Publications

The context of predatory journals

The image is a graph showing the increasing evolution over the years of the number of journals, indicating the proportion of reliable journals and predatory journals. We can see that predatory journals began in 2010 in small numbers and reached almost half of the total number of journals in 2018.

Source: "Combatting Predatory Academic Journals and Conferences"
Consulted 9 January 2025

Several factors have directly or indirectly encouraged the growth of low-quality journals:

  • The development of Open Access policies: these journals have positioned themselves in this segment

  • The strong incentive to publish ("Publish or Perish"), particularly as a result of exclusively quantitative evaluation or institutional obligations, such as having a minimum number of publications to defend a thesis

  • The economic context: the high and rising cost of APCs and Open Access licences is putting increasing pressure on budgets. As a result, the often much lower APCs of low-quality journals can appear particularly attractive.