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It
is certainly true that the problem of questionable publications occurs
more often with open access journals, but this is not inherently due to
the publishing model. Most publishers, including the major commercial
publishers, have discovered that open access provides a superior economic
model for publishing new journals. The result is that nearly all new
journals use the open access model and predatory publishing practices
often (but not solely) occur in new journals. Even
if the open access model was abolished the phenomenon of predatory
journals would not go away. Those behind these enterprises would find new
ways of serving this market. Subscription publishers have also produced
questionable journals, including some of the main commercial publishers.
There also exists a network of non-open access vanity publishers willing
to publish any dissertation or thesis as a scholarly monograph. But
let us return to Mr Beall’s list, an article he recently published makes
it clear that his targeting of open access journals is, in fact, based on
his keen dislike of the open access movement in general, which he believes
is a conspiracy led by European socialists aimed at destroying for- profit
publishing. Mr Beall is particularly scathing of gold open access stating
that “Scholars should have never allowed a system that requires monetary
transactions between authors and publishers”, but appears to have no
problem with subscription journals levying page charges, a clear case of
double standards. Mr
Beall also appears to have a deep mistrust of academic publishing in the
developing world. He regularly puts new publishers from these countries on
his list until they can “prove” their credentials creating added
difficulties for publishers in these countries. A case in point is MedKnow,
a publisher of reputable journals in the Middle East and Asia, including
the journal of a regional office of the World Health Organization. This
publisher was added to his watch list, presumably because it was based in
India. The publisher was then acquired by Walters-Kluwer and the journals
suddenly becoming safe in Beall’s worldview as the publisher disappeared
from the watch list. This
combination of dislike of open access publishing and distrust of scholarly
publishing in the developing world has now resulted in his recent blog
comparing the SciELO platform to a favela. Readers of this blog do not
need me to describe the outstanding services provided by SciELO to
academic publishing nor the absurdity of his arguments, however you can
find further details in my comments and replies posted on his original
blog1 which
provides further evidence of his prejudices and motives. Blacklists,
particularly those created without due process, are morally perilous and
it is time that Beall’s list is replaced with a list of reputable
journals. Predatory journals are only one problem in an increasingly
ethically challenging publishing environment particularly for
inexperienced researchers. By Hooman Momen This article initially published on http://blog.scielo.org/en/2015/08/04/jeffrey-beall-and-blacklists/ |
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