Predatory Publishers, Scholarly Communication, and Open Access: Home

What is Scholarly Communication:

"Scholarly communication is the system through which research and other scholarly writings are created, evaluated for quality, disseminated to the scholarly community, and preserved for future use. The system includes both formal means of communication, such as publication in peer-reviewed journals, and informal channels, such as electronic listservs."

More on "Scholarly Communication in Crisis" (source: Association of College & Research Libraries)

What is a Predatory Publisher?  Publishers that exist mostly in the scholarly open-access environment who charge publication fees to authors without the providing editorial/peer-reviewer services that are common in legitimate scholarly journals.

Checklist:

• Be wary of email invitations to submit to journals, conference, or become a member of an editorial board.
• Beware of fast acceptance rates and turnaround times
• No peer-review process or a “fake” process done in 24-48 hours
• Fake ISSN number
• Check that the publisher provides full, verifiable contact information (not just a web form)
• Check that the journal’s editorial board lists recognized experts with full affiliations
• Check that the journal prominently displays its policy for author fees or author processing fees (especially in the open-access environment).
• If you're unsure, please contact your librarian.

• Beall's List of Predatory Publishers
  • Established a black list of illegitimate publishers/journals
  • Published list through personal blog “Scholarly Open Access,” ceased publication in January 2017 (list still exists in cached websites, but is not maintained)
• DOAJ (Directory of Open Access Journals)
  • Community-curated online directory that indexes and provides access to high quality, open access, peer-reviewed journals.
• DOAR (Directory of Open Access Repositories)

• An authoritative directory of academic open access repositories.

• OASIS (Open Access Scholarly Information Sourcebook)
  • Resource and support for open-access publishing
• SPARC (Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition)
  • An international alliance of academic and research libraries working to create a more open system of scholarly communication.
• Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE)
  • COPE provides leadership in thinking on publication ethics, practical resources to educate and support members, and offers a professional voice in current debates.
• Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association (OASPA)
  • Represents the interests of Open Access (OA) journal and book publishers globally, across all subjects and disciplines
• World Association of Medical Editors (WAME)
• Cabell’s Scholarly Analytics
  • Publishes Journal White List and Black List, available via subscription (the Library does not have a subscription at this time)
• Retraction Watch
  • Tracking retractions as a window into the scientific process
• Ulrich’s Periodical Database

This video by Jeffrey Beall (University of Colorado Denver) gives an overview of predatory publishing.

Jennifer Huffman (2017) Publisher Package and Open Access Journals: Are Any of Them Predatory?, The Serials Librarian, 73:3-4, 248-268, DOI: 10.1080/0361526X.2017.1389796

Clark, A. M. and Thompson, D. R. (2017), Five (bad) reasons to publish your research in predatory journals. J Adv Nurs, 73: 2499-2501. DOI:10.1111/jan.13090

Nerissa Nelson & Jennifer Huffman (2015) Predatory Journals in Library Databases: How Much Should We Worry?, The Serials Librarian, 69:2, 169-192, DOI: 10.1080/0361526X.2015.1080782

What is Open Access? Open-access is digital, online, free of charge, and free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.

This short video by Nick Shockey (of SPARC),Jonathan Eisen (professor at UC Davis) and Jorge Cham (of PhD Comics) gives an overview of the history of scholarly publishing.