From: Richard Poynder <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Mon, 17 Sep 2012 14:32:15 +0100

Founded in 1997, Hindawi Publishing Corporation was the first
subscription publisher to convert its entire portfolio of journals to
Open Access (OA). This has enabled the company to grow very rapidly
and today it publishes over 400 OA journals.

The speed of Hindawi’s growth, which included creating many new
journals in a short space of time and mass mailing researchers, led to
suspicion that it was a “predatory” organisation. Today, however, most
of its detractors have been won round and — bar the occasional hiccup
— Hindawi is viewed as a respectable and responsible publisher.

Nevertheless, Hindawi’s story poses a number of questions. First, how
do researchers distinguish between good and bad publishers in today’s
Internet-fuelled publishing revolution, and what constitutes
acceptable practice anyway? Second, does today’s Western-centric
publishing culture tend to discriminate against publishers based in
the developing world? Third, might the author-side payment model fast
becoming the norm in OA publishing turn out to be flawed? Finally, can
we expect OA publishing to prove less expensive than subscription
publishing? If not, what are the implications?

These at least were some of the questions that occurred to me during
my interview with Ahmed Hindawi.

The interview can be read here:
http://poynder.blogspot.fi/2012/09/the-oa-interviews-ahmed-hindawi-founder.html

Richard Poynder