KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Hijacked journals imitate authentic journals and breach research ethics by publishing plagiarised, fabricated, or non-peer reviewed papers.
• Over 60 hijacked journals have been identified in the indexing database Scopus, prompting Elsevier to remove all source homepage links from the database.

Journal hijacking is an increasingly recognised form of publishing fraud, in which the identity of legitimate journals is stolen. Many papers in hijacked journals have been found to be plagiarised, fabricated, or published without peer review. But just how concerned should we be?

A ScienceInsider article by Jeffrey Brainard highlighted a recent study revealing that 67 hijacked journals were documented in the renowned scholarly database Scopus up to September 2023. Of these journals:

• 33 had indexed unauthorised content
• 23 had compromised the journal’s homepage link
• 11 had done both.

These hijacked journals represent a small minority of the more than 27,000 active, peer-reviewed journals indexed in Scopus. Nevertheless, Anna Abalkina, the study author, argues that the indexing of hijacked journals in scholarly databases can have far-reaching effects. Unauthorised content may be cited and thus imported into other databases, corrupting the scholarly record.

Indexing of hijacked journals in scholarly databases can have far-reaching effects. Unauthorised content may be cited and thus imported into other databases, corrupting the scholarly record.

In order to create an illusion of authenticity, journal hijackers often use or mimic a legitimate journal’s title, ISSN, and other metadata. They then use a variety of methods to infiltrate indexing databases, known as ‘indexjacking’, including:

• compromising a journal’s homepage link to instead link to a cloned website
• hacking the website of a legitimate journal
• registering an expired domain of a legitimate journal
• targeting print-only journals with inactive or unestablished homepage links.

In response to Abalkina’s study, Elsevier launched an investigation into the journals in question and confirmed that they had already removed 13 illicit journal homepage links from Scopus. In December 2023, the publisher went a step further and announced the decision to remove all source homepage links from the database. However, Abalkina cautions that this may not be enough to prevent hijacked journals from infiltrating databases, and encourages researchers to also use the Hijacked Journal Checker she launched in 2022 in partnership with Retraction Watch.

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