Current and potential cyber attacks on medical journals; guidelines for improving security

Area of Science:

• Scholarly Publishing
• Information Security
• Cybersecurity

Background:

• Academic publishing faces increasing threats from misconduct, including predatory journals, hijacked journals, phishing, and scams.
• There is a notable lack of specific guidelines for editors to protect themselves and their journals against these evolving cyber threats.
• Information security is often overlooked in scholarly publishing, particularly within medical journals.

Purpose of the Study:

• To identify and detail various cyber-attacks targeting academic journal editors and publishing.
• To provide practical guidelines for the detection and prevention of these security threats.
• To prioritize identified cyber-attacks based on their impact and prevalence in scholarly publishing.

Main Methods:

• Analysis of common cyber-attack vectors affecting scholarly publishing.
• Detailed explanation of the mechanisms behind specific threats like predatory and hijacked journals.
• Development of general detection and prevention strategies for editors.
• Inclusion of small-scale experiments to validate proposed methods.

Main Results:

• Categorization of prevalent cyber-attacks in academic publishing.
• Explanation of the modus operandi for each identified threat.
• Presentation of actionable guidelines for editors to enhance journal security.
• Experimental validation of the effectiveness of certain preventative measures.

Conclusions:

• Editors and academic journals require enhanced information security measures to combat cyber threats.
• Proactive detection and prevention strategies are crucial for maintaining the integrity of scholarly publishing.
• Prioritization of threats will enable focused efforts on the most significant risks to academic journals.