From: "Beall, Jeffrey" <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Thu, 23 May 2013 13:32:36 -0600

Dear Kevin and members of the list:

I would like to clarify an apparent misunderstanding regarding the
criteria I have established for determining predatory open-access
scholarly publishers. In his recent email, Kevin wrote:

"My principal objection to Beall's list is that it is critical of only
some of those practices, based on the business model employed.  Why is
to predatory to ask an author to pay a few hundred dollars in
processing charges for open access, but not predatory to increase a
small college's subscription to a single journal 300% overnight (which
has happened several times, in my experience, when small society
journals are bought by large commercial publishers)?"

Nowhere have I said that charging processing fees equates to a journal
or publisher being predatory. Indeed, there are dozens or hundreds of
gold OA journals that charge such fees that are not on my lists. Could
you point out any specific examples where my language implies that the
article processing fee alone was indicated as the reason for
classifying a publisher
as predatory? Upon seeing these, I'll clarify the language, as this
was not my intent.

My criticism is not directed at the gold OA publishing model but at
those who exploit it for their own unwarranted profit.

Thank you,

Jeffrey Beall, MA, MSLS, Associate Professor
Scholarly Initiatives Librarian
Auraria Library
University of Colorado Denver
Denver, Colo.  80204 USA
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