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The article presents the word publication essentially means "the act of making public" such information or content which hitherto has remained private to a group of people or an individual. Topics include the creator of the content of the published material as well as to all potential recipients of such published information, and the duty of the publishers to ensure that all published material is valid and true to the best of their judgment.

Scientific conferences, once deemed essential in scholars' lives, are now converting into a high-profit business. These predatory conferences are often organized by some profit-making predatory publishers or manufacturing companies for marketing their product or luring young researchers and scientists to submit their research manuscripts to these so-called predatory journals. Various tactics are used by these conferences to extract money from the researchers and students such as organizing conferences at attractive tourist places with multidisciplinary scope, invitation to submit a research paper to be published at the earliest or to become part of an editorial board/editor-in-chief. It should be realized that these predatory conferences do not provide any benefit to registering individuals for the development of science. The only remedy to expose and stop the business of all such predatory conference organizers is by creating awareness among young scholars and researchers, regarding these predatory conferences and the demerits of attending them, through the established medical and dental institutions, along with specialized associations and societies. A zero-tolerance policy should be created to ban such conferences with a refusal to provide promotion or funding to scholars or researchers attending these conferences. Hence, this narrative review aims to create awareness regarding these predatory conferences, the tactics used by them to trap researchers and ways which young researchers and academic scholars can use to delineate them from legitimate ones. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Currently, there is an increased dependency on the impact factor in scientific research publications. Sometimes the overzealousness in implementing the impact factor value to a publication is detrimental to the growth of the scientific authors, especially the junior lot, for no fault of theirs. The inept and myopic application of the impact factor defeats the purpose of making the value judgment and hence has been criticized by many learned authors. The scientist Eugene Garfield, who formulated the impact factor, feels wrong that it is being not judiciously used. A corollary is the invention dynamite by Alfred Nobel which instead of helping, aiding, and reducing human effort and endeavor it was more misused for human annihilation and pained the scientist who gave it to the world. The authors reexamine the application of impact factor to scientific manuscripts for rightful application of the value judgment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

BACKGROUND: As the list of predatory journals is burgeoning, the researchers should have knowledge of calculating the predatory rate (PR) for the journals, in which they aim to publish their work and self-guard them from publishing in bogus journals. AIM AND OBJECTIVES: Our aim is to find out the predatory rate for various Pharmacology journals. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Here, we have examined the recently updated list (in 2017) of standalone predatory journals created and maintained by Beall, pertinent to all auspices of pharmacology including pharmacy, pharmaceutical, and pharmacognosy. The PR of various journals was calculated. RESULTS: Of 131 journals, pertinent to the pharmacology field, 45.03% of them had the PR between 0.72 and 0.84. 98.5% of journals were classified as predatory, whereas only 2 (1.53%) journals were classified in the category of predatory practice. CONCLUSION: It should be an eye-opener to the researchers, and they should deliberately select the journals to get real recognition of their work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In today's world when biomedical science is experiencing continuous threats from various sources, publication of research articles in predatory journals has created a major havoc. These predatory journals are publishing worthless biomedical science which will haunt genuine researchers and keen readers of authentic biomedical journals for several decades. Hence, researchers of various disciplines and academic experience should be continuously made aware of these predatory publishers and potential ways to recognize them. The main aim of this article is to discuss the issues related to predatory publishing, techniques and strategies used by these publishers to prey young inexperienced researchers, and disadvantages of publishing in predatory journals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author conveys his thoughts on issues related to predatory journals. Topics discussed include the impact of predatory journals on scientists, the science itself, and other legitimate processes and entities, the primary reasons for the widespread distribution of predatory journals and growth in their numbers, and the practice of regulatory bodies linking promotion of medical teachers to the number of research publications without examining the quality of the study.

The article offers information related to the phenomenon of predatory open access publishing. It is noted that researchers can maximize the impact of their work by making their research open access, which enables readers to view, read, download, copy and distribute. Topics discussed include popularity of the concept of open access, issues related to predatory publishing in ophthalmology and launch of initiative called "Think. Check. Submit" in 2015 to raise awareness of disreputable journals.