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Beyond Beall's List: Better Understanding Predatory Publishers City University of New York (CUNY) CUNY Academic Works Publications and Research CUNY Graduate Center 2015 Beyond Beall’s List: Better Understanding Predatory Publishers Monica Berger CUNY New York City College of Technology Jill Cirasella CUNY Graduate Center How does access to this work benefit ou?y Let us know! More information about this work at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu/gc_pubs/70 Discover additional works at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu This work is made publicly available by the City University of New York (CUNY). Contact: [email protected] scholarly communication Monica Berger and Jill Cirasella Beyond Beall’s List Better understanding predatory publishers f you have even a fleeting interest in the deeply problematic submissions (e.g., Ievolving landscape of scholarly communi- Andrew Wakefield et al.’s article linking cation, you’ve probably heard of predatory autism to vaccines in The Lancet1 and Alan open access (OA) journals. These are OA Sokal’s nonsense article in Social Text).2 journals that exist for the sole purpose of Although predatory publishers predate profit, not the dissemination of high-quality OA, their recent explosion was expedited research findings and furtherance of knowl- by the emergence and success of fee- edge. These predators generate profits by charging OA journals. No matter how charging author fees, also known as article strong our urge to support and defend processing charges (APCs), that far exceed OA, librarians cannot deny the profusion the cost of running their low-quality, fly- of predators in the OA arena; John Bohan- by-night operations. non’s recent “sting” made abundantly clear Charging a fee is not itself a marker of (despite methodological flaws) that there a predatory publisher: many reputable OA are many bad actors.3 Rather, we should journals use APCs to cover costs, especially seek to understand their methods, track in fields where research is often funded by their evolution, and communicate their grants. (Many subscription-based journals characteristics to our patrons. also charge authors fees, sometimes per page or illustration.) However, predatory Blacklists, whitelists, and other journals are primarily fee-collecting op- defenses against predatory erations—they exist for that purpose and publishers only incidentally publish articles, gener- The highest-profile watchdog of predatory ally without rigorous peer review, despite publishers is Jeffrey Beall, a librarian at claims to the contrary. Of course, low-quality publishing is not new. There have long been opportunistic Monica Berger is electronic resources and technical publishers (e.g., vanity presses and sellers services librarian at New York City College of Technology-CUNY, email: mberger@citytech. of public domain content) and deceptive cuny.edu, and Jill Cirasella is associate librarian for publishing practices (e.g., yellow journal- public services and scholarly communication at The ism and advertisements formatted to look Graduate Center, CUNY, email: [email protected] like articles). Contact series editors Zach Coble, digital scholarship It is also not unique to OA journals. specialist at New York University, and Adrian Ho, director There are many mediocre subscription- of digital scholarship at the University of Kentucky Libraries, at [email protected] with article based journals, and even respected ideas subscription-based journals have accepted © 2015 Monica Berger and Jill Cirasella C&RL News March 2015 132 the University of Colorado-Denver, who these publishers.10,11,12 Imperfect English curates a blacklist of “potential, possible, or a predominantly non-Western editorial or probable” predatory OA publishers and board does not make a journal preda- journals.4 Beall’s list has become a go-to tory. An interesting example is Hindawi, tool and has even been featured in The an Egyptian publisher once considered New York Times,5 but it is not the final word predatory that improved its practices and on predatory publishing, partially because standards over time. If we accept that there Beall himself has a complicated, and not is a continuum from devious and duplici- entirely supportive, attitude toward OA tous to simply low-quality and amateurish, in general. then it is likely, as Crawford believes, that Without a doubt, Beall has amassed some of the publishers on Beall’s list are considerable knowledge and greatly in- not actually predatory.13 creased awareness of predatory publish- Although Beall’s contributions are argu- ing. He is recognized as a leading expert ably compromised by his attitudes about and has gone largely unchallenged, prob- OA, the criteria he uses for his list are an ably both because nonexperts are eager excellent starting point for thinking about for blacklists that seemingly obviate the the hallmarks of predatory publishers and need for individual analysis of publishers journals.14 He encourages thorough analy- and journals, and because little empirical sis, including scrutiny of editorial boards research has been done on the phenom- and business practices. Some of his red enon of predatory publishing. However, flags provide a lot of “bang for your buck” in 2014, Walt Crawford took Beall to task in that they are both easy to spot and likely in an article called “Ethics and Access 1: to indicate a predatory operation. These The Sad Case of Jeffrey Beall.”6 include editors or editorial board members Crawford criticizes Beall for not con- with no or fake academic affiliations, lack textualizing predatory or low-quality of clarity about fees, publisher names and publishing as a phenomenon that predates journal titles with geographic terms that OA and is not exclusive to OA journals. have no connection to the publisher’s He also points out that Beall favors toll- physical location or journal’s geographic access publishers, specifically Elsevier, scope, bogus impact factor claims and praising its “consistent high quality.”7 invented metrics, and false claims about However, a simple Google search for “fake where the journal is indexed. Elsevier journals” reveals Beall’s position Beall also lists common practices in- as tenuous. Furthermore, Beall conflates dicative of low-quality but not necessarily OA journals with “author pays” journals, predatory journals. He is rightfully wary of and reveals his skepticism, if not hostility, journals that solicit manuscripts by spam- about OA.8 ming researchers, as established publishers Politics aside, Beall’s laser-like focus generally do not approach scholars, as on predatory publishers may prevent him well as publishers or editors with email from having a broader perspective on addresses from Gmail, Yahoo, etc. Also, scholarly communication. Case in point: he wisely warns researchers away from Beall has blithely declared the “serials journals with bizarrely broad or disjointed crisis” to be over,9 but those of us who scopes and journals that boast extremely manage resources beg to differ. rapid publication, which usually suggests Another concerning aspect of Beall’s no or only cursory peer review. work is his evaluation of OA publish- Given the fuzziness between low-qual- ers from less economically developed ity and predatory publishers, whitelisting, countries. Crawford, Karen Coyle, and Jill or listing publishers and journals that have Emery have all noted Beall’s bias against been vetted and verified as satisfying cer- March 2015 133 C&RL News tain standards, may be a better solution open peer review—i.e., any form of peer than blacklisting. The central player in the review where the reviewer’s identity is not whitelisting movement is the Directory of hidden—increases transparency and allows Open Access Journals (DOAJ). journals to demonstrate their standards.19 In response to the Bohannon sting, DOAJ removed 114 journals and revamped The role of librarians its criteria for inclusion.15 Journals ac- As librarians, we need to understand the cepted into DOAJ after March 2014 under hallmarks and methods of predatory pub- the stricter rules are marked with a green lishers for several reasons. Most obviously, tick symbol, and DOAJ has announced we must help researchers avoid becoming that it will require the remaining 99% of its prey and help readers recognize low-quality listed journals to reapply for acceptance. journals. In addition, we need to counter- At the basic level, a journal must be act the misconceptions and alarmism that chiefly scholarly; make the content im- stymie the acceptance of OA. mediately available (i.e., no embargoes); For example, many researchers conflate provide quality control through an editor, journal quality with publication model or editorial board, and peer review; have a business model, and librarians can help registered International Standard Serial untangle those concepts. To do so, we Number (ISSN); and exercise transparency must arm ourselves with clear, convincing about APCs. Journals that meet additional explanations that quality and reputation are requirements, such as providing external independent of openness, that OA journals archiving and creating persistent links, do not necessarily charge fees, and that fees are recognized with the DOAJ Seal. DOAJ do not necessarily imply predatoriness. We receives an assist from the ISSN Centre, should be ready with examples of high- which in 2014 added language reserving quality and well-respected OA journals, as the right to deny ISSNs to publishers that well as reassuring facts about fees (e.g., as provide misleading information.16 of January
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