I have been an advocate for open access and open source journals because I think that everyone should have the ability to benefit from research and studies that are, in effect, funded by the public; database and journal subscription prices often make such access cost prohibitive. Libraries seem to be jumping on the open access bandwagon, as well as many professors and researchers who write scholarly articles submitted and published through such resources. I'm truly glad to see that this effort has been gaining momentum over the past few years, as I firmly believe this benefits us all.
However (you could see that word coming, couldn't you?), there are also those that take advantage of the system and use it for their own benefit. I saw an article posted on the NPR blog, The Two-Way. My first reaction to this article was that another librarian was being targeted for posting his opinion about a publisher, such as what happened with Dale Askey and Edwin Meller Press. But then I read more into the article and started really understanding what is going on. Publishers are seeing the open access movement and are taking advantage of the opportunity to--how shall I put this?--scam those who wish to publish their work in an open access resource. Mind you, this is not indicative of the "genre" as a whole, but there are always a few bad apples that seem to make a bad name for the entire group.
As mentioned in the NPR article, Jeffrey Beall is the target of a supposed lawsuit brought forward by OMICS publishing which is accusing Beall of committing "a criminal offense" for writing something they claim is "highly inappropriate." (Need I go into the First Amendment and freedom of the press here? I think not.) So what did Beall write that's so offensive? I hear you ask. Well, Beall has a personal blog on which he discusses open access journals and publishers that have questionable practices in their handling of peer review, their dealings with authors, and other critical areas. And this is where I started to go down the rabbit hole. I took a look at Beall's blog.
From Beall's blog, several trends appear in regards to disreputable or questionable open access journals and publishers. First off, they seek out anyone and everyone who will submit something for publication; and while this isn't bad in and of itself, it's questionable when calls for submissions happen in circles or target individuals that have little or nothing to do with the area of information/expertise that the journal supposedly focuses on. Another trend that is apparent is that the fees the journals/publishers charge authors seem to be astronomically more than other open access publications--up to thousands of dollars that the author is expected to pay to have his/her article published. When authors refuse the fee and withdraw their article, sometimes it gets published anyway. A big selling point of these open access journals/publishers is that authors are promised a short turnaround time for peer review, sometimes as little as two weeks. By comparison, other scholarly journals (open access and subscription) have a turnaround time of up to several months. For someone under pressure to publish, the short peer review period can be a big draw. And these are not all of the "no-no's" that open access journals and publishers engage in. Take a look at Beall's Criteria for Determining Predatory Open-Access Publishers. Keep in mind that for each criterion to exist, there is likely a publisher or journal that has done what it warns against.
I personally see Beall as providing a service to grad students, professors, researchers, and others that want their work published. Not all of these individuals know to do their due diligence in finding reputable journals (regardless if they're open access or not) when publishing their work. I didn't realize that there were so many publishers and journals out there that prey upon the members of the research community. For all of those that made Beall's "black list," check his List of Predatory Publishers 2013. There are quite a few.
If you are interested, here are some additional posts from Beall's site I recommend. They will help give you a more complete view of the problem that I could in a single post:
The Onslaught of Questionable Open-Access Journals Persists Unabated
OMICS Ineptly Uses Social Media to Promote its Brands
OMICS Goes from "Predatory Publishing" to "Predatory Meetings"
What's Up with Dr. George Perry?
Documenting Plagiarism in the Journal of Academic and Business Ethics
The Epitome of Predatory Publishers
And here is an article from the Chronicle of Higher Education published back in March that discusses this growing problem.
So what to take away from all of this? 1) Protect yourself. Do your due diligence if you wish to publish an article. Make sure that the publisher doesn't engage in questionable practices. I would research online to make sure that there aren't any unusual complaints about the publisher that fall into line with what Beall warns against. And don't hesitate to use Beall's list as a starting point. 2) Protect others. Help make others aware of this problem and encourage them to stay away from any disreputable or questionable journals. Alert your colleagues, inform your institutions--especially the grad students! Warn everyone that they need to be selective about where they send their work (if they are not self-publishing or publishing through their institution). If you stop feeding the beast, it will die.
I'm saddened to see that something with so much benefit has been twisted in this manner. But forewarned is forearmed.
No comments:
Post a Comment