
in the neurosciences are advised to use all the available tools to recognize
predatory practices and avoid the downsides of predatory journals.