An overview of studies assessing predatory journals within the biomedical sciences

The proliferation of predatory journals (PJs) poses challenges to the integrity and reliability of scientific research. This study provides a comprehensive overview of studies assessing predatory practices in the biomedical sciences and the evaluation of their methodologies.

We systematically searched three databases: PubMed, Web of Science and Scopus. We included review-type studies published in English that assessed PJs within biomedical fields. We analyzed the characteristics of PJs, and methodological quality using the advice of "a measurement tool to assess systematic reviews" (AMSTAR-2) and the Cochrane Handbook.

Fifty articles were included in the analysis. The first review of PJs was published in 2015. More than 80% of the reviews were published from 2018 onwards. The studies most often focused on the lack of an adequate peer review process (33/50), time to publication (30/50), and level of article processing charge (27/50). Concerning methodological quality, none of the studies fulfilled all the suggested items; 30 of the studies did not meet any of them.

The methodological quality of the existing reviews was rather low, and the results of the present study may help researchers improve the methodological quality of future reviews on this topic.