Requested to write a review by a predatory journal?

[Bored_Conscious]

Hi all,

I joined a lab recently and my PI requested that I write a literature review. He says that he receives requests from journals occasionally to write reviews and he will hand one off to me.

Well a couple weeks ago he passed on a review request to me from the Journal of European Society of Medicine. I believe their official journal is called the Medical Research Archives.
(Medical Research Archives)

I didn't think much of it initially, but today I decided to take a look at the journal that requested the submission and I found links (European Society of Medicine solicitations) that seem to make me think the journal is predatory.

I have my suspicions that this is a predatory journal.

This is my first project assigned to me by my PI. I'm not entirely sure if he is even aware that this is a predatory journal or not and I don't know how to approach him regarding this. I don't want to be rude and accuse him of wasting my time by writing an illegitimate review or whatever. It's highly likely the cost of publication will be exorbitant and the fact that it most likely won't even be indexed into pubmed is disheartening.

What should I do?

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[Bored_Conscious]

Okay, well I was able to find "Medical Research Archives" in this predatory journals list: https://archive.fo/9MAAD that I found another SDN user linked awhile ago to check if the journals were predatory.

What should I tell my PI? Should I go forward with writing the review or request a new review/project?

 

[GoSpursGo]

I don't think you should accuse your PI of "wasting your time," but it is totally fair game to say "Hey I as I was starting the process of preparing this paper I came across some evidence that this may be a predatory journal--what do you think?" He will probably thank you for catching this and not wasting HIS time.

 

[Bored_Conscious]

I don't think you should accuse your PI of "wasting your time," but it is totally fair game to say "Hey I as I was starting the process of preparing this paper I came across some evidence that this may be a predatory journal--what do you think?" He will probably thank you for catching this and not wasting HIS time.

Yes, for sure. I didn't intend on coming off rudely.

Should I go ahead and get the paper written before approaching him and suggesting that maybe we should try to publish the paper in a different journal?

 

[GoSpursGo]

Yes, for sure. I didn't intend on coming off rudely.

Should I go ahead and get the paper written before approaching him and suggesting that maybe we should try to publish the paper in a different journal?

I think just raise your concerns now. Who knows whether the next literature review that is requested of him would be the same as the one you would write for this journal.

 

[NotAProgDirector]

I agree you should ask your PI.

Looking at their actual website, this looks very sketchy. They promise a peer review answer within 20 days. Copy editing takes 5-7 days. And they claim that "On average, in PubMed MRA articles receive 6.54 citations.". Which is insane, that would be the caliber of a highly regarded journal.

** EDIT: looking at Pub Med, very few of their "articles" are actually indexed. There's only 53 of them. I am not certain why this is, but it wouldn't surprise me if after paying your publication fee, there's yet more fees to be indexed.

And fees, well at least they are open about that:

Looking at the journal, scan down the articles to see what their quality is. Many have nothing to do with medicine (which is fine, but also means I can't assess them at all). But a quick look will show you that this is junk.

There's this critical publication: View of An overview of lockdown measures, vaccination rollout and other treatment strategies used against COVID-19 in the past triennium since the start of the global pandemic in the United Kingdom. It explains that apparently there was this COVID pandemic thing? And there were lockdowns. And then there were some vaccines too. And apparently there were some treatments also. It's incredibly poorly written, misses all sorts of nuances in the results of studies, and is completely useless.

So, do your homework and talk to your PI. There's some chance that they were completely unaware that they would get a bill for $3200 to publish this, perhaps confusing it with "Archives of Medical Research" which is a reputable journal. Perhaps they know this is bogus and they wanted to see if you would figure that out. Perhaps they know it's bogus, don't care, and are giving this to you just to see what you can do before giving you something serious.

Whatever you do, post back here so we know how the story ends!

 

[Lost in Translation]

Paying to publish? LMAO wouldn’t even send my undergrad Egyptian History paper to them.

 

[imidazzle92]

Paying to publish? LMAO wouldn’t even send my undergrad Egyptian History paper to them.

Not uncommon to have to pay to publish in open access. JAHA and other reputable journals have this.

 

[Bored_Conscious]

I agree you should ask your PI.

Looking at their actual website, this looks very sketchy. They promise a peer review answer within 20 days. Copy editing takes 5-7 days. And they claim that "On average, in PubMed MRA articles receive 6.54 citations.". Which is insane, that would be the caliber of a highly regarded journal.

** EDIT: looking at Pub Med, very few of their "articles" are actually indexed. There's only 53 of them. I am not certain why this is, but it wouldn't surprise me if after paying your publication fee, there's yet more fees to be indexed.

And fees, well at least they are open about that:

View attachment 366634

Looking at the journal, scan down the articles to see what their quality is. Many have nothing to do with medicine (which is fine, but also means I can't assess them at all). But a quick look will show you that this is junk.

There's this critical publication: View of An overview of lockdown measures, vaccination rollout and other treatment strategies used against COVID-19 in the past triennium since the start of the global pandemic in the United Kingdom. It explains that apparently there was this COVID pandemic thing? And there were lockdowns. And then there were some vaccines too. And apparently there were some treatments also. It's incredibly poorly written, misses all sorts of nuances in the results of studies, and is completely useless.

So, do your homework and talk to your PI. There's some chance that they were completely unaware that they would get a bill for $3200 to publish this, perhaps confusing it with "Archives of Medical Research" which is a reputable journal. Perhaps they know this is bogus and they wanted to see if you would figure that out. Perhaps they know it's bogus, don't care, and are giving this to you just to see what you can do before giving you something serious.

Whatever you do, post back here so we know how the story ends!

Reached out to my PI regarding my concerns and he got back to me pretty quickly. Said to just focus on the actual review and that he will find a good journal to publish the paper in that is not predatory.

 

[Goro]

Paying to publish? LMAO wouldn’t even send my undergrad Egyptian History paper to them.



That's their business model.

 

[JoaoMoutinho]

Paying to publish? LMAO wouldn’t even send my undergrad Egyptian History paper to them.

Publishing options | Nature

Publishing options

www.nature.com

Honestly, that's nothing compared to some journals. Nature conveniently added this feature as many funding agencies have moved to require papers to be published open access.

 

[SurfingDoctor]

Um… if you’re NIH funded… you have to pay for open access in 2026