Predatory journals in education sciences: an exploratory analysis

There are various signs and corpus of evidence that show that the so-called "predatory publications" have been penetrating the research community worldwide, undoubtedly driven by an academic culture increasingly dominated by the phenomenon of publish or perish. Although being a quite problematic phenomenon, there are no evidences on the impact of these journals in the educational sciences. Our study aims at analysing and describing the predatory journals focused on education. To do this we used data extracted from Cabell's Predatory Reports and a total of 443 journals have been identified and analysed. Results show that the number of predatory journals in education is quite relevant although being inferior if compared with other disciplines. The main characteristics of these journals are presented and some suggestions are made based on this explanatory and pioneering study.