Avoiding predatory publishing for early-career ophthalmologists

This article aims at analyzing the impact of predatory publishing in ophthalmology, criteria to identify a legitimate journal, red flags of a predatory journal, sources, and checkpoints available before publishing scientific work in a standard ophthalmology journal. A retrospective review was performed and a list of suspected Ophthalmology predatory journals was extracted through four major so-called blacklists: Beall’s, Cabell’s, Manca’s, and Strinzel’s list. This list of journals was then cross-referenced with the UGC CARE and vetted whitelist of vision science journals to remove the legitimate journals. Moreover, as all the predatory journals are supposed to be open access, all possible types of open-access journals on the Scimago webpage were also searched. A gross estimate in terms of publication cost was searched for, and a list of authentic links to find out a legitimate journal was prepared. Additionally, the methodology by which these predatory journals penetrate legitimate indexes such as PubMed was also evaluated. A total of 51 ophthalmology predatory journals were enlisted. Thirty-eight out of 124 Ophthalmology journals listed on Scimago were open access, and the cost of publishing in predatory journals ranged from USD50–500, which is substantially lower than that in legitimate journals (USD 50–3000). A total of 13 open-access platforms exist, with 10 characteristic red flags to identify a predatory journal. These journals have penetrated legitimate indexes such as PubMed by similar-sounding names to the legitimate journals and have published articles with external funding, which needs indexing. Predatory publishing impacts the quality of research in every field, including Ophthalmology, and must be discouraged.