Predatory publishing is just one of the consequences of gold 79

Predatory publishing is just one of the consequences of gold open access Learned Publishing, 26: 79–84 doi:10.1087/20130203

POINT OF VIEW Predatory publishing is just Introduction I have been closely following and par- one of the consequences of ticipating in the open-access (OA) movement since 2008. In that year, when the gold OA model fi rst began to be implemented on a large scale, gold open access I noticed the appearance of several new publishers that lacked trans- Jeffrey BEALL parency and used deceptive websites University of Colorado Denver to attract submissions and the accompanying author fees. This article examines the ways the gold open-access model is negatively affecting scholarly Initially, I printed out copies of their communication. web pages and placed them in a blue folder. In 2009, I published a review of the publisher Bentham Open the communication of . I increased dramatically worldwide, in the library review journal the argue that the gold OA model is a creating the need and the markets for Charleston Advisor. Writing a second failure, that the debate surround- new journals and publishers to make review in the same journal in 2010, I ing OA has become contentious it all available. coined the term ‘predatory publisher’ and divisive, and that the future of Reacting to the criticism and to and changed the focus of my informal scholarly publishing is in peril. Never the journal cancellations, the schol- blog, called Metadata, to predatory before has the scholarly publishing arly publishing industry took action. publishing. I published my fi rst list of industry attracted so much attention They granted libraries new econo- predatory publishers on my old blog from scholars, researchers, and aca- mies of scale, one in the form of in 2010, but it drew almost no atten- demics. The medium of scholarship journal bundling, which increased tion. In late 2011, gathering together has now become the intense focus of the number of titles that individual the expanding materials in my blue scholarship itself, and many have a academic libraries were able to afford folder, I published a second list of stake in its outcome. predatory publishers that garnered and make available to their users. much attention. Later in early 2012 The second economy of scale was to grant deep discounts to library con- I moved my blog to an improved A brief platform and changed its name to sortia. Repurposing existing library Scholarly Open Access. Throughout The story of OA publishing begins cooperative ventures involving tradi- 2012, I continued tracking, listing, with the advent of the Internet tional library functions such as cata- and writing about the new publishers and soon after with librarians alert- loging, libraries organized regional that I added to my list. The 2010 list ing the academic community to the and statewide consortia – groups included 18 publishers, the 2011 list ever-increasing subscription prices of libraries that function basically had 23, and the 2013 list had over of scholarly journals. At that time, as buyers’ cooperatives. Publishers 225. Also beginning in early 2012, I the term ‘serials crisis’ was coined. competed with each other for librar- started keeping a second list of inde- Libraries began to cancel journal sub- ies’ business, granting deep discounts pendent journals that do not publish scriptions, yet at the same time the that essentially resolved the serials under the aegis of any publisher, and desktop publishing revolution helped crisis by 2004. that list now contains over 150 titles. increase the number of journals being One other aspect of the serials In this paper, I relate the new and published by medium- and small- crisis was the impact of the higher important things that I have learned sized organizations. Also, the amount journal subscription prices on librar- about scholarly publishing, OA, and of scholarship being published ies in developing countries, but pub-

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lishers also solved this problem. The departments contributed to lowering that has created the whole problem Research4Life program grants free the overall cost of academic publish- of predatory publishers. or very low cost access to subscrip- ing by subscribing to scholarly publi- The weaknesses of the gold OA tion e-journals in developing coun- cations. Now these corporations are model are many. Some are now even tries. Many fail to acknowledge the benefi ting from OA by not paying sarcastically calling it ‘pay to say’. contributions of the Research4Life the subscription costs they used to The model will limit contributions to program in the developing world. In pay, costs that essentially subsidized those with access to funds to support some developing countries, this pro- the subscription costs paid by librar- article processing charges (APCs). gram brings about a greater access to ies to support scholarly publishing. While it is true that some publishers contemporary journal literature than OA decreases the pool of money offer waivers or discounts on the fees libraries in developed countries can that publishers (traditional or author- levied on authors, these are in reality provide. Many are ignorant of these pays) can dedicate to meeting the the exception, I think. programs and fatuously malign estab- costs of high-quality publishing. Gold OA threatens the existence lished publishers for their supposed of scholarly societies, chiefl y those indifference. in the arts and humanities. Largely Flipping the model from print to But despite the resolution of the funded by library subscriptions to online serials crisis, the seeds of revolution their journals, scholarly societies are had already been planted. The truth In the early 2000s, scholarly pub- facing a no-win situation with gold of the crisis’ resolution was incom- lishers began to fl ip their publishing OA. In many fi elds, authors have modious to those fervently advocat- models from print to online. Many, never paid APCs and are uncomfort- ing OA. Moreover, the strong leftist if not most, now publish exclusively able with the idea of paying them. and anti-corporatist propensity of online. This change involved a mas- Moreover, even with author charges, the academy led to an identifi cation sive investment on the part of pub- many societies would still not make of its arch-enemy: the large, for- lishers. One of the amazing benefi ts enough money to support their pub- profi t scholarly publishers. The OA of this change was the digitization of lishing programs and would lose the advocates even named their poster journal backfi les. Like never before, subsidies that these programs now child of corporate malevolence, pub- scholars could search entire runs of provide to societies’ overall operat- lisher Reed , long respected journals including, in many cases, ing costs. Here, the traditional pub- as a high-quality scholarly publisher issues from as far back as the 19th lishing system operated as a kind whose portfolio includes many of century. Publishers also created and of commonwealth. Many academic world’s top academic journals. The implemented new value-added fea- libraries and other organisations paid zealots have symbolically burned tures to facilitate research such as reasonable subscription costs to soci- Elsevier in effi gy for so many years automatic reference linking. They ety publishers, and these contribu- now that the protests have become invested in digital preservation, safe- tions spread out the costs and sup- hackneyed. guarding their products against loss ported the important work of the Meanwhile, faculty salaries in c- and format change. Traditional toll- learned societies. Gold OA threatens reased dramatically during this same access publishers focused most of to destroy this successful system and period. Many of the same faculty their innovations on the consumers leaves arts and humanities societies members across North America who of their products, the readers. with few positive choices as to how were protesting higher journal sub- to operate their publishing programs. scription costs concurrently saw giant A second very negative impact The rise and fall of gold OA increases in their salaries. Increasing of the advent of gold OA publish- retirements meant more inter- At the same time, the gold OA model ing is the alarming increase in author university competition for faculty began to proliferate and, along with misconduct. Ironically, OA makes across the United States, a competi- this, the focus changed. For many author misconduct easier to fi nd and tion that many faculty were happy to journals, authors became publishers’ document. Misconduct that involves exploit. customers, leaving readers as second- piracy, such as plagiarism, can eas- Later many would realize that one ary players in the new OA equation. ily be confi rmed by searching for a of the chief benefi ciaries of the anti- The fatal fl aw of the gold OA model plagiarized passage on the Internet. corporatist OA movement would be is the built-in confl ict of interest: the But there are many additional forms corporations themselves. Countless more papers a journal accepts, the of author misconduct that seem to companies and private organiza- more money it makes. There is no be appearing more frequently; these tions with research and development way around this confl ict, and it is this include self-plagiarism, image or data

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manipulation, ghost authorship, hon- is entitled ‘Defending the Imprimatur ing market, which is snowballing in orary authorship, duplicate submis- of Science: Duesberg and the Medical size as lazy authors repurpose their sion, and salami slicing, which refers Hypotheses Saga’. Probably one of or others’ earlier works into quick, to splitting up a coherent article and the most eloquent defenses of peer new journal articles. It is normally a submitting it as more than a single review ever, the chapter details positive development when markets work. how the peer-review process of the emerge that fi ll consumers’ needs. A 1983 article by Thomas F. Elsevier journal Medical Hypotheses But in this case many of the consum- Gieryn entitled ‘Boundary work and had become corrupted, allowing ers (authors) have malevolent inten- the demarcation of science from non- AIDS denialist Peter Duesberg to get tions. Many are not responding ethi- science: strains and interests in pro- an unscientifi c paper published in cally to their institutions’ demands fessional ideologies of scientists’ and the journal – a paper that scientists for more accountability. Publishers published in the American Sociological successfully rose to expose as unsci- want more papers because it means Review bears relevance today in the entifi c. There are many similar cases more income for them. These are context of predatory publishers.1 It’s of bogus science among contempo- the main factors that have increased diffi cult to describe the peer-review rary journals, especially the predatory author misconduct. The gold OA practices of many questionable pub- ones, but few are rising to defend sci- model is an unsustainable failure. lishers because they hide it, lie about ence’s boundaries. Is it too late? One result of this situation has it, or don’t do it, even though they Pesudoscience is the same thing been the publication of millions of say they do. as non-science, and it is growing useless articles that create an awful Gieryn describes boundary work rapidly. Wikipedia has an informa- lot of academic noise. The excessive as ‘an ideological style found in sci- tive article on the topic and gives number of scholarly articles being entists’ attempts to create a public examples including rebirthing ther- published makes searching more dif- image for science by contrasting it apy, cold fusion, reiki, and ayurvedic fi cult (one has more junk to weed favorably to non-scientifi c intellec- medicine. Indeed, there is a category out), and it makes keeping up with tual or technical activities’.1 It is in Wikipedia that collocates articles one’s fi eld more diffi cult. On the important for scientists to mark on different types of . other hand, it may spark the devel- clearly the border between sci- These include articles covering opment of recommender systems, ence and non-science; this is called well-known bogus sciences such as such as F1000, that do this work for demarcation. Peer review is the astrology and alternative medicine, scholars, adding value to published mechanism through which scientists and they also include corruptions of works by sorting out the unworthy defi ne and enforce this boundary. traditional fi elds, such as pseudohis- ones. Because so many predatory publish- tory, pseudophysics, and pseudoar- ers and journals are negligent in their chaeology. The role of peer review Beall’s List of Predatory Publishers management of peer review (or do is to protect science from these false not carry it out at all despite claiming disciplines, to grant a seal of approval Earlier, I gave a brief history of the to), we can conclude that the bound- to work that meets the standards of blog that includes the two lists I ary between science and non-science science. Because research is cumula- maintain. I now maintain the two is increasingly becoming vague, vio- tive, boundary work and honest peer lists (one of publishers, one of inde- lated, and unpatrolled. review are essential to protect sci- pendent journals) on a WordPress Author Nicoli Nattrass has built ence from the infl uence of the false blog platform. The website address is on Gieryn’s work, applying it to the sciences. http://scholarlyoa.com. I also do reg- case of AIDS denialism. A small and The economic downturn that ular blogging on the website, usually disruptive social movement from the started in 2008 has ultimately resulted adding about two blog posts per week. mid-1980s to the early 1990s spread in an intense pressure on scholars to My goals in maintaining the lists are the falsehood that HIV is harmless publish. State-supported institutions to help people by letting them know and that anti-retroviral drugs were now demand increased accountabil- about the counterfeit publishers and the disease’s true cause. In her 2012 ity from the researchers they sup- to critically analyze various aspects of book The AIDS Conspiracy: Science port. They want to demonstrate a scholarly OA publishing. Fights Back,2 Nattrass details how sci- return on investment. This need to I have also published on my blog entists defended the evidence they document accountability feeds right a list of the criteria to be used when had found that linked HIV to AIDS into the mouths of the predatory judging questionable journals.3 and how they negated the opposing, OA scholarly publishers. The need Some have suggested that keeping bogus theories. Chapter 7 in her book has fueled the predatory publish- a list of quality publishers might be a

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better approach than keeping a list sites that contained the copy of the fests itself daily, broadcasting piquant of the bad ones. There are already email. Some of the publishers on my debates, personal attacks, and a metrics in place to measure quality lists are true criminals, so it is natural diversity of opinion on how schol- journals, including the impact fac- that they respond in a criminal man- arly publishing will and should pro- tor. A weakness of the impact fac- ner to my reviews of their publishing ceed. There is a lot at stake, and tor is that it takes a long time (often operations. each stakeholder wants the future of several years or more) for an impact scholarly communication to suit his factor to be calculated. Other ‘posi- The ongoing debate about OA or her best interests. Representatives tive’ measures would also probably of the traditional, toll-access publish- take time to calculate as well. On the There are many who are content ers mostly avoid the debate, choos- other hand, negative components of with the traditional system of schol- ing instead to monitor the sharp publishers and journals, such as lack- arly publishing, many who have no linguistic volleys thrown around the ing an editorial board, spamming, problem with signing over their copy- Internet. Representatives of mega- and plagiarism, can be observed and right to someone who can manage it journals, such as PLoS one, tout recorded right away and often do for them better than they can, and their products effectively using the not need to be measured over time. many who really do not want their Internet, perhaps leading many to Hence a black list is easier to compile work to be accessible by the ever- believe the journal is more successful and maintain than a white list and increasing number of lonely pseudo- than it really is. Predatory publish- by its contains more updated scientists on the Internet. Yes, it is ers (and some other publishers) use information than a white list could. wonderful that struggling scientists in spam email to solicit articles (and I often hear criticisms of my lists. the Global South now have increased their accompanying fees) and edi- Some believe that the predatory access to scholarship, but how will torial board memberships. Perhaps publishing problem is really a small they share what they learn when they the strongest debate occurs between problem, and my highlighting the have to pay to publish their research those preferring either the green problem is making it appear bigger fi ndings? route or the gold route to OA. I don’t than it really is. Others claim that I think the debate about licens- see the green OA model as a solution we really need to give these preda- ing for OA works will continue. to the problems of gold. It relies on tory publishers a larger opportunity The standard for OA is the Creative mandates that are not being enacted to succeed, that it is not fair to attack Commons attribution 3.0 license, a or followed, and I do not believe that people from poor countries. I agree broad waiving of rights that allows imposing OA mandates on research- with this except when publishers use commercial and derivative works to outright deception or signifi cant lack be made of one’s scholarship. Many ers is proper because it takes away of transparency in their operations. emerging companies, especially their freedom to publish research in Many have advised me that some European ones, are developing new the way they see fi t. startup publishers will eventually ways of aggregating and reselling this We have seen several boycotts be successful and become respected , and they are among targeting Reed Elsevier, and for the in the scholarly community, even the most strident in defending and organizers of these boycotts, they if they make honest mistakes early promoting the broad CC BY license. are an effective method for getting on. I agree and make every effort to Many in North America are wary of praise from colleagues and for being exclude from my list operations that signing away so many rights, espe- seen as heroic, but the boycotts have appear to be well-intentioned and cially commercial rights. They see all failed. The boycotts’ popularity honest startups. OA chiefl y as ‘ocular,’ which means is ephemeral, and the enthusiasm In late 2012, a small group of that access is limited to viewing OA for them soon wanes. This happens predatory publishers colluded in a works on the Internet, but not much mostly because OA is really two campaign to discredit me and my more. Everyone is trying to predict things: a model of scholarly publish- work. Using email spoofi ng, they the future of scholarship and OA. ing, and a social movement. As a sent out emails to publishers that We are all anxious for the OA future social movement, however, it is con- appeared to be from me. The emails to arrive so we will know how to tentious and internecine. Scholarly offered a re-evaluation of their inclu- manage and license it. publishing will continue to wander sion on my lists in exchange for The online conversation sur- down an uncertain and unstable $5,000. They sent the spoofed email rounding OA is contentious. In path, and only the fullness of time to publishers on my list, and they social media, email lists, blogs, and will bring about stability to the also created a bunch of fake blog websites, the OA movement mani- industry.

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Libraries and librarians in the OA into account. Just because a resource decide on licensing. This is an espe- movement is OA doesn’t mean that it is a quality cially contentious area. Many new resource. Librarians must be the fi rst businesses will accomplish great Even though librarians are credited to develop skills in what we might things given the wide availability of with having alerted academia to the call scholarly publishing literacy, and scientifi c research. They will be able serials crisis, they have been far from then they must share these skills with to text-mine and repurpose the sci- stellar in collaborating to resolve it. their patrons. Thus, librarians need entifi c corpus, creating new jobs and Many have anti-corporatist lean- new scientifi c fi ndings. ings, bemoaning any company’s to add value to online information There is a new type of scientifi c attempt at making a fair profi t from by helping validate it, and they must literacy, and it is called scientifi c scholarly publishing. Their collectiv- not blindly promote OA works just publishing literacy. It means that sci- ist and anti-capitalist attitudes have because they fulfi ll a certain collec- entists must be able judge publishers strained relations among the produc- tivist ideology. Librarians have a ten- and conferences and make decisions ers and consumers of scholarly con- dency to be neophiliacs; they adopt about which are ethical and which tent. Many librarians in the United a new technology or a new system are not. It will be an essential skill for States and Canada are unionized, merely because it is new. Librarians all scientists to acquire if they want demanding high salaries, benefi ts, must be more discerning and must to be effective as researchers. and favorable perks for themselves exclude political ideology from their I hope to continue to list and while simultaneously wailing over the library management operations. research predatory publishers and ‘greed’ of the scholarly publishers. Many librarians are enthusiastic Moreover, constrained by political about the still unproven Alt-Metrics predatory independent journals. correctness, many academic librar- just because it is new. Librarians’ Their number is expanding greatly. ians in the West fear pointing out analyses of novel solutions tend to be I think that many in developing the corrupt practices of the preda- gushing rather than critical. countries have discovered scholarly tory publishers based in developing Instead of zealously promoting a publishing as an easy way to make countries, for fear of being pegged particular method of scholarly com- money, and it has the benefi t of low a racist. Many thought that defeat- munication, librarians should ask startup costs. There are millions of ing the corporate publishers was the themselves: what is the best model researchers around the world des- fi nal solution to the serials crisis, but for the future of scholarly com- perate to publish, and the predatory the transition to gold OA has only munication? The gold OA model publishers are eager to have them as created a new crisis, in the form of is demonstrating many signifi cant customers. predatory publishers and prohibi- weaknesses and drawbacks, so librar- tively high author fees for scientifi c ians and others need to re-examine References authors. Some react to predatory the model with a healthy skepticism 1. Gieryn, T.F. 1983. Boundary-work and the publishers by minimizing the prob- instead of doubling down and pro- demarcation of science from non-science: moting it as the fi nal solution. strains and interests in professional ide- lems they create, either claiming that ologies of scientists. American Sociological the predatory publishers are few, or Review, 48: 781–795. that no serious scholar would submit Moving forward 2. Nattrass, N. The AIDS Conspiracy: Science to them anyway. Fights Back. New York, Columbia University Librarians are also cataloging Predatory publishers are poisoning Press, 2012. gold OA, and they threaten to harm 3. Beall, J. Criteria for Determining Predatory the journals published by predatory Open-Access Publishers, 2nd edn. Available publishers and including them in all of scholarly communication. The at: http://scholarlyoa.com/2012/11/30/crite- their online catalogs, a practice that gold OA model is failing, and the ria-for-determining-predatory-open-access- essentially grants a library’s seal of valuable validation feature that the publishers-2nd-edition/ approval to the journal. Including traditional publishing model pro- Jeffrey BEALL predatory journals in library online vided is being lost. This corruption University of Colorado Denver catalogs is negligent, because it of scholarly publishing is making the Auraria Library essentially promotes the journal to future of all scholarly communication 1100 Lawrence Street the library’s patrons. As librarians’ doubtful as to its quality and whether Denver, CO, USA roles change from custodians of print or not it really effectively communi- Email: [email protected] collections to facilitators of online cates valid science. scholarship, they need to take quality The OA movement needs to © Jeffrey Beall 2013

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