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These operate by publishing academic work with few or no checks in return for a fee.

¡°Hijacked¡± journals are those that pretend to be existing, reputable journals in order to dupe academics into sending them their paper and fee.

The figures come from Jeffrey Beall, a librarian at the University of Colorado Denver, who compiles lists of such journals and publishes them on his blog Scholarly Open Access.

A study of predatory journals released last year found that a majority of academics publishing in such journals were from Asia, particularly India, while the practice was also rife in Nigeria.

It also argued that the term ¡°predatory¡± is misleading, because many of the academics involved are likely to be fully aware of the journal¡¯s lack of standards, but are nevertheless happy to be published there in the hope that it will boost their careers.

david.matthews@tesglobal.com