From: "Jean-Claude Guédon" <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Wed, 1 Nov 2017 11:40:36 -0400

The answer to Jim O'Donnell's question lies perhaps in abandoning the
ranking perspective altogether. For one thing, this ranking refers to very
ambiguous (not to say more) characteristics of journals. Instead, it would
be much more useful to establish a quality-threshold that journals should
respect in order to be considered as legitimate. Such a threshold could be
patterned after the criteria used, for example, by Latindex in latin
America (a liste of criteria can be found here: http://www.latindex.org/
latindex/descCampos). It should be managed transparently and openly.

The advantage of such a system is that it would not divide the publishing
world according to the whims of WoS or Scopus, but according to the
transparent criteria agreed to by a number of well-recognized universities
in the world (and not located only or mainly in the northern hemisphere, by
the way).

Just a thought...

Jean-Claude Guédon

Le mardi 31 octobre 2017 à 20:06 -0400, LIBLICENSE a écrit :

From: "Jim O'Donnell" <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Tue, 31 Oct 2017 13:13:17 -0700

I'm always happy to deal with FDIC-insured banks, but there are other
kinds, and lots of people wind up getting the money they need from payday
lenders.  Scientific publishing offers a spectrum as well, and as I see
things like this I realize that a binary good/bad, virtuous/predatory frame
of reference is perhaps a place to start thinking about the issues, but not
a good place to end.

If it's unlikely that you can magically eradicate the ones who fall on the
predatory side of whatever quality-ranking scale you prefer to look at,
what could we actually do to move authors over to the good side of the
scale and the move the dividing line between good and bad in a useful
direction.  Where are the journals in the middle that could be influenced?

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/30/science/predatory-journal
s-academics.html?_r=0

Jim O'Donnell
Arizona State U.