Predatory journals: Do not judge journals by their Editorial Board Members

Objective: Given that often the quality of journals is based on its editors, the objective of this study was to describe quantitatively the profiles of members of editorial boards (MEBs) of presumed predatory journals. Methods: The following information was retrieved from 1015 editors taken from journals listed in Beall's list: country, university, position, and degree. The Scopus website was used to identify the number of citations, documents, and h-index. Results: Presumed open access predatory journals are including all types of profiles as their MEBs, which include fake and unqualified editors, but mostly very high-qualified scientists who are professors, medical doctors and/or had a PhD. MEBs were located in 74 different countries, most had an affiliation in the United States of America (USA) (44.4%). The median of publications per editor was 43, number of citations 664 and h-index 14. Conclusions: The results dispute the common belief that it is possible to identify predatory journals by checking their editorial boards. Scientists should not rely on the editors to determine if a journal is predatory. If an author has doubt, the editors should be contacted.