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Inserting commentaries attributed to Bivens-Tatum and Berger; combining paras 1 and 4 under Reception, then reformatting the whole into three para.
Updating the opening section (History and Beall's List) to provide another example of a test of the Open Access system. Commentary on the maturity advantage of established publications, added to Reception para 2, last sentence.
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Beall published his first list of predatory publishers in 2010.<ref name=Butler /> In August 2012 he posted his criteria for evaluating publishers,<ref name=Butler /> with the second edition posted on December 1 the same year.<ref name=BeallCriteria2ndEd>{{cite web |last1=Beall |first1=Jeffrey |title=Criteria for Determining Predatory Open-Access Publishers (2nd edition) |url=http://scholarlyoa.com/2012/11/30/criteria-for-determining-predatory-open-access-publishers-2nd-edition/ |website=Scholarly Open Access |date=December 1, 2012}}</ref> In February 2013 he added a process for a publisher to appeal its inclusion in the list.<ref name=Butler />
Beall published his first list of predatory publishers in 2010.<ref name=Butler /> In August 2012 he posted his criteria for evaluating publishers,<ref name=Butler /> with the second edition posted on December 1 the same year.<ref name=BeallCriteria2ndEd>{{cite web |last1=Beall |first1=Jeffrey |title=Criteria for Determining Predatory Open-Access Publishers (2nd edition) |url=http://scholarlyoa.com/2012/11/30/criteria-for-determining-predatory-open-access-publishers-2nd-edition/ |website=Scholarly Open Access |date=December 1, 2012}}</ref> In February 2013 he added a process for a publisher to appeal its inclusion in the list.<ref name=Butler />

In a more recent test of this evolving system of publishing ([[Who's Afraid of Peer Review?]]), a staff writer for Science magazine and popular science publications targeted the open access system in 2013 by submitting to a number of such journals a deeply flawed paper on the purported effect of a lichen constituent. About 60% of those journals, including the Journal of Natural Pharmaceuticals, accepted the faked medical paper, although PLOS ONE, the most established one, did reject it.<ref>{{cite web|author=John Bohannon |url=http://www.sciencemag.org/content/342/6154/60.full |title=Who's Afraid of Peer Review? |publisher=Sciencemag.org |accessdate=2013-10-07}}</ref> As a result, this experiment was criticised for being not peer-reviewed itself and for having a flawed methodology and lack of a control group.<ref>{{cite web|last=Eve|first=Martin|title=What’s “open” got to do with it?|url=https://www.martineve.com/2013/10/03/whats-open-got-to-do-with-it/|work=Martin Eve|accessdate=7 October 2013|date=3 October 2013}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|last=Michael|first=Eisen|title=I confess, I wrote the Arsenic DNA paper to expose flaws in peer-review at subscription based journals |url=http://www.michaeleisen.org/blog/?p=1439|work=it is NOT junk|accessdate=7 October 2013|date=3 October 2013}}</ref>


== Characteristics of predatory publishing ==
== Characteristics of predatory publishing ==
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In 2013, ''Nature'' reported that Beall's list and web site are "widely read by librarians, researchers, and open-access advocates, many of whom applaud his efforts to reveal shady publishing practices."<ref name=Butler /> Others have raised doubts that "Whether it's fair to classify all these journals and publishers as 'predatory' is an open question — several shades of gray may be distinguishable."<ref>{{cite doi |10.1056/NEJMp1214750}}</ref>
In 2013, ''Nature'' reported that Beall's list and web site are "widely read by librarians, researchers, and open-access advocates, many of whom applaud his efforts to reveal shady publishing practices."<ref name=Butler /> Others have raised doubts that "Whether it's fair to classify all these journals and publishers as 'predatory' is an open question — several shades of gray may be distinguishable."<ref>{{cite doi |10.1056/NEJMp1214750}}</ref>


Wayne Bivens-Tatum, librarian at [[Princeton University]], states that Beall's "rhetoric provides good examples of what [[Albert O. Hirschman]] called the 'rhetoric of reaction'" (see ''[[The Rhetoric of Reaction]]''). Bivens-Tatum concludes Beall's "argument fails because the sweeping generalizations with no supporting evidence render it unsound."<ref>{{cite journal |url=http://www.triple-c.at/index.php/tripleC/article/view/617/574 |title=Reactionary Rhetoric Against Open Access Publishing |last1=Bivens-Tatum |first1=Wayne |journal=tripleC |year=2014 |volume=12 |issue=2 |pages=441–446}}</ref> Beall has also been criticized for being biased against open-access journals from less economically developed countries.<ref>{{cite web | url=http://crln.acrl.org/content/76/3/132.full | title=Beyond Beall’s List | work=[[College & Research Libraries News]] | date=March 2015 | accessdate=15 June 2015 | author=Berger, Monica | pages=132-135}}</ref>
Wayne Bivens-Tatum, librarian at [[Princeton University]], states that Beall's "rhetoric provides good examples of what [[Albert O. Hirschman]] called the 'rhetoric of reaction'" (see ''[[The Rhetoric of Reaction]]''). Bivens-Tatum concludes Beall's "argument fails because the sweeping generalizations with no supporting evidence render it unsound."<ref>{{cite journal |url=http://www.triple-c.at/index.php/tripleC/article/view/617/574 |title=Reactionary Rhetoric Against Open Access Publishing |last1=Bivens-Tatum |first1=Wayne |journal=tripleC |year=2014 |volume=12 |issue=2 |pages=441–446}}</ref> Beall has also been criticized for being biased against open-access journals from less economically developed countries.<ref>{{cite web | url=http://crln.acrl.org/content/76/3/132.full | title=Beyond Beall’s List | work=[[College & Research Libraries News]] | date=March 2015 | accessdate=15 June 2015 | author=Berger, Monica | pages=132-135}}</ref> Many newer open access journals also lack the reputation of their subscription counterparts, which have been in business for decades.


There have been attempts to verify Beall's list independently.<ref>Walt Crawford, (July 2014), "[http://citesandinsights.info/civ14i7on.pdf Journals, 'Journals' and Wannabes: Investigating The List]", ''Cites & Insights'', 14:7, ISSN 1534-0937</ref> More transparent peer review, such as [[open peer review]] and [[post-publication peer review]], has been advocated to combat predatory journals.<ref>{{cite web|first= Bonnie|last= Swoger |date=November 26, 2014|url=http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/information-culture/2014/11/26/is-this-peer-reviewed-predatory-journals-and-the-transparency-of-peer-review/|title=Is this peer reviewed? Predatory journals and the transparency of peer review.|publisher=[[Scientific American]]}}</ref> Others have argued instead that the discussion on predatory journals should not be turned "into a debate over the shortcomings of peer review – it is nothing of the sort. It is about fraud, deception, and irresponsibility..."<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Bartholomew |first1=R. E. |title=Science for sale: the rise of predatory journals |journal=Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine |date=2014 |volume=107 |issue=10 |pages=384–385 |doi=10.1177/0141076814548526 |pmid=25271271 |url=http://jrs.sagepub.com/content/107/10/384}}</ref> One librarian wrote that Beall's list "attempts a binary division of this complex gold rush: the good and the bad. Yet many of the criteria used are either impossible to quantify..., or can be found to apply as often to established OA journals as to the new entrants in this area... Some of the criteria seem to make First World assumptions that aren't valid worldwide."<ref>{{cite web|first=Karen|last= Coyle|date= April 4, 2013 |url=http://lj.libraryjournal.com/2013/04/opinion/peer-to-peer-review/predatory-publishers-peer-to-peer-review/ |title=Predatory Publishers – Peer to Peer Review |work=[[Library Journal]]}}</ref> Others find that it is wrong for a single person to maintain such a list.<ref>{{cite web|first=Peter|last= Murray-Rust|authorlink=Peter Murray-Rust|url=https://blogs.ch.cam.ac.uk/pmr/2014/02/18/bealls-criticism-of-mdpi-lacks-evidence-and-is-irresponsible/|title=Beall's criticism of MDPI lacks evidence and is irresponsible|date=February 18, 2014|work=petermr's blog}}</ref>
There have been attempts to verify Beall's list independently.<ref>Walt Crawford, (July 2014), "[http://citesandinsights.info/civ14i7on.pdf Journals, 'Journals' and Wannabes: Investigating The List]", ''Cites & Insights'', 14:7, ISSN 1534-0937</ref> More transparent peer review, such as [[open peer review]] and [[post-publication peer review]], has been advocated to combat predatory journals.<ref>{{cite web|first= Bonnie|last= Swoger |date=November 26, 2014|url=http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/information-culture/2014/11/26/is-this-peer-reviewed-predatory-journals-and-the-transparency-of-peer-review/|title=Is this peer reviewed? Predatory journals and the transparency of peer review.|publisher=[[Scientific American]]}}</ref> Others have argued instead that the discussion on predatory journals should not be turned "into a debate over the shortcomings of peer review – it is nothing of the sort. It is about fraud, deception, and irresponsibility..."<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Bartholomew |first1=R. E. |title=Science for sale: the rise of predatory journals |journal=Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine |date=2014 |volume=107 |issue=10 |pages=384–385 |doi=10.1177/0141076814548526 |pmid=25271271 |url=http://jrs.sagepub.com/content/107/10/384}}</ref> One librarian wrote that Beall's list "attempts a binary division of this complex gold rush: the good and the bad. Yet many of the criteria used are either impossible to quantify..., or can be found to apply as often to established OA journals as to the new entrants in this area... Some of the criteria seem to make First World assumptions that aren't valid worldwide."<ref>{{cite web|first=Karen|last= Coyle|date= April 4, 2013 |url=http://lj.libraryjournal.com/2013/04/opinion/peer-to-peer-review/predatory-publishers-peer-to-peer-review/ |title=Predatory Publishers – Peer to Peer Review |work=[[Library Journal]]}}</ref> Others find that it is wrong for a single person to maintain such a list.<ref>{{cite web|first=Peter|last= Murray-Rust|authorlink=Peter Murray-Rust|url=https://blogs.ch.cam.ac.uk/pmr/2014/02/18/bealls-criticism-of-mdpi-lacks-evidence-and-is-irresponsible/|title=Beall's criticism of MDPI lacks evidence and is irresponsible|date=February 18, 2014|work=petermr's blog}}</ref>

Revision as of 17:25, 27 July 2015

In academic publishing, predatory open access publishing describes an exploitative open-access publishing business model that involves charging publication fees to authors without providing the editorial and publishing services associated with legitimate journals (open access or not). "Beall's List", a regularly-updated report by Jeffrey Beall, sets forth criteria for categorizing predatory publications and lists publishers and independent journals that meet those criteria.[1] Especially newer scholars from developing countries are at a risk of becoming the victim of these practices.[2][3]

History and Beall's List

The term "predatory open access" was conceived by University of Colorado Denver librarian and researcher Jeffrey Beall. After noticing a large number of emails inviting him to submit articles or join the editorial board of previously unknown journals, he began researching open-access publishers and created Beall's List of potential, possible, or probable predatory scholarly open-access publishers.[4] Beall has also written on this topic in The Charleston Advisor,[1] in Nature,[5] and in Learned Publishing.[6]

Preceding Beall's efforts was the well-known case of a manuscript consisting of computer-generated nonsense submitted by a Cornell University graduate student, Phil Davis, which was accepted for a fee (but withdrawn by the author) by one of the open-access publishers now included on Beall's List (Bentham Open).[7] Doubts about honesty and scams in open-access journals had already been raised in 2009.[8] Concerns for spamming practices from the "black sheep among open access journals and publishers" ushered the leading open access publishers to create the Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association in 2008.[9]

Beall published his first list of predatory publishers in 2010.[4] In August 2012 he posted his criteria for evaluating publishers,[4] with the second edition posted on December 1 the same year.[10] In February 2013 he added a process for a publisher to appeal its inclusion in the list.[4]

In a more recent test of this evolving system of publishing (Who's Afraid of Peer Review?), a staff writer for Science magazine and popular science publications targeted the open access system in 2013 by submitting to a number of such journals a deeply flawed paper on the purported effect of a lichen constituent. About 60% of those journals, including the Journal of Natural Pharmaceuticals, accepted the faked medical paper, although PLOS ONE, the most established one, did reject it.[11] As a result, this experiment was criticised for being not peer-reviewed itself and for having a flawed methodology and lack of a control group.[12][13]

Characteristics of predatory publishing

Complaints that are associated with predatory open-access publishing include

  • Accepting articles quickly with little or no peer review or quality control,[14] including hoax and nonsensical papers.[7][15][16]
  • Notifying academics of article fees only after papers are accepted.[14]
  • Aggressively campaigning for academics to submit articles or serve on editorial boards.[4]
  • Listing academics as members of editorial boards without their permission,[1][17] and not allowing academics to resign from editorial boards.[1][18]
  • Appointing fake academics to editorial boards.[19]
  • Mimicking the name or web site style of more established journals.[18]
  • Misleading claims about the publishing operation, such as a false location.[1]
  • Improper use of ISSNs.[1]
  • Fake impact factors.[20][21]

Reception

In 2013, Nature reported that Beall's list and web site are "widely read by librarians, researchers, and open-access advocates, many of whom applaud his efforts to reveal shady publishing practices."[4] Others have raised doubts that "Whether it's fair to classify all these journals and publishers as 'predatory' is an open question — several shades of gray may be distinguishable."[22]

Wayne Bivens-Tatum, librarian at Princeton University, states that Beall's "rhetoric provides good examples of what Albert O. Hirschman called the 'rhetoric of reaction'" (see The Rhetoric of Reaction). Bivens-Tatum concludes Beall's "argument fails because the sweeping generalizations with no supporting evidence render it unsound."[23] Beall has also been criticized for being biased against open-access journals from less economically developed countries.[24] Many newer open access journals also lack the reputation of their subscription counterparts, which have been in business for decades.

There have been attempts to verify Beall's list independently.[25] More transparent peer review, such as open peer review and post-publication peer review, has been advocated to combat predatory journals.[26] Others have argued instead that the discussion on predatory journals should not be turned "into a debate over the shortcomings of peer review – it is nothing of the sort. It is about fraud, deception, and irresponsibility..."[27] One librarian wrote that Beall's list "attempts a binary division of this complex gold rush: the good and the bad. Yet many of the criteria used are either impossible to quantify..., or can be found to apply as often to established OA journals as to the new entrants in this area... Some of the criteria seem to make First World assumptions that aren't valid worldwide."[28] Others find that it is wrong for a single person to maintain such a list.[29]

As a result of Beall's list and the Who's Afraid of Peer Review? investigation, the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) has tightened up its inclusion criteria, with the purpose of serving as a whitelist, very much like Beall's has been a blacklist.[30] The investigation found that "the results show that Beall is good at spotting publishers with poor quality control."[31]

Beall has been threatened with a lawsuit by a Canadian publisher that appears on the list. He reports that he has been the subject of online harassment for his work on the subject. His list has been criticized[citation needed] by some organizations which represent open-access publishers for relying heavily for analysis of publishers' web sites, not engaging directly with publishers, and including newly founded but legitimate journals. Beall has responded to these complaints by posting the criteria he uses to generate the list, as well as instituting an anonymous three-person review body to which publishers can appeal to be removed from the list.[4] For example, a 2010 re-evaluation resulted in some journals being removed from Beall's list.[32]

The list is used as an authoritative source by South Africa's Department of Higher Education and Training in maintaining its list of accredited journals: articles published in those journals will determine funding levels for their authors; however, journals identified as predatory will be removed from this list.[33] ProQuest is reviewing all journals on Beall's list, and has started removing them from the International Bibliography of the Social Sciences.[33]

In an effort to "set apart legitimate journals and publishers from non-legitimate ones," principles of transparency and best practice have been identified and issued collectively by the Committee on Publication Ethics, the Directory of Open Access Journals, the Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association, and the World Association of Medical Editors.[34]

A number of measures have been suggested to further combat predatory journals. Some have called research institutions to improve the publication literacy notably among junior researchers in developing countries.[35] As Beall has ascribed predatory publishing to a consequence of gold open access,[6] one researcher has argued for platinum open access, where the absence of author fees removes the publisher's conflict of interest in accepting article submissions.[36] More objective discriminating metrics[37] have been proposed, such as a "predatory score".[38] Others have encouraged authors to consult subject-area expert-reviewed journal listings, such as the Directory of Nursing Journals, vetted by the International Academy of Nursing Editors and its collaborators.[39]

See also

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f Elliott, Carl (June 5, 2012). "On Predatory Publishers: a Q&A With Jeffrey Beall". Brainstorm. The Chronicle of Higher Education.
  2. ^ Kearney, Margaret H. (2015). "Predatory Publishing: What Authors Need to Know". Research in Nursing & Health. 38: 1–3. doi:10.1002/nur.21640.
  3. ^ Xia, Jingfeng; Harmon, Jennifer L.; Connolly, Kevin G.; Donnelly, Ryan M.; Anderson, Mary R.; Howard, Heather A. (2014). "Who publishes in "predatory" journals?". Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology: n/a. doi:10.1002/asi.23265.
  4. ^ a b c d e f g Butler, Declan (March 27, 2013). "Investigating journals: The dark side of publishing". Nature. 495 (7442): 433–435. Bibcode:2013Natur.495..433B. doi:10.1038/495433a. PMID 23538810.
  5. ^ Attention: This template ({{cite doi}}) is deprecated. To cite the publication identified by doi:10.1038/489179a, please use {{cite journal}} (if it was published in a bona fide academic journal, otherwise {{cite report}} with |doi=10.1038/489179a instead.
  6. ^ a b Attention: This template ({{cite doi}}) is deprecated. To cite the publication identified by doi:10.1087/20130203, please use {{cite journal}} (if it was published in a bona fide academic journal, otherwise {{cite report}} with |doi=10.1087/20130203 instead.
  7. ^ a b Basken, Paul (June 10, 2009). "Open-Access Publisher Appears to Have Accepted Fake Paper From Bogus Center". The Chronicle of Higher Education.
  8. ^ Suber, Peter (October 2, 2009). "Ten challenges for open-access journals". SPARC Open Access Newsletter. No. 138.
  9. ^ Eysenbach, Gunther. Black sheep among Open Access Journals and Publishers. Gunther Eysenbach Random Research Rants Blog. Originally posted 2008-03-08, updated (postscript added) 2008-04-21, 2008-04-23, 2008-06-03. [1]. Accessed: 2008-06-03. (Archived by WebCite at [2])
  10. ^ Beall, Jeffrey (December 1, 2012). "Criteria for Determining Predatory Open-Access Publishers (2nd edition)". Scholarly Open Access.
  11. ^ John Bohannon. "Who's Afraid of Peer Review?". Sciencemag.org. Retrieved 2013-10-07.
  12. ^ Eve, Martin (3 October 2013). "What's "open" got to do with it?". Martin Eve. Retrieved 7 October 2013.
  13. ^ Michael, Eisen (3 October 2013). "I confess, I wrote the Arsenic DNA paper to expose flaws in peer-review at subscription based journals". it is NOT junk. Retrieved 7 October 2013.
  14. ^ a b Stratford, Michael (March 4, 2012). "'Predatory' Online Journals Lure Scholars Who Are Eager to Publish". The Chronicle of Higher Education. (subscription required)
  15. ^ Gilbert, Natasha (June 15, 2009). "Editor will quit over hoax paper". Nature. doi:10.1038/news.2009.571.
  16. ^ Safi, Michael (November 25, 2014), "Journal accepts bogus paper requesting removal from mailing list", The Guardian.
  17. ^ Beall, Jeffrey (August 1, 2012). "Predatory Publishing". The Scientist.
  18. ^ a b Kolata, Gina (April 7, 2013). "For Scientists, an Exploding World of Pseudo-Academia". The New York Times.
  19. ^ Neumann, Ralf (February 2, 2012). ""Junk Journals" und die "Peter-Panne"". Laborjournal.
  20. ^ Jeffrey Beall (February 11, 2014). "Bogus New Impact Factor Appears". Scholarly Open Access.
  21. ^ Mehrdad Jalalian, Hamidreza Mahboobi (2013). "New corruption detected: Bogus impact factors compiled by fake organizations" (PDF). Electronic Physician. 5 (3): 685–686.
  22. ^ Attention: This template ({{cite doi}}) is deprecated. To cite the publication identified by doi:10.1056/NEJMp1214750, please use {{cite journal}} (if it was published in a bona fide academic journal, otherwise {{cite report}} with |doi=10.1056/NEJMp1214750 instead.
  23. ^ Bivens-Tatum, Wayne (2014). "Reactionary Rhetoric Against Open Access Publishing". tripleC. 12 (2): 441–446.
  24. ^ Berger, Monica (March 2015). "Beyond Beall's List". College & Research Libraries News. pp. 132–135. Retrieved 15 June 2015.
  25. ^ Walt Crawford, (July 2014), "Journals, 'Journals' and Wannabes: Investigating The List", Cites & Insights, 14:7, ISSN 1534-0937
  26. ^ Swoger, Bonnie (November 26, 2014). "Is this peer reviewed? Predatory journals and the transparency of peer review". Scientific American.
  27. ^ Bartholomew, R. E. (2014). "Science for sale: the rise of predatory journals". Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine. 107 (10): 384–385. doi:10.1177/0141076814548526. PMID 25271271.
  28. ^ Coyle, Karen (April 4, 2013). "Predatory Publishers – Peer to Peer Review". Library Journal.
  29. ^ Murray-Rust, Peter (February 18, 2014). "Beall's criticism of MDPI lacks evidence and is irresponsible". petermr's blog.
  30. ^ Attention: This template ({{cite doi}}) is deprecated. To cite the publication identified by doi:10.1038/512017a, please use {{cite journal}} (if it was published in a bona fide academic journal, otherwise {{cite report}} with |doi=10.1038/512017a instead.
  31. ^ Bohannon, J (4 October 2013). "Who's afraid of peer review?". Science. 342 (6154): 60–65. Bibcode:2013Sci...342...60B. doi:10.1126/science.342.6154.60. PMID 24092725.
  32. ^ Butler, Declan (2013). "Investigating journals: The dark side of publishing". Nature. 495 (7442): 433–435. Bibcode:2013Natur.495..433B. doi:10.1038/495433a. PMID 23538810.
  33. ^ a b "Accredited Journals". Stellenbosch University.
  34. ^ Committee on Publication Ethics, Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing
  35. ^ Clark, J.; Smith, R. (2015). "Firm action needed on predatory journals". BMJ. 350: h210. doi:10.1136/bmj.h210.
  36. ^ "(Gold) Open Access: the two sides of the coin". ox.ac.uk.
  37. ^ Beall, J (2013). "Unethical Practices in Scholarly, Open-Access Publishing". Journal of Information Ethics. 22 (1): 11–20. doi:10.3172/jie.22.1.11.
  38. ^ Teixeira; da Silva, J. A. (2013). "How to better achieve integrity in science publishing". European Science Editing. 39 (4): 97.
  39. ^ "Predatory Publishers: What Editors Need to Know." Nurse Author & Editor, September 2014. [3]. Republished as open access in in: "Predatory Publishing". Journal of Midwifery & Women's Health. 59 (6): 569–571. 2014. doi:10.1111/jmwh.12273.

External links

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