Anesthesia and analgesia
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Predatory publishing is an exploitative fraudulent open-access publishing model that applies charges under the pretense of legitimate publishing operations without actually providing the editorial services associated with legitimate journals. The aim of this study was to analyze this phenomenon in the field of anesthesiology and related specialties (intensive care, critical and respiratory medicine, pain medicine, and emergency care). Two authors independently surveyed a freely accessible, constantly updated version of the original Beall lists of potential, possible, or probable predatory publishers and standalone journals. ⋯ Rules for ethics/scientific misconduct were reported in only 24% of cases (50/212). In conclusion, potential or probable predatory open-access publishers and journals are widely present in the broad field of anesthesiology and related specialties. Researchers should carefully check journals' reported information, including location, editorial board, indexing, and rules for ethics when submitting their manuscripts to open-access journals.