I don't understand the conflation between gaming an impact
factor (by publishers?  by editors?),  "predatory behavior,"
Beall's list, subscription vs. OA, and all the other variables/players
discussed below.

They are related to each other because...?

  Bill

On 6/23/13 4:54 PM, LIBLICENSE wrote:
> From: Kevin Smith <[log in to unmask]>
> Date: Fri, 21 Jun 2013 15:04:03 +0000
>
> This blog post made me curious.  Surely gaming the impact factor is a
> practice we should be made aware of in the academic library world,
> since impact is a selling point for subscriptions.  So are there
> subscription journals on this list, or are such "predatory practices"
> really confined to open access publishing?
>
> The Nature blog post initially led me to think that, regardless of
> business model, these were very obscure journals.  They cite two
> specific titles, and it is probably fair to call the Iranian Journal
> of Fuzzy Systems obscure, at least to Western academics.  It is
> apparently published by an Iranian university.  But the other one
> named, the International Journal of Crashworthiness, is published by
> Taylor and Francis, so is likely part of a journal package sold to
> many universities.  Knowing that made me more curious.
>
> I selected a random sample of fifteen of these titles to see who
> published them.  While it would be unfair to blame the publishers for
> all of the practices that caused Thomson Reuters to ban these titles,
> knowing their sources can at least give us a better idea of the scope
> of the problem of dubious publishing practices.  So from my random
> sample of fifteen titles, here is a breakdown of who the publishers of
> these banned titles are:
>
> * Only one of the fifteen is a purely open access journal, published
> by an association and not on Beall's list of predatory OA
> publications.  The remainder appear to be subscription journals, most
> with a "hybrid" paid OA option.
>
> * One other, in addition to the OA title mentioned above, is published
> by an association.
>
> * Four are published by small presses of which I have not heard before
> (a subjective classification, I know).
>
> * The remaining nine titles from my sample are published by four of
> the large commercial academic publishers: Taylor and Francis (2), Sage
> (3), Elsevier (2), and Springer (2).
>
> This breakdown confirms my impression that we need to have a broader
> discussion about publishing ethics and good stewardship of academic
> resources rather than focusing our attention only on misbehaving open
> access publishers.
>
> Kevin L. Smith, M.L.S., J.D.
> Director, Copyright and Scholarly Communication
> Duke University Libraries
> P.O. Box 90193
> Durham, NC  27708
> [log in to unmask]
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Pamela Puryear <[log in to unmask]>
> Date: Thu, 20 Jun 2013 10:35:14 -0400
>
> http://blogs.nature.com/news/2013/06/new-record-66-journals-banned-for-boosting-impact-factor-with-self-citations.html
>
> Pamela E. Puryear, MA, MLS, CCRM
> NCARS Resource Manager
> North Carolina Agricultural Research Service (NCARS)