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The question might feel a little common out here, but allow me to explain more.

I am a Junior Year CS Student and in my early days of getting involved in publishing conference papers, research articles in journals led me to certain journals which apparently fell under the Beal's list of Predatory Journals.

My question is How does a publication in such journals affect my profile in two domains:

1. Academia - Where all professors are highly educated and experienced and may/may not know about such journals. I would love to hear from anyone from the academia how do you treat such a candidate, whose early experience has been publishing in Predatory Journals? Does this affect my prospects of Further Studies such as MS/PhD?

I have transitioned from that phase and have a paper in progress worthy of publication in an IEEE Conference. My prior publications belong to IJRASET, IJSER - both apparently falling under Beal's List of Predatory Journals.

2. Industry: Assuming I switch from Academia to Industry and have mentioned publications from these predatory journals on my Resume/CV, How does the Industry perceive this and whether it affect my prospects of bagging an offer from them?

Looking forward to a healthy discussion, worthy suggestions and insights from the users will be highly appreciated and helpful!

aryashah2k
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    Related: https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/38538/68109 – GoodDeeds Sep 28 '21 at 09:12
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    Have you already published in such journals or only considering it? – Buffy Sep 28 '21 at 10:37
  • @Buffy, Hey there, I have one paper in IJRASET already published and was considering to publish one in IJSER,(The preprint being almost ready). – aryashah2k Sep 28 '21 at 12:26
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    Why do you knowingly want to publish in a predatory journal again? – GoodDeeds Sep 28 '21 at 12:47
  • That's a great question and the reason is simple for me, being a Junior, I do not match with cutting edge research pedagogies but that does not mean that the research I do is subminimal, it is just not to the mark to be publish worthy in State of the art journals say CVPR, which is highly revered upon by budding researchers. As someone who devotes time to do research that he is capable of, I do feel the urge to get my work out, without bothering much about the background of the journal(this is the old me.) Hence, I might knowingly want to publish in such journals... – aryashah2k Sep 28 '21 at 13:09
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    There's a difference between a low tier venue and a predatory venue. Can't you try publishing in the former instead? In research contexts, publishing in a predatory venue is worse than not publishing at all or just uploading a preprint on arXiv. – GoodDeeds Sep 28 '21 at 13:21
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    @aryashah2k No. Bad. Stop. You don't have to publish in Q1 in order not to publish in predatory journals, and "I do feel the urge to get my work out" must be moderated by a great deal of reason. If you feel like you must share results ASAP, arXiv exists. Post on twitter, if you will - just do not approach academic publishing in a way that is comparable to Instagram thirst traps... Please. Even if it is salami slicing publishing, you'd be still far better off doing it in journals which have at least some dignity and integrity. – Lodinn Sep 28 '21 at 13:21
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    See e.g. https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/103770/68109 – GoodDeeds Sep 28 '21 at 13:26
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    In fact, assuming your work is incremental but sound, you risk unnecessarily sullying it by associating it with a predatory venue, and would likely make any serious reader summarily disregard it. – GoodDeeds Sep 28 '21 at 13:33
  • @GoodDeeds, that indeed is kind of you for helping me out with your views and suggestions, I do agree when you said I could target legit but low level Journals or even an Arxiv preprint rather than just ruining the credibility of my work by falling into these "thirst traps". Thanks a lot for throwing light on this, grateful for that! – aryashah2k Sep 28 '21 at 14:10

1 Answers1

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You don't have a say, anymore, over what you have done in the past, so, having published once in a predatory journal is not a concern. It is what it is. But you do have a say in what you do in the future.

I's recommend that you not publish in journals that many consider disreputable. The main reason is not that they publish for money, but that they will publish just about anything for money. They don't have the same standards of scientific review that reputable journals do. You don't want to get associated with disreputable practices or low-quality work.

You are early enough in your career to make a turn to the light side, so that you won't be judged much, or for long, for your early actions. But if you continue on that way, you are unlikely to prosper.

If your work is of such low quality that you can publish only on predatory journals that will be recognized. The solution isn't to publish again in such places, but to improve the work sufficiently (as necessary) to be published in reputable venues. Quantity doesn't trump quality in academic work.

But the fact that you are doing any research as a Junior in college is impressive. Don't dilute that by going to the dark side. The more you do that, the worse it will get.

Buffy
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  • This is really helpful, thanks a lot for this. A lot of points mentioned by you are actually super meaningful and something that I can always carry with me as far as I belong to this Industry. – aryashah2k Sep 28 '21 at 13:10