From: Ken Masters <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Wed, 19 Dec 2012 10:23:45 +0400

Hi All

I agree that any publishers who exploit researchers' desires to be
published and who charge for services that are not delivered should be
exposed.  (Naturally, this should apply to open access and non open
access publishers alike).

But I believe that the process should be formalised properly,
otherwise it devolves quickly into what may look like a screaming
match of accusations and counter-accusations.  Before any exposing can
be done, the criteria should be clear, explicit, visible, relevant,
and have strong support for being valid criteria.  (e.g. the fact that
a publisher is large or small, is seldom (ever?) relevant.  The fact
that a publisher is based in a "foreign" country, is not only
irrelevant, but smacks of the worst kind of jingoism and even racism,
and I would certainly not put my name to a list that held that as a
criterion.)

Once the criteria have been established, for each publisher so named,
there should be explicit details and cases.  This should not be
something based on hearsay or rumor or vague feelings of disquiet.
The explicit documentation is crucial, and follows the same principle
of any research - it allows any skeptics to examine the validity of
the criticisms against the specific cases.  For example, simply saying
that a publisher publishes material of questionable quality is
meaningless, unless we have explicit information.  (E.g. to which
articles are you referring? what are the inaccuracies? who performed
the evaluation, and what qualifies them to perform such an
evaluation?)

It is unlikely that any one person is qualified (or has the time) to
examine all the articles published by a particular publisher (unless
the number of articles is very small), so making the claim to have
done so immediately stains the credibility of the review unless that
reviewer gives more details.  The reviewers would have to be explicit
in their qualifications and background to justify the validity of
their reviews - as much as I respect librarians, I do not know of many
who have MDs (or the equivalent), and are therefore qualified (and
have the time) to review a wide range of journal articles from a
medical publisher.  If they do, then this needs to be stated to add
credibility to the review.  The same would go for almost any other
discipline.

Along that line, one should also not confuse a publisher with a
journal, or even a journal article - many respected publishers have
had bad spots (e.g. to taint Elsevier because of a few shady editors
is nonsensical, and will quickly make the critic look idiotic - to be
balanced, we should take the same approach with all publishers).  We
have all seen papers in respected journals that have questionable
references, and we may wonder at how carefully the peer-reviewers have
done their work - to taint an entire company as fraudulent on the
strength of that is an abuse of a privileged position.  (And yes, I
believe everybody on this list is in a very privileged position).  On
this list, the number of retractions from respected commercial
publishers has never led to their being labelled as "predatory," yet,
if the retraction is to be taken as admission of error, then it is
obvious that those articles were of questionable quality, and the
publishers made money from them.

The value of having this credibility would allow one to go one stage
further: checking on the review process.  For example, if a paper were
questionable, then the editor of the journal could be mailed and could
be asked to submit proof of peer-review (No demands, no accusations,
requests).  The editor would need to check that this was ok with the
author and the reviewers, and there may be issues of confidentiality,
but I would hazard that it may be a painless process. After a proper
evaluation of the review documentation, one could determine the cause
of the problem: maybe the reviewers just messed up; maybe an author
was 'bullied' into writing something s/he didn't want to write (yes,
it happens), etc.

And when the review of the publisher has been written, then follow
your own criteria to the letter.  Don't self-publish it in a blog that
has no peer-review, and over which your have the facility to quash
dissenting voices by not publishing their comments.  Rather, submit it
to a respected journal with proper peer-review, and peer-reviewers who
are committed to pick up on any unfounded generalizations and
speculations, and have the paper go through the process that we demand
from respected publishers.  (This appears self-evident, given the
subject.)

Yes, this does involve work.  Without it, however, the classification
or criticisms have no validity at all.  When we reach that stage, then
the criticisms become valid criticisms of a system or publisher.  And,
in so doing, we contribute to the quality of research everywhere.

Disclaimer: I am the editor of an open access journal whose publisher
appears on a list of "predatory" publishers.   It's no secret that
Jeffrey Beall and I have a difference of opinion on several issues
(which I believe could be amicably resolved), but I don't agree with
the tactics that he has reported have been used against him.

Regards

Ken

Dr. Ken Masters
Asst. Professor: Medical Informatics
Medical Education Unit
College of Medicine & Health Sciences
Sultan Qaboos University
Sultanate of Oman
E-i-C: The Internet Journal of Medical Education


On 19 December 2012 05:34, LIBLICENSE <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> From: Stevan Harnad <[log in to unmask]>
> Date: Tue, 18 Dec 2012 13:57:26 -0500
>
> The research community needs to unite to expose, name and shame these increasingly criminal practices by predatory "publishers" bent on making a fast buck by abusing the research community's legitimate desire for open access (OA) (as well as exploiting some researchers' temptation to get accepted for publication fast, no matter what the cost or quality).
>
> I cannot omit mentioning that this is yet another symptom of "gold fever," in which researchers mistakenly assume that OA only means publishing their articles in a gold OA journal (often for a price) and forget about green OA self-archiving of articles published in subscription journals, and at no additional cost.
>
> Green OA retains the quality and track-record of established journals, and needs to come first. If and when universally mandated green OA makes subscriptions unsustainable, that's the time to for journals to make the transition to gold OA, maintaining their respective authorships, readerships, refereeships, and titles, hence their quality and track-record.
>
> The price of pre-emptive gold fever is not just the extra gold OA fees, over and above what is still being paid for subscriptions that remain uncancelable until there is universal green OA as an alternative, but, as we see, the growth of these bottom-feeding junk-journals, purveying fool's gold.
>
> Jeffrey Beall is performing an invaluable service: Let us all help him by naming and shaming the false-name-shamers so they don't keep treating the research community like a community of suckers waiting (and asking) to be bilked.
>
> Stevan Harnad
>
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: Peter Suber <[log in to unmask]>
> Date: Tue, Dec 18, 2012 at 12:48 PM
>
> [Forwarding from Jeffrey Beall, via the ScholComm list.  --Peter Suber.]
>
> Colleagues,
>
> I am the author of Scholarly Open Access, a blog that includes lists of questionable scholarly publishers and questionable independent journals.
>
> I'm writing to let people that I've been the victim of an ongoing, organized attempt to discredit me and my blog.  Specifically, I've been a victim of email spoofing, in which someone is sending emails that appear to be from me but really are not.
>
> One of the spoofed emails is an offer to "reevaluate" a publisher's presence on my list for five thousand dollars. These emails try to make it look like I am extorting money from publishers.
>
> Also, someone is going around setting up new blogs that reprint the spoofed email or that include contrived quotes from scholars. An example is here.
>
> Additionally, someone is leaving negative comments about me and my work on various OA-related blogs and websites, writing in the names of people prominent in the OA movement. One place this occurred was in the comments section of my October Nature piece. The publisher has removed these spurious statements and closed further comments.
>
> I'm going to continue my work identifying questionable and predatory publishers as best I can. Because many of the publishers on my list are true criminals, it's no surprise that they would respond in a criminal way.
>
> I realize my blog is not perfect; I've made mistakes and have tried to learn from them. Many of you have given me valuable advice, and I have tried to implement the good advice as best I could. I have not engaged in any of the activities that they are trying to frame me with.
>
> Thanks for your understanding.
>
> Jeffrey
>
> Jeffrey Beall, MA, MSLS, Associate Professor
> Scholarly Initiatives Librarian
> Auraria Library
> University of Colorado Denver
> Denver, Colo.  80204 USA
> [log in to unmask]