Predatory publishing continues

I keep hoping that there will be no more need to address predatory publishing and I can cover more substantive nursing and clinical issues in these editorials. However, between each editorial—and many have been on predatory publishing (Watson, 2015a,b, 2017a,b, 2018)—something new arises. A recent email from the Cabell’s team indicated that there are now over 10,000 verified predatory journals and some suspicion that this could be the “tip of the iceberg.” It is hardly surprising, therefore, that people continue to be defrauded by these criminals who have polluted academic publishing. I have recently returned from the Middle East where I met someone who thought they were publishing in a nursing journal with an impact factor of 14. He was crestfallen when I told him that no nursing journal on the Clarivate list had an impact factor exceeding 4. He had parted with several hundred US dollars for the privilege of being published in a predatory journal. But his problems did not stop there. He asked the journal not to publish his article and, assuming they had agreed, he proceeded to publish the article in a bona fide journal only to be accused of duplication when he came up for annual review. The article had, unknown to him, been published by the predatory journal. I do not know where all this will end for him but predatory journals are notoriously unresponsive to emails unless you are offering them a manuscript and, of course, money