To the best of our knowledge, this is the first online survey in the field of orthopaedic and trauma surgery to specifically address the current awareness of predatory journals and open access publishing in Germany. We found that only 39.9% of all participants were aware of predatory journals. Age, gender or the field of professional activity did not correlate with the knowledge on predatory journals. Regardless of the medical subspecialty, knowledge about predatory journals is alarmingly limited. In line with our findings, the prevalence of awareness varies between 29.4% in dermatology and 69.7% in oncology [9, 10]. In this concern, Cohen et al. interviewed several editorial publishers who are listed as editors of a predatory journal, showing that 77.0% reported a high level of knowledge on the danger associated with predatory journals. However, 40.0% of the contacted editors were not aware of being an editor for this journal in particular [11].
Our data demonstrated, that both the professional occupation and the employer / working place impacts the knowledge of predatory journals. Surprisingly, the knowledge of the underlying danger was very high, particularly among students. However, this could be based on a bias, as this survey only included individual students (n = 8) who had made early contributions in the field of orthopaedics and trauma surgery, for example through scientific lectures on a congress. Furthermore, a more fundamental comparison with the literature is not possible due to a lack of surveys among students, but would be very informative both before and after the integrated academic course on “good clinical practice”.
Only 31.7% of the residents knew the term “predatory journals”. In comparison knowledge in dermatological residents was lower (20.3%) [9] whilst awareness in oncological residents (47.8%) [10] was much more pronounced. Whereas the awareness level of the predatory journals among junior consultants (37.5%) and senior consultants (36.6%) within our collective was similar to that of the residents, the familiarity of the predatory journals in dermatology showed an increase to 33.3% among senior consultants. However, the share in oncology consultants remained similar to that of residents at 46.3% [9, 10]. Furthermore, there was a close association between the level of scientific expertise and the knowledge of predatory journals. This is reflected by the fact that 71% of the professors and 61.4% of the colleagues who achieved the “habilitation”, which is a qualification required in order to conduct self-contained university teaching, were familiar with the issue. This is in line with the findings by Richtig et al. [9]. Christopher et al. emphasized that the term predatory journals is often misunderstood and the danger is thus further underestimated. As especially trainees were unaware of the hazard, they recommend early education of younger professionals, [12]. As previously described in the literature, our findings also indicate that participants employed by university hospitals or research institutions were substantially more likely to be aware of the threat posed by predatory journals [9, 10].
Nevertheless, knowledge about Open Access journals seems to be very limited. Although the majority of the surveyed had a clear understanding of how to cover the costs of a conventional or an Open Access journal, the ideas about the publishing process differed considerably. This becomes clear, as for example a relatively large proportion of participants answered questions about the editorial board and the peer review process with “not specified”. To the opposite, 63.6% of the respondents stated that they would critically review the title of the journal before submission and 45.4% claimed to critically review the editorial board. Surprisingly low was the proportion (6.3%) of those who answered the question “I prefer to publish in an Open Access journal rather than in a subscription journal” with strongly agree / agree. 31.3% were convinced that it was easier to publish in an open access journal than in a conventional journal. This study did not investigate the impact factor’s influence on the planned publication, but the literature clearly showed that this was a decisive factor for many authors [13]. Furthermore, publication fees are an important factor in the decision-making process when considering publishing. Koroulakis et al. showed that more than 50% of the residents made their choice to publish at least once dependent on publication fees [13]. In our cohort, only 19.9% of participants stated that publication costs play a secondary role. 12.7% were uncertain, while for 41.9% the publication costs were a decisive factor.
29.6% of all participants were familiar with the “think, check and submit” approach, while less (21.0%) have ever heard about the DOAJ. In contrast, Swanberg et al. showed that almost 50% of the study participants knew that journals listed in the DOAJ were considered legitimate [14]. Therefore, it is important, that already alongside their academic education, young academics are side advised of the possible dangers by predatory journals on the one hand and on the other hand learn about the “think, check and submit” approach, the Journal Citation Reports (JCR) list and the DOAJ with mandatory courses on “good clinical practice”. Since even a co-authorship in a predatory journal can lead to great harm, the small effort to identify fake journals before submission should be made [15]. While the effects may seem limited at first, we think it might become apparent in the longer term, for example through incorrect treatment recommendations in patient care. Only a sincere peer review process can help to avoid misleading literature.
Richtig et al. reported that three quarters of all interviewed participants regularly received advertising e-mails with requests/offers for publication from different journals. In most cases (77.5%) these were from predatory journals [10]. We found, that the number of papers published positively correlated with the number of e-mail requests received per week and with the professional occupation. However, this does not only affect the co-responding author, whose e-mail contact is easily available on the published paper. The question is, how can publishers protect authors from these unpleasant daily annoyances? Are contact details only to be given out on justified request? Recently, this problem is gaining increased attention.
Although the study reveal a bigger threat of predatory journals as before thought, some limitations governed the resulting conclusion. The main limitation of this study is that we only surveyed orthopaedists and trauma surgeons who were included in the mailing list of the German Society for Orthopaedics and Trauma Surgery (DGOU) online. Thus, not all orthopaedic and trauma surgeons in Germany could be reached. Second, the overall response rate of 4% was low. Nevertheless, our results are similar to those described in the literature. Perhaps in a shortened questionnaire more than 291 of the 350 participants would have answered all questions, leading to a smaller drop-out rate.
Overall, we consider our results to be representative for Germany. We base it on the fact that, according to the Federal Medical Association (Bundesärztekammer), 19.158 orthopaedic and trauma surgeons are registered in Germany. About half of them are members of the DGOU. Thus, our survey was made available to almost 50% of the orthopaedic and trauma surgeons in Germany. According to the DGOU, 10,2% of members are clinic directors, 19,9% are senior consultants, and 16.7% are junior consultants. Our response rate deviates slightly from this to an excess representation of clinic directors and senior consultants. However, this deviation is negligible from our point of view.
