ArticlePloS one2023
Predatory journals: Perception, impact and use of Beall's list by the scientific community-A bibliometric big data study.
Article in PloS one, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. An erratum has been issued. Cited by 7 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
7 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Multi-Organ Phenotypes of Offspring Born Following Hypertensive Disorders of Pregnancy: A Systematic Review.Journal of the American Heart Association · 2024Pooled it
- [Publish well in anesthesiology: Quality standards and dealing with predatory journals].Die Anaesthesiologie · 2026Article
- Climate change and water-related diseases: a bibliometric, knowledge map, topic modeling, and content analysis.Journal of water and health · 2026Article
- Ethical Challenges of the “Publish or Perish” Culture in Clinical Research: Insights from the COVID-19 PandemicBalkan medical journal · 2025Article
- Publishers' Response to Post-Publication Concerns About Clinical Research in Women's Health.BJOG : an international journal of obstetrics and gynaecology · 2025Article
- The crucial role and challenges of medical journal editors in the modern era.Journal of clinical orthopaedics and trauma · 2025Article
- Correction: Predatory journals: Perception, impact and use of Beall's list by the scientific community-A bibliometric big data study.PloS one · 2024Article
Corrections and comments
- Erratum issued
Authors and funding
8 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Beall's list is widely used to identify potentially predatory journals. With this study, we aim to investigate the impact of Beall's list on the perception of listed journals as well as on the publication and citation behavior of the scientific community. We performed comprehensive bibliometric analyses of data extracted from the ISSN database, PubMed, PubMed Central (PMC), Crossref, Scopus and Web of Science. Citation analysis was performed by data extracted from the Crossref Cited-by database. At the time of analysis, Beall's list consisted of 1,289 standalone journals and 1,162 publishers, which corresponds to 21,735 individual journals. Of these, 3,206 (38.8%) were located in the United States, 2,484 in India (30.0%), and 585 in United Kingdom (7.1%). The majority of journals were listed in the ISSN database (n = 8,266), Crossref (n = 5,155), PubMed (n = 1,139), Scopus (n = 570), DOAJ (n = 224), PMC (n = 135) or Web of Science (n = 50). The number of articles published by journals on Beall's list as well as on the DOAJ continuously increased from 2011 to 2017. In 2018, the number of articles published by journals on Beall's list decreased. Journals on Beall's list were more often cited when listed in Web of Science (CI 95% 5.5 to 21.5; OR = 10.7) and PMC (CI 95% 6.3 to 14.1; OR = 9.4). It seems that the importance of Beall's list for the scientific community is overestimated. In contrast, journals are more likely to be selected for publication or citation when indexed by commonly used and renowned databases. Thus, the providers of these databases must be aware of their impact and verify that good publication practice standards are being applied by the journals listed.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.