Publishing research during pandemics: are you vulnerable to the COVID-19 or predatory publishers?

Memon, Aamir Raoof; Rathore, Farooq Azam

The coronavirus disease-2019 outbreak has spread rapidly affecting 1.4 million people across the world in only four months. Healthcare fraternity is struggling to circumvent the consequences of this fast spreading infection and communicating their scientific discoveries through research publications. As a result, the scientific output on COVID-19 is growing rapidly and both the journal editors and authors are interested to publish results on scientific discoveries about it as soon as possible. However, novice and improperly trained authors are at high risk for getting duped by deceptive journals , which might keep their research unnoticed by the scientific and general community. This paper discusses these potential risks posed by deceptive (predatory) journals, for prospective authors and scientific community, during the COVID-19 outbreak. It also presents ways to address those risks and the role of journal editors and academic organisations.