Author Reply Re: Jena R, Sharma AP, Madhavan K, Sridhar AN, Parmar K, Shrivastava N. What should urologists know about pseudojournals and open access publishing? A narrative review of the literature. Indian J Urol 2022;38:184-90

We would like to thank the authors of this letter for their kind words of appreciation and acknowledging the fact that the article is timely and informative to the readers.[1] The key observations made by the authors regarding the whitelist journals and PUBMED database are correct. Indeed, there are journals in the whitelist which charge large article processing fees for publications. The second point regarding the infiltration of predatory journals in PUBMED has also been highlighted in our article and that researchers need to be wary of this fact as well to prevent themselves from getting duped by these journals. Our reasons on whether the journal was genuine or pseudojournal have been mentioned in the Supplementary Table of the original article. The decision was made based on the SAFEiMAP checklist.[1] We also appreciate suggestions from the authors to further objectify the checklist to give a clear idea to the researcher whether the journal is genuine or a pseudojournal. We are already in the process of refining the checklist to make it more compact and provide a scoring system for helping researchers further. A PRISMA flow diagram is an important part of any systematic review or meta-analysis. However, strictly speaking, the literature search was done in view of existing checklists and the article took a narrative review aiming to make the readers aware of the existence and the perils of predatory publishing in addition to educating them on the concepts of open access publishing.[2] Hence, the PRISMA flow diagram was omitted. Using statistical methods to arrive at the points in this checklist is well-nigh impossible because it is difficult to lend objectivity to the characteristics of a pseudojournal. The red flag signs compiled in the checklist were those characteristics which had a recurring trend in our list of pseudojournals. The SAFEiMAP is a simple acronym for the detailed checklist and hence is easy to remember. The validity and comparative benefit of this checklist was not a part of the current study and hence this shall remain an area of potential research. The authors of the letter have added valuable points regarding the establishment of mechanism for retraction of the articles from pseudojournals to a genuine journal. Regarding promotional interview in academia, there are established criteria at various institutes such as inclusion of articles in journals indexed in Science Citation Index and exclusion of articles published in pseudojournals. Moreover, for clinical branches, more determinants can be factored in while considering for promotional interviews such as surgical outcomes, clinical skills, and teaching skills based on peer and trainee evaluations and patient satisfaction rates.[3] Financial support and sponsorship: Nil. Conflicts of interest: There are no conflicts of interest.