In the spring of 2023, the Presidium of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences decided to set up a committee whose main task was to develop an action plan for science practicioners against questionable publication practices.
As a result of the Committee’s work, a report entitled Proposals for the Handling of Articles for Journals that Engage in Objectionable Practices has been produced and on 16th October published on the MTA website.
Among the proposals from the Committee are:
„Proposal 9: Publications that have been published in journals with objectionable practices should be flagged in the MTMT after they have been listed.
Proposal 10: It is recommended that articles published in journals flagged for questionable publication practices after flagging not be given a „scientific” classification; they would thus appear in the MTMT summary table and not be considered for the title of Doctor of Science, in the selection of academicians, for applications to MTA, or for prize nominations. We recommend that institutions involved in domestic scientific research and funding do likewise.”
The Committee supported the use of the journal classification of the Norwegian Register for the future identification of articles published in journals with dubious practices in non-Hungarian journals. Specifically, it is proposed that articles published in journals classified as „0” in the list should be ignored in the various classifications.
For publications and journals published in Hungarian and in Hungarian journals, the Committee did not support the use of the Norwegian list; here they encourage the use of the classification currently available in the MTMT, which is based on the recommendations of the scientific departments of MTA.
At the end of October 2023, the MTA created a special sub-page on the MTMT website (List of journals that engage in objectionable practices 2024), where authors can get information about the journals concerned. The list will be updated in January–February 2024 on the basis of published final evaluations, but only positive changes will be included.
For more information, please visit the MTA website and study the full report Proposals for the Handling of Articals for Journals that Engage in Objectionable Practices (pdf, Hungarian version).