From: Kevin Smith <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Fri, 24 May 2013 01:52:06 +0000

My fundamental criticism, Jeffrey, is not with the criteria you use to
identify predatory practices, but with your limitation of their
application to OA publishers.  And even if we accept the rationale for
that limitation that some of the representatives of the traditional
business model for publishing have suggested on this list, I still
have a question.  Now that the American Journal of Public Health has
announced that they are extending their embargo period on open access
for older articles from 2 to 10 years, and have asked authors to pay
$1000 for OA if they want to shorten that period -- and these are
authors who expected OA after two years when they published in AJPH --
will you list that journal as predatory?  If not, why not?

Kevin

Kevin L. Smith, J.D.
Director of Scholarly Communication
Duke University Libraries
P.O. Box 90193
Durham, NC 27708


On May 23, 2013, at 8:12 PM, "LIBLICENSE" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> 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
> [log in to unmask]