From: "Armbruster, Chris" <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Fri, 9 Mar 2012 03:19:54 -0800

A few comments

1. The anecdotal evidence collected suggests that the problem exists
and is growing. The perception that you must 'publish or perish' may
drive scholars to submit to (new) publishers/journals without vetting
them. Moreover, some publishers/journals seem to be faking their
credentials - making it hard for the unsuspecting scholar to detect
the scam easily. Importantly and urgently, a more thorough
investigation is needed.

2. Open access advocates and their organizations (e.g. OASPA, DOAJ,
SPARC, KE) should be most interested to establish criteria and
evidence for respectable open access publishing. The whole business
may suffer heavy damage if there are more 'predatory' open access
journals than real ones.

3. The above points are reinforced by noting that Jeffrey Beall last
December had a watch list (Hindawi, MedKnow Publication, PAGEPress,
Versita Open) - much disputed by commentators
(http://metadata.posterous.com/tag/predatoryopenaccessjournals) but
that this list seems to have been dropped from the new blog (without
explanation) and substituted by a new list to be examined
(http://scholarlyoa.com/2012/03/07/publishers-to-examine/). Clearly,
one individual alone cannot establish criteria, cases and evidence.

Chris Armbruster


________________________________________
From: Jim O'Donnell <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Wed, 7 Mar 2012 07:39:36 -0500

Yesterday's Chronicle of Higher Education has a long piece on 'predatory
OA journals', with a focus on the work of a Colorado librarian who
monitors the business.

Do list readers think this is a significant problem? A growing problem?

http://chronicle.com/article/Predatory-Online-Journals/131047/?key=HD10d1VhNHdJbCsyZTgRMj4EOyFoZk0hYn9JPS8pbl9cEQ%3D%3D

Extract:

The practice of charging authors to have their work published is not
inherently problematic, said Jeffrey Beall, a librarian at the
University of Colorado at Denver, who tracks open-access publishers­
that operate on an author-pays model.

"There is nothing wrong with the model itself," Mr. Beall said, citing
author-pays publishers he considers to be legitimate, like the Public
Library of Science (PLoS). But, he said, because the author-pays
system features an inherent conflict of interest—publishers make more
money if they accept more articles—it is ripe for abuse.

Such abuse is becoming more prevalent, Mr. Beall said. On his blog
Scholarly Open Access, he keeps a running list of what he calls
"predatory" open-access publishers. Mr. Beall said he uncovers one new
predatory journal or publishing company about every week, and his list
now totals more than 50 publishers and individual journals.

Mr. Beall defines a "predatory" publisher as one whose main goal is to
generate profits rather than promote academic scholarship. Such
publishers, he said, "add little value to scholarship, pay little
attention to digital preservation, and operate using fly-by-night,
unsustainable business models."

Jim O'Donnell
Georgetown U.