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