From: Stevan Harnad <[log in to unmask]> Date: Thu, 23 May 2013 00:22:25 -0400 Obvious and profound difference between bottom-rung subscription journals and bottom-rung OA journals: subscription journals have to convince multiple subscribers that they have a product worth paying for, sustainably, otherwise no journal; authors risk only their article, not their money. Publishers risk their investment. Not so with bottom-rung OA journals, where, with next to no investment, publisher takes next to no risk, and author, often unknowingly, takes all the risk. SH On 2013-05-22, at 8:34 PM, LIBLICENSE <[log in to unmask]> wrote: From: Kevin Smith <[log in to unmask]> Date: Wed, 22 May 2013 00:18:12 +0000 It seems obviously true, to me, that all journals, whether OA or subscription-bassed, should be judged on their merits. And also that there are predatory practices amongst some journal publishers of both types. 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)? Why is shoddy or non-existent peer-review predatory at an OA journal, but not when it is discovered in a "traditional" journal from a commercial publisher (as it sometimes is)? It is also true, by the way, that bloggers need to be careful about defamation. Some of Beall's criticisms of specific publishers are stronger than I would be comfortable making. I hope and am prepared to believe that he has evidence for what he says, since truth is always a defense against defamation, at least in US courts. But the post I found recently about OMICS was pretty vague -- mentioning "evidence" without specification and quoting a single anonymous scientist. So I feel obligated to withhold judgment about the specific accusation, while hoping that the threat is just a bluff or that Jeffrey can rebuff it. I hope this mostly because of the chilling effect that such threats can have on the free exchange of ideas about scholarly publishing, independently of what I personally think about the value of Beall's own contribution to that exchange. Kevin Kevin L. Smith, M.L.S., J.D. Director of Copyright and Scholarly Communications Duke University Libraries Durham, NC 27708 [log in to unmask]