Hijacked journals, hijacked web-sites, journal phishing, misleading metrics, and predatory publishing: actual and potential threats to academic integrity and publishing ethics

Academic research has always faced challenges associated with assuring its quality and seeking optimal ways of representing results. Conducting a high level of research and selecting a suitable target publisher and journal require careful attention. The choice of publishing venue has been expanded by the open access (OA) movement, spurring additional scientific activity. The benefits of OA, which consist, generally speaking, in making the results of empirical research and/or the results of intellectual work available almost immediately and to a wide audience, have also introduced a number of threats and challenges to the academic world. On one hand, the number of opportunities to publish has increased significantly. On the other hand, the traditional system of peer review that was always perceived to exert a level of control by the academic community with respect to the quality of publications, has become less strict and rigorous, or has shown flaws. Collectively, a researcher faces a number of challenges when wanting to publish in an OA journal. This paper focuses on some of the threats to the integrity of the expanding OA movement, specifically hijacked journals, hijacked websites, journal phishing, misleading metrics, and predatory publishing.