From: Stevan Harnad <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Sun, 15 Jul 2012 20:09:23 -0400

Is this for real? Trash the competition? Moral high ground?

(Maybe Dr. Masters should sue Jeff Beall, the way El Naschie
sued Nature, and other low quality journal-publishers have
threatened to sue Richard Poynder?)


On 2012-07-15, at 6:35 PM, LIBLICENSE wrote:

> From: Ken Masters <[log in to unmask]>
> Date: Sat, 14 Jul 2012 06:56:54 +0200
>
> Hi All
>
> Prof. Beall's list must be taken with a mountain of salt, as it is
> fraught with problems.
>
> For example, he makes it clear that he does NOT evaluate at the
> journal level, only at publisher level.  How then, we should ask, does
> he get to include independent journals on his list?  How then, does he
> evaluate article quality?
>
> On the moral side, in which he attempts to take the high ground, he
> does not disclose that he is on the editorial board of a journal
> published by Taylor & Francis.  He has very effectively used his blog,
> Facebook, The Chronicle,  and, inadvertently, this list, to trash the
> competition.
>
> There are many other problems with his list, but far too numerous to
> repeat on this list.
>
> 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 12 July 2012 21:23, LIBLICENSE <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
>> From: Richard Poynder <[log in to unmask]
>> Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2012 21:01:47 +0100
>>
>> Jeffrey Beall, a metadata librarian at the University of Colorado
>> Denver, maintains a list of what he calls “predatory publishers”. That
>> is, publishers who, as Beall puts it, “unprofessionally exploit the
>> gold open-access model for their own profit.” Amongst other things,
>> this can mean that papers are subjected to little or no peer review
>> before they are published.
>>
>> Currently, Beall’s blog list of predatory publishers lists over 100
>> separate companies, and 38 independent journals. And the list is
>> growing by 3 to 4 new publishers each week.
>>
>> Beall’s opening salvo against predatory publishers came in 2009, when
>> he published a review of the OA publisher Bentham Open for The
>> Charleston Advisor. Since then, he has written further articles on the
>> topic, and has been featured twice in The Chronicle of Higher
>> Education.
>>
>> His work on predatory publishers has caused Beall to become seriously
>> concerned about the risks attached to gold OA. And he is surprised at
>> how little attention these risks get from the research community. As
>> he puts it, “I am dismayed that most discussions of gold open-access
>> fail to include the quality problems I have documented. Too many OA
>> commenters look only at the theory and ignore the practice. We must
>> ‘maintain the integrity of the academic record’, and I am doubtful
>> that gold open-access is the best long-term way to accomplish that.”
>>
>> An interview with Jeffrey Beall is available here:
>>
>> http://poynder.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/oa-interviews-jeffrey-beall-university.html
>>
>> Richard Poynder