ArticleJournal of the Medical Library Association : JMLA2025
Analyzing the citation impact of predatory journals in the health sciences.
Article in Journal of the Medical Library Association : JMLA, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.
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
0 citing papers in PubMed.
No citing paper in PubMed yet.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Objective: Predatory journal articles do not undergo rigorous peer review and so their quality is potentially lower. Citing them disseminates the unreliable data they may contain and may undermine the integrity of science. Using citation analysis techniques, this study investigates the influence of predatory journals in the health sciences. Methods: The twenty-six journals in the "Medical Sciences" category of a known predatory publisher were selected. The number of articles published by these journals was recorded based on the information from their websites. The "Cited References" search function in Web of Science was used to retrieve citation data for these journals. Results: Of the 3,671 articles published in these predatory journals, 1,151 (31.4%) were cited at least once by 3,613 articles indexed in Web of Science. The number of articles that cited articles published in predatory journals increased significantly from 64 in 2014 to 665 in 2022, an increase of 10-fold in nine years. The citing articles were published by researchers from all over the world (from high-, middle-, and lower-income countries) and in the journals of traditional and open access publishers. Forty-three percent (1,560/3,613) of the citing articles were supported by research funds. Conclusions: The content from articles published in predatory journals has infiltrated reputable health sciences journals to a substantial extent. It is crucial to develop strategies to prevent citing such articles.
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.