Contribution of Iranians to Journals Published by Predatory Publishers in 2015

To measure the contribution of Iranian academics as author, editor, member of editorial board and referee in the journals published by predatory publishers (Beall’s list) in 2015.
Scientometrics approach. Population consists of all predatory journals. A random sample of journals was selected from a random sample of predatory publishers and then information about Iranian articles in those journals during 2015 was collected.
973 Iranian authors from 70 institutions published 372 articles in the sample journals in 2015. Islamic Azad University holds the highest record with 211 articles and 437 authors. Iranian authors have probably paid about 113000 USD for the publication of their articles.
Iranians have a high participation as author, editorial board member and chief editor in predatory publishers’ journals. These could be considered as a huge threat for the science cycle of the country. An evidence of the undesirable impact of these journals is the authors’ tendency towards citing the articles appeared in this context because of their more accessibility. This deficiency invalids the research originality