Characteristics of blacklisted journals: Evidence from Chinese-language academic journals

ABSTRACT

Some institutions have issued blacklists of academic journals in China and use them as a basis for research evaluation. However, due to a lack of transparent formulation criteria, the characteristics of blacklisted journals remain unclear. Using blacklisted academic journals of the East China University of Political Science and Law, this study analyzed differences in characteristics between blacklisted and non-blacklisted journals via web surveys and statistical analyses. Statistically significant differences were detected for article review time, article processing charges (APCs), the number of editorial board members, and the journal impact factor. There was no significant difference in the number of editors. While there is scientific merit in creating and publishing a blacklist of academic journals, the list development process requires more rigorous evaluation and a public process of development.

KEYWORDS:

• Journal blacklists
• academic journals
• research evaluation
• predatory journals

Acknowledgments

We would like to acknowledge Prof. Monica Berger and another anonymous reviewer for their insights that greatly improved our work. Notably, we are grateful to Editor-in-Chief Lisa M. Rasmussen and associate editor Kelly Laas for their great editorial support.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/08989621.2022.2112953.

Notes

1. The impact factors for English-language journals are provided by the Clarivate. The impact factors for Chinese academic journals (mentioned below) are provided by the China Scientometrics and Bibliometrics Research Center. The formulae for calculating both are the same.

2. This blacklist is currently not publicly available. However, one official media outlet provided the list on its website: https://www.sohu.com/a/308019141_260616?qq-pf-to=pcqq.c2c.

3. The makers of the two annual reports ranked their journals. We subsequently combined the two annual reports and renumbered the journals according to the rankings of the makers: 2021 Annual Report for Chinese Academic Journal Impact Factors (Social Science) being first and 2021 Annual Report for Chinese Academic Journal Impact Factors (Natural Science) being second.

4. In order to ensure that the recovery rate and the identity of the interviewees meet the requirements of the questionnaire, we only distributed the questionnaires to researchers and editors at our institution (Sichuan Academy of Social Sciences).

5. The results of the questionnaire are presented in the Supplement 2.

6. k is a given year, Nk-1 + Nk-2 is the number of papers published in the journal in the previous year or two years, and nk-1 and nk-2 are the number of citations to the journal in the previous year or two years.

7. $\mathrm{journal}\mathrm{impact}\mathrm{index}=\sqrt{2}-\sqrt{{\left(1-\mathit{A}\right)}^2+{\left(1-\mathit{B}\right)}^2}$;

$\mathit{A}=\frac{\mathit{I}{\mathit{F}}_{\mathrm{Individual}\mathrm{publications}}-\mathit{I}{F}_{\mathrm{Minimum}\mathrm{in}\mathrm{group}}}{\mathit{I}{F}_{\mathrm{Maximum}\mathrm{in}\mathrm{group}}-\mathit{I}{F}_{\mathrm{Minimum}\mathrm{in}\mathrm{group}}}\mathit{\hspace{0.17em}}\mathit{A}\text{isin}\left[0,1\right]$;

$\mathit{B}=\frac{\mathit{T}{\mathit{C}}_{\mathrm{Individual}\mathrm{publications}}-\mathit{T}{C}_{\mathrm{Minimum}\mathrm{in}\mathrm{group}}}{\mathit{T}{C}_{\mathrm{Maximum}\mathrm{in}\mathrm{group}}-\mathit{T}{C}_{\mathrm{Minimum}\mathrm{in}\mathrm{group}}}\mathit{\hspace{0.17em}}\mathit{B}\text{isin}\left[0,1\right]$

8. The maximum number of days for a manuscript submitted to the journal to receive a first decision.

9. B₃ had 32 and 70 samples of data from journal websites and journal review websites, respectively. B₆ had 79 and 23 samples of data from journal websites and journal review websites, respectively.

10. The eshukan website (http://eshukan.com/) compiles information on all Chinese academic journals (like https://www.scimagojr.com/). It includes the journal’s submission URL, aim and scope, and allows researchers to share their experiences of submitting to the respective journals. When reviewing journals, researchers will be asked to provide optional information on the length of the review time, APCs and whether papers were accepted.

Additional information

Funding

The authors of this study didn’t receive any funding neither from industry nor from academic institutions.