At the Open Publishing Seminar back in February I touched on the issue of predatory publishers. One of the lists I’m on has recently had a thread on PPs some content of which may be of interest to those wanting to identify PPs or assess OA publishers. The full posts are here: http://liblicense.crl.edu
The Chronicle of Higher Education has a long piece on ‘predatory OA journals’, with a focus on the work of Jeffrey Beall, a librarian at the University of Colorado at Denver, who tracks open-access publishers that operate on an author-pays model.
His blog http://metadata.posterous.com/?tag=predatoryopenaccessjournals and web site http://scholarlyoa.com/ include summaries about apparently unethical publishers.
This does need to be treated with some caution as Mr Beall’s lists are drawn up by him based on patterns of behaviour, although there are criteria that Mr Beall uses to raise suspicions about particular publishers. Ina Smith from Stellenbosch University, South Africa reported to the list that they have started to compile some criteria against which they measure the validity of an OA journal. I thought this worth sharing:
The Stellenbosch criteria are:
1. Mandatory
- The journal must have a proper web page and URL with the following info e.g. Contact details, Editorial Team, Editorial Board, Advisory Board, Scope and Focus, Peer Review Process (must be an exhaustive peer review process), Publication Frequency, Open Access Policy, Author Guidelines, About the Publisher, Previously published issues (Archive) , Copyright policy (under the Creative Commons Licensing policies
- International editorial board
- Valid online ISSN registered with the ISSN International Centre (France)
- Members of CrossRef with doi’s assigned to individual articles
- Journal must have established a history of responsible reporting (not always possible with “new” OA journals)
- The journal must contain good quality articles detailing well performed research
2. Recommended
- Listed on DOAJ (not all OA journals are listed on DOAJ immediately, and there might be a slight time delay)
- (Howard’s note: some publishers and their journals considered predatory by Mr Beall (e.g. Internet Scientific Publications) are listed on DOAJ)
- Publisher must be registered with OASPA
- OA Policy of publisher must be available via SHERPA/RoMEO
- Listed on Wikipedia as an academic journal
- Digital preservation policy in place
- Journal title must be listed with one of the following:
– International Bibliography of the Social Sciences (IBSS)
– Science Citation Index
– Social Sciences Citation Index
– Arts and Humanities Citation Index
- Journal impact factor assigned to the journal – Journal Citation Reports – ISI (for impact factors)
- Journal ranking is recommended – SCImago Journal Ranking (Scopus)
If researchers are considering publishing in an unfamiliar OA journal that follows the author pays model the Liaison Librarians would be happy to assist with an assessment of the Journal.