gms | German Medical Science

21. Jahrestagung des Deutschen Netzwerks Evidenzbasierte Medizin e. V.

Deutsches Netzwerk Evidenzbasierte Medizin e. V.

13. - 15.02.2020, Basel, Schweiz

Real and false teeth: The search of questionable (“predatory”) dental journals

Meeting Abstract

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  • Jens Christoph Türp - Universitäres Zentrum für Zahnmedizin Basel, Klinik für Oral Health & Medicine, Basel, Schweiz
  • Gerd Antes - LMU München, Institut für Didaktik und Ausbildungsforschung, München, Deutschland

Nützliche patientenrelevante Forschung. 21. Jahrestagung des Deutschen Netzwerks Evidenzbasierte Medizin. Basel, Schweiz, 13.-15.02.2020. Düsseldorf: German Medical Science GMS Publishing House; 2020. Doc20ebmS6-V1-03

doi: 10.3205/20ebm037, urn:nbn:de:0183-20ebm0378

Published: February 12, 2020

© 2020 Türp et al.
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License. See license information at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.


Outline

Text

Background/research question: The phenomenon of daily unsolicited emails inviting/urging/pushing the recipient to submit a manuscript to (often unknown) dental journals can be seen as an unwanted and annoying side effect of open access. An overall analysis of the journals in question, the publishers, and related characteristics remains a desideratum, however.

Methods: Between January 2017 and October 2019 we created a list containing the titles of all dental journals that were mentioned in these emails. We then searched the websites of the publishers of the email-related journals to identify additional pertinent titles. Subsequently, we documented the following features: publishing companies and number of dental journals issued by them; publication start and end dates; number of published articles (original articles, reviews, case reports, editorials, guest editorials, short communications, letters to the editors, journal reviews, book reviews, obituaries); publication charges; membership in the Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association; listing of the title in the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ); journals that have been awarded the DOAJ Seal of Approval for Open Access Journals; journals that are referenced (as “indexed” or “currently not indexed”) in the NCBI Databases (NLM Catalog); existence of characteristics commonly associated with predatory journals.

Results: We identified 187 dental journals published by 93 companies. Among them, one single publisher located in India has offered 53 titles. Additional results of our analysis will be presented at the annual conference of the Network for Evidence-based Medicine in Basel.

Conclusion: The awareness of the wide dissemination of questionable journals and the negative consequences for both the dental/medical community and potential authors should be considerably increased.

Competing interests: The authors declare that there is no conflict of interest.