The ‘cultural’ capital for scientists is publications. Whether it’s a tenured professor, for whom the length of the publication list is decisive, or a young researcher who needs three journal articles for their dissertation: one of the central ‘currencies’ in science is the number of publications. Depending on the discipline, these are either articles in academic journals (mostly in the natural sciences, life sciences, and empirical social sciences) or books/book chapters in edited volumes (mostly in the [German-speaking] humanities and theoretical social sciences).
Under the catchphrase ‘Publish or Perish’, one can summarize that most scientists are under more or less significant pressure to regularly publish their research. The problem: science only works if there is some quality assurance between the researcher’s draft and the final publication. In most academic journals, this happens through so-called (double-blind) peer review. That means the submitted articles are sent by the journal editors to anonymous experts in the field, who review the article, provide suggestions for improvement, and can also prevent publication. (Which actually happens quite frequently!)
This system is far from perfect, but it does ensure that a certain minimum standard is maintained in academic articles. The problem: for the submitting scientist, this creates an enormous risk. They must invest time and effort into an article without any guarantee that it will be published. It’s not uncommon for an article to go through several rounds of revisions at a journal before it is finally published – or ultimately rejected – which can take several (!) months. Especially for early-career researchers, who are usually employed on fixed-term contracts and who must present a certain number of publications to keep their funding or to complete their dissertation, this uncertainty can lead to existential problems.
Enter Shady Science: Predatory Publishing
A wide variety of rather dubious business models exploit this problem. There are thousands of self-proclaimed ‘academic journals‘ that take a very loose approach to quality assurance – in exchange for payment, of course. Concretely, this means that the publishers of these journals exploit the need (and ignorance) of researchers to make money: they offer guaranteed publication of articles regardless of quality. At the same time, they suggest on their websites that their publications undergo quality control in the form of peer review. In academic jargon, this practice is known as ‘predatory publishing’.
My Study
As part of my work at the RRC, I sifted through a large number of these predatory journals. One thing caught my attention: the published articles (which, incidentally, are usually provided as PDFs in both legitimate and illegitimate journals) already looked somehow odd at first glance. When you’ve been in academia for a while, you develop a kind of ‘gut feeling‘ that something is ‘off’ with these documents. I investigated this feeling with a quantified approach (i.e. analyzing PDF files via Python) and published the results in a study in the journal Scientometrics.
Direct link (research journal article)
The study was published in the Journal Scientometrics 130, pages 5043–5066 by Springer with the following title:
Evaluating the visual design of science publications—a quantitative approach comparing legitimate and predatory journal papers.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-025-05411-1 (full Open Access)
The Uncanny Valley
The reason for this phenomenon is obvious: the publishers of predatory papers simply want to make money. That means they couldn’t care less about corporate branding, design, or even a minimal sense of aesthetics and layout. Quite the opposite: design costs money. Nevertheless, the papers must at least superficially look as if they were published by a legitimate, reputable publisher. The result: most papers look like they were cobbled together with an office tool. That means more design effort went into them than into a plain Word or LibreOffice template, but they were still not fully ‘designed through’ to the end. This reminds me of a phenomenon in computer graphics known as the ‘Uncanny Valley’.1 In short, this theory states that a (3D) computer model becomes eerier the more human-like it appears. This sense of uncanniness only decreases again once the computer model is indistinguishable from a ‘real human’ (i.e., a photo). A similar phenomenon occurs with predatory papers: they are more than just a quick office document, but less than a sophisticated paper from a renowned publisher.
Findings from the Study
For my study, I compared 443 legitimate (i.e., reputable) and 555 potentially predatory papers. In short, the following aspects emerged:
- On average, texts from predatory journals are significantly shorter than papers from reputable journals, both in character count and in number of pages.
- Reputable journals use more variation in their typography (e.g., italics or boldface) than predatory journals. The variation in typography – i.e., the range between the smallest and largest font sizes used – is also significantly greater in established publications.
- Reputable journals use standard fonts like Arial, Times New Roman, Calibri, or Cambria much less frequently.
- The PDF metadata revealed that predatory journals relied much more often on standard office applications to generate their PDFs.
- Predatory journals, on average, use significantly fewer graphics than legitimate publications.
- The title pages of legitimate publications are more uniform, while those of predatory journals show greater variance.
No significant differences were found in the following aspects:
- The average grayscale value was largely the same in both datasets.
- The number of characters per page.
- The readability score.
Observation: Predatory Mimicry
During the research, I noticed that some predatory journals try to imitate the layout and design of established publishers. In particular, the designs of Elsevier and Springer Open were often copied. This further illustrates the ‘Uncanny Valley’ phenomenon: experienced researchers quickly recognize the imitation, which – often due to the lack of proper tooling on the part of predatory publishers – only appears legitimate at first glance.
Access & Data Availablity
The study is available at the following link as an open access publication: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11192-025-05411-1
Since the PDFs were automatically analyzed using Python, the dataset (license: CC-By Attribution 4.0 International) and the Python code (license: CC-By Attribution 4.0 International) can be found on the OSF with the following DOI: https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/YEVTS
In the press
The study was featured in:
- The Journalist’s Resource: How to spot predatory journals: 4 tips and 2 checklists by Naseem S. Miller. (published September 30th, 2025)
- The Journalist’s Resource: Study sheds light on journalists’ knowledge of predatory journals by Naseem S. Miller. (published September 30th, 2025)
- Retraction Watch: Weekend reads: Stopping citation hallucinations; the ‘uncanny valley’ of predatory journals; fighting back against misconduct (published September 13th, 2025)
- Revista Pesquisa: Olhar enviesado sobre a produção científica by Mônica Manir. (published October 12th, 2025)
- Laborjournal: Wie erkenne ich ein Raubtier(-Journal) by Jan Westermeyer. (published October 16th, 2025)
Other outlets/mentions:
- Occidental College New Angeles (USA): Resources for Research (no publication date given)
- Norecopa (Norway): Prepare for better Science – Journals and online resources (published October 16th, 2025)
- Springer Research Communities: The graphic design of predatory papers by Andreas Siess. (published September 26th 2025)
Acknowledgements
This research was funded by:
- Open Access funding enabled and organized by Projekt DEAL (H-BRS).
- This work was funded by Volkswagen Foundation as part of the initiative Wissenschaftskommunikation hoch drei (Grant Number: Az. 99996)