Predatory open access publishing

In academic publishing, predatory open access publishing is an exploitative open-access publishing business model that involves charging publication fees to authors without providing the editorial and publishing services associated with legitimate journals (open access or not). "Beall's List", a regularly updated report by Jeffrey Beall, sets forth criteria for categorizing predatory publications and lists publishers and independent journals that meet those criteria.[1] Newer scholars from developing countries are said to be especially at risk of becoming the victim of these practices.[2][3]

History

In July 2008, Richard Poynder's interview series brought attention to the practices of new publishers who were "better able to exploit the opportunities of the new environment."[4] Doubts about honesty and scams in a subset of open-access journals continued to be raised in 2009.[5][6] Concerns for spamming practices from the "black sheep among open access journals and publishers" ushered the leading open access publishers to create the Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association in 2008.[7] In another early precedent, in 2009 the Improbable Research blog had found that Scientific Research Publishing's journals duplicated papers already published elsewhere;[8] the case was subsequently reported in Nature.[9] In 2010, Cornell University graduate student Phil Davis (editor of the Scholarly Kitchen blog) submitted a manuscript consisting of computer-generated nonsense (using SCIgen) which was accepted for a fee (but withdrawn by the author).[10] Predatory publishers have been reported to hold submissions hostage, refusing to allow them to be withdrawn and thereby preventing submission in another journal.[11][12]

On 25 August 2016, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) filed a lawsuit against the OMICS Group, iMedPub, Conference Series, and the individual Srinubabu Gedela, an Indian national who is president of the companies.[13] In the lawsuit, the defendants are accused of having been "deceiving academics and researchers about the nature of its publications and hiding publication fees ranging from hundreds to thousands of dollars."[14] The FTC was also responding to pressure to take action against predatory publishers.[15] Attorneys for the OMICS Group published a response on their website, claiming "your FTC allegations are baseless. Further we understand that FTC working towards favoring some subscription based journals publishers who are earring [sic] Billions of dollars rom [sic] scientists literature," suggesting that corporations in the scientific publishing business were behind the allegations.[16]

Beall's List

Jeffrey Beall

University of Colorado Denver librarian and researcher Jeffrey Beall, who coined the term "predatory publishing," first published his list of predatory publishers in 2010.[17] After noticing a large number of emails inviting him to submit articles or join the editorial board of previously unknown journals, he began researching open-access publishers and created Beall's List of potential, possible, or probable predatory scholarly open-access publishers.[17] In August 2012 he posted his criteria for evaluating publishers,[17] with the second edition posted on December 1 the same year.[18] In February 2013 he added a process for a publisher to appeal its inclusion in the list.[17] Beall has also written on this topic in The Charleston Advisor,[1] in Nature,[19] and in Learned Publishing.[20]

Bohannon's experiment

In a more recent test of this evolving system of publishing ("Who's Afraid of Peer Review?"), John Bohannon, a staff writer for the journal Science and for popular science publications, targeted the open access system in 2013 by submitting to a number of such journals a deeply flawed paper on the purported effect of a lichen constituent. About 60% of those journals, including the Journal of Natural Pharmaceuticals, accepted the faked medical paper, and 40%, including the most established one, PLOS ONE, rejected it.[21] Bohannon's experiment was criticised in turn for not being peer-reviewed itself and for having a flawed methodology and lack of a control group.[22][23]

Characteristics

Complaints that are associated with predatory open-access publishing include

Growth and structure

Predatory journals have rapidly increased their publication volumes from 53,000 in 2010 to an estimated 420,000 articles in 2014, published by around 8,000 active journals.[32][33] Early on, publishers with more than 100 journals dominated the market, but since 2012 publishers in the 10–99 journal size category have captured the largest market share. The regional distribution of both the publisher’s country and authorship is highly skewed, in particular Asia and Africa contributed three quarters of authors. Authors paid an average article processing charge of 178 USD per article for articles typically published within 2 to 3 months of submission.

Response

Beall's list

Beall's List of potential, possible, or probable predatory scholarly open-access publishers attempts to identify scholarly open access publishers with questionable practices.[34] In 2013, Nature reported that Beall's list and web site are "widely read by librarians, researchers, and open-access advocates, many of whom applaud his efforts to reveal shady publishing practices."[17] Others have raised doubts that "Whether it's fair to classify all these journals and publishers as 'predatory' is an open question — several shades of gray may be distinguishable."[35]

Beall's analyses have been called sweeping generalizations with no supporting evidence,[36] and he has also been criticized for being biased against open-access journals from less economically developed countries.[37] One librarian wrote that Beall's list "attempts a binary division of this complex gold rush: the good and the bad. Yet many of the criteria used are either impossible to quantify..., or can be found to apply as often to established OA journals as to the new entrants in this area... Some of the criteria seem to make First World assumptions that aren't valid worldwide."[38] Others find that it is wrong for a single person to maintain such a list, especially when lacking discipline knowledge.[39] Crawford has made critical attempts to verify Beall's list independently, and - documenting numerous instances of inconsistency and ambiguity - concludes that the lists should be ignored, and offers an alternative algorithm based primarily on the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ).[40] Beall differed with these opinions and wrote a letter of rebuttal in mid-2015.[41]

Following the Who's Afraid of Peer Review? investigation, the DOAJ has tightened up its inclusion criteria, with the purpose of serving as a whitelist, very much like Beall's has been a blacklist.[42] The investigation found that "the results show that Beall is good at spotting publishers with poor quality control."[43] However, the managing director of DOAJ, Lars Bjørnshauge, estimates that questionable publishing probably accounts for fewer than 1% of all author-pays, open-access papers, a proportion far lower than Beall's estimate of 5-10%. Instead of relying on blacklists, Bjørnshauge argues that open-access associations such as the DOAJ and the Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association should adopt more responsibility for policing publishers: they should lay out a set of criteria that publishers and journals must comply with to win a place on a 'white list' indicating that they are trustworthy.[44]

Beall has been threatened with a lawsuit by a Canadian publisher that appears on the list. He reports that he has been the subject of online harassment for his work on the subject. His list has been criticized[40] for relying heavily on analysis of publishers' web sites, not engaging directly with publishers, and including newly founded but legitimate journals. Beall has responded to these complaints by posting the criteria he uses to generate the list, as well as instituting an anonymous three-person review body to which publishers can appeal to be removed from the list.[17] For example, a 2010 re-evaluation resulted in some journals being removed from Beall's list.[45]

In 2013, the OMICS publishing group threatened to sue Beall for $1 billion for his "ridiculous, baseless, [and] impertinent" inclusion of them on his list, which "smacks of literal unprofessionalism and arrogance".[46] An unedited sentence from the letter read: "Let us at the outset warn you that this is a very perilous journey for you and you will be completely exposing yourself to serious legal implications including criminal cases lunched against you in INDIA and USA."[47] Beall responded that the letter was "poorly written and personally threatening" and expressed his opinion that the letter "is an attempt to detract from the enormity of OMICS's editorial practices."[48] OMICS' lawyers stated that damages were being pursued under section 66A of India's Information Technology Act, 2000, which makes it illegal to use a computer to publish "any information that is grossly offensive or has menacing character" or to publish false information.[49] It stated that three years in prison was a possible penalty, although a U.S. lawyer said that the threats seemed to be a "publicity stunt" that was meant to "intimidate".[46] This section has been criticised in an India Today editorial due to its potential for misuse in "stifling political dissent, crushing speech and ... enabling bullying".[49] Beall could have been sued for defamation but truth is a complete defense; under section 66A, the truth of any information is irrelevant if it is grossly offensive.[49] Section 66A was struck down by the Supreme Court of India in an unrelated case in 2015, finding that it had no proximate connection to public order, "arbitrarily, excessively and disproportionately invades the right of free speech" and that the description of offenses is "open-ended, undefined and vague."[50] As such, it is not possible for the OMICS Group to proceed against Beall under section 66A, but it could mount a defamation case.

The list is used as an authoritative source by South Africa's Department of Higher Education and Training in maintaining its list of accredited journals: articles published in those journals will determine funding levels for their authors; however, journals identified as predatory will be removed from this list.[51] ProQuest is reviewing all journals on Beall's list, and has started removing them from the International Bibliography of the Social Sciences.[51]

Other efforts

More transparent peer review, such as open peer review and post-publication peer review, has been advocated to combat predatory journals.[52] Others have argued instead that the discussion on predatory journals should not be turned "into a debate over the shortcomings of peer review – it is nothing of the sort. It is about fraud, deception, and irresponsibility..."[53]

In an effort to "set apart legitimate journals and publishers from non-legitimate ones," principles of transparency and best practice have been identified and issued collectively by the Committee on Publication Ethics, the DOAJ, the Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association, and the World Association of Medical Editors.[54] Various journal review websites (crowd-sourced or expert-run) have been started, some focusing on the quality of the peer review process and extending to non-OA publications.[55][56] A group of libraries and publishers launched an awareness campaign.[57][58]

A number of measures have been suggested to further combat predatory journals. Some have called research institutions to improve the publication literacy notably among junior researchers in developing countries.[59] As Beall has ascribed predatory publishing to a consequence of gold open access (particularly its author-pays variant),[20] one researcher has argued for platinum open access, where the absence of article processing charges removes the publisher's conflict of interest in accepting article submissions.[60] More objective discriminating metrics[61] have been proposed, such as a "predatory score"[62] and positive and negative journal quality indicators.[63] Others have encouraged authors to consult subject-area expert-reviewed journal listings, such as the Directory of Nursing Journals, vetted by the International Academy of Nursing Editors and its collaborators.[64] It has been argued that the incentives for fraud need to be removed.[65]

Bioethicist Arthur Caplan has warned that predatory publishing, fabricated data, and academic plagiarism erodes public confidence in the medical profession, devalues legitimate science, and undermines public support for evidence-based policy.[66]

In 2015, Rick Anderson, associate dean in the J. Willard Marriot Library, University of Utah, challenged the term itself: “what do we mean when we say ‘predatory,’ and is that term even still useful?... This question has become relevant because of that common refrain heard among Beall’s critics: that he only examines one kind of predation—the kind that naturally crops up in the context of author-pays OA.” Anderson suggests that the term “predatory” be retired in the context of scholarly publishing. “It’s a nice, attention-grabbing word, but I’m not sure it’s helpfully descriptive… it generates more heat than light.”[67]

See also

Past inclusions
Current inclusions

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Elliott, Carl (June 5, 2012). "On Predatory Publishers: a Q&A With Jeffrey Beall". Brainstorm. The Chronicle of Higher Education.
  2. ↑ Kearney, Margaret H. (2015). "Predatory Publishing: What Authors Need to Know". Research in Nursing & Health. 38: 1–3. doi:10.1002/nur.21640.
  3. ↑ Xia, Jingfeng; Harmon, Jennifer L.; Connolly, Kevin G.; Donnelly, Ryan M.; Anderson, Mary R.; Howard, Heather A. (2014). "Who publishes in "predatory" journals?". Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology. 66 (7): n/a. doi:10.1002/asi.23265.
  4. ↑ Poynder, Richard. "The Open Access Interviews: Dove Medical Press". Open and Shut?. Retrieved 13 April 2016. For the series of interviews, see The Open Access Interviews index page.
  5. ↑ Suber, Peter (October 2, 2009). "Ten challenges for open-access journals". SPARC Open Access Newsletter (138).
  6. ↑ Beall, Jeffrey (2009), "Bentham Open", The Charleston Advisor, Volume 11, Number 1, July 2009, pp. 29-32(4)
  7. ↑ Eysenbach, Gunther. Black sheep among Open Access Journals and Publishers. Gunther Eysenbach Random Research Rants Blog. Originally posted 2008-03-08, updated (postscript added) 2008-04-21, 2008-04-23, 2008-06-03. . Accessed: 2008-06-03. (Archived by WebCite at )
  8. ↑ Abrahams, Marc (2009-12-22). "Strange academic journals: Scam?". Improbable Research. Retrieved 2015-01-13.
  9. ↑ Sanderson, Katharine (2010-01-13). "Two new journals copy the old". Nature News. 463 (7278): 148–148. doi:10.1038/463148a. PMID 20075892. Retrieved 2013-04-11.
  10. 1 2 Basken, Paul (June 10, 2009). "Open-Access Publisher Appears to Have Accepted Fake Paper From Bogus Center". The Chronicle of Higher Education.
  11. ↑ McCook, Alison (August 26, 2016). "U.S. government agency sues publisher, charging it with deceiving researchers". Retraction Watch. Retrieved November 2, 2016.
  12. ↑ Molteni, Megan (19 September 2016). "The FTC is Cracking Down on Predatory Science Journals". Wired. Retrieved 2 November 2016.
  13. ↑ "FTC sues OMICS group: Are predatory publishers' days numbered?". STAT. 2 September 2016. Retrieved 3 September 2016.
  14. ↑ Shanka, David. "COMPLAINT FOR PERMANENT INJUNCTION AND OTHER EQUITABLE RELIEF" (PDF). Case 2:16-cv-02022. United States District Court Nevada. Retrieved 3 September 2016.
  15. ↑ "Federal Trade Commission begins to crack down on 'predatory' publishers". Retrieved 3 September 2016.
  16. ↑ "FTC sues OMICS group: Are predatory publishers' days numbered?". STAT. 2 September 2016. Retrieved 3 September 2016.
  17. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Butler, Declan (March 27, 2013). "Investigating journals: The dark side of publishing". Nature. 495 (7442): 433–435. Bibcode:2013Natur.495..433B. doi:10.1038/495433a. PMID 23538810.
  18. ↑ Beall, Jeffrey (December 1, 2012). "Criteria for Determining Predatory Open-Access Publishers (2nd edition)". Scholarly Open Access.
  19. ↑ Beall, J. (2012). "Predatory publishers are corrupting open access". Nature. 489 (7415): 179. Bibcode:2012Natur.489..179B. doi:10.1038/489179a. PMID 22972258.
  20. 1 2 Beall, J. (2013). "Predatory publishing is just one of the consequences of gold open access". Learned Publishing. 26 (2): 79–83. doi:10.1087/20130203.
  21. ↑ John Bohannon (Oct 2013). "Who's Afraid of Peer Review?". Science. Sciencemag.org. 342 (6154): 60–5. doi:10.1126/science.342.6154.60. PMID 24092725. Retrieved 2013-10-07.
  22. ↑ Eve, Martin (3 October 2013). "What's "open" got to do with it?". Martin Eve. Retrieved 7 October 2013.
  23. ↑ Michael, Eisen (3 October 2013). "I confess, I wrote the Arsenic DNA paper to expose flaws in peer-review at subscription based journals". it is NOT junk. Retrieved 7 October 2013.
  24. 1 2 Stratford, Michael (March 4, 2012). "'Predatory' Online Journals Lure Scholars Who Are Eager to Publish". The Chronicle of Higher Education. (subscription required)
  25. ↑ Gilbert, Natasha (June 15, 2009). "Editor will quit over hoax paper". Nature. doi:10.1038/news.2009.571.
  26. ↑ Safi, Michael (November 25, 2014), "Journal accepts bogus paper requesting removal from mailing list", The Guardian.
  27. ↑ Beall, Jeffrey (August 1, 2012). "Predatory Publishing". The Scientist.
  28. 1 2 Kolata, Gina (April 7, 2013). "For Scientists, an Exploding World of Pseudo-Academia". The New York Times.
  29. ↑ Neumann, Ralf (February 2, 2012). ""Junk Journals" und die "Peter-Panne"". Laborjournal.
  30. ↑ Jeffrey Beall (February 11, 2014). "Bogus New Impact Factor Appears". Scholarly Open Access.
  31. ↑ Mehrdad Jalalian; Hamidreza Mahboobi (2013). "New corruption detected: Bogus impact factors compiled by fake organizations" (PDF). Electronic Physician . 5 (3): 685–686.
  32. ↑ Shen, Cenyu; Björk, Bo-Christer (2015-10-01). "'Predatory' open access: a longitudinal study of article volumes and market characteristics". BMC Medicine. 13 (1): 230. doi:10.1186/s12916-015-0469-2. ISSN 1741-7015.
  33. ↑ Carl Straumsheim (October 2015). "Study finds huge increase in articles published by 'predatory' journals". Retrieved 2016-02-15.
  34. ↑ Beall, Jeffrey. "List of Publishers". Scholarly Open Access. Retrieved 30 April 2016.
  35. ↑ Haug, C. (2013). "The Downside of Open-Access Publishing". New England Journal of Medicine. 368 (9): 791–793. doi:10.1056/NEJMp1214750.
  36. ↑ Bivens-Tatum, Wayne (2014). "Reactionary Rhetoric Against Open Access Publishing". tripleC. 12 (2): 441–446.
  37. ↑ Berger, Monica & Cirasella, Jill (March 2015). "Beyond Beall's List". College & Research Libraries News. pp. 132–135. Retrieved 15 June 2015.
  38. ↑ Coyle, Karen (April 4, 2013). "Predatory Publishers – Peer to Peer Review". Library Journal.
  39. ↑ Murray-Rust, Peter (February 18, 2014). "Beall's criticism of MDPI lacks evidence and is irresponsible". petermr's blog.
  40. 1 2 Walt Crawford, (July 2014), "Journals, 'Journals' and Wannabes: Investigating The List", Cites & Insights, 14:7, ISSN 1534-0937
  41. ↑ Monica Berger & Jill Cirasella. "Response to "Beyond Beall's List"".
  42. ↑ Van Noorden, R. (2014). "Open-access website gets tough". Nature. 512 (7512): 17. Bibcode:2014Natur.512...17V. doi:10.1038/512017a. PMID 25100463.
  43. ↑ Bohannon, J (4 October 2013). "Who's afraid of peer review?". Science. 342 (6154): 60–65. Bibcode:2013Sci...342...60B. doi:10.1126/science.342.6154.60. PMID 24092725.
  44. ↑ Butler, D (2013). "Investigating journals: The dark side of publishing". Nature. 495 (7442): 433–435. Bibcode:2013Natur.495..433B. doi:10.1038/495433a. PMID 23538810.
  45. ↑ Butler, Declan (2013). "Investigating journals: The dark side of publishing". Nature. 495 (7442): 433–435. Bibcode:2013Natur.495..433B. doi:10.1038/495433a. PMID 23538810.
  46. 1 2 New, Jake (15 May 2013). "Publisher Threatens to Sue Blogger for $1-Billion". Chronicle of Higher Education. Retrieved 22 October 2016.
  47. ↑ Anderson, Rick (20 May 2013). "High Noon – A Publisher Threatens to "Lunch" a Criminal Case Against Librarian Critic". Scholarly Kitchen. Retrieved 24 October 2016.
  48. ↑ Chappell, Bill (15 May 2013). "Publisher Threatens Librarian With $1 Billion Lawsuit". National Public Radio. Retrieved 2 October 2016.
  49. 1 2 3 Venkataramakrishnan, Rohan (May 19, 2013). "Send Section 66A bullies home". India Today. Retrieved October 24, 2016.
  50. ↑ Sriram, Jayant (March 25, 2015). "SC strikes down 'draconian' Section 66A". The Hindu. Retrieved October 24, 2016.
  51. 1 2 "Accredited Journals". Stellenbosch University.
  52. ↑ Swoger, Bonnie (November 26, 2014). "Is this peer reviewed? Predatory journals and the transparency of peer review.". Scientific American.
  53. ↑ Bartholomew, R. E. (2014). "Science for sale: the rise of predatory journals". Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine. 107 (10): 384–385. doi:10.1177/0141076814548526. PMID 25271271.
  54. ↑ Committee on Publication Ethics, Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing
  55. ↑ Perkel, Jeffrey (30 March 2015). "Rate that journal". Nature. 520 (7545): 119–120. Bibcode:2015Natur.520..119P. doi:10.1038/520119a. PMID 25832406.
  56. ↑ van Gerestein, Danielle (2015). "Quality Open Access Market and Other Initiatives: A Comparative Analysis". LIBER Quarterly. Association of European Research Libraries. 24 (4): 162. doi:10.18352/lq.9911.
  57. ↑ "Avoiding fake journals and judging the work in real ones". October 13, 2015.
  58. ↑ "Awareness Campaign on 'Predatory' Publishing". October 2, 2015.
  59. ↑ Clark, J.; Smith, R. (2015). "Firm action needed on predatory journals". BMJ. 350: h210. doi:10.1136/bmj.h210.
  60. ↑ "(Gold) Open Access: the two sides of the coin". ox.ac.uk.
  61. ↑ Beall, J (2013). "Unethical Practices in Scholarly, Open-Access Publishing". Journal of Information Ethics. 22 (1): 11–20. doi:10.3172/jie.22.1.11.
  62. ↑ Teixeira; da Silva, J. A. (2013). "How to better achieve integrity in science publishing". European Science Editing. 39 (4): 97.
  63. ↑ Beaubien, S; Eckard, M (2014). "Addressing Faculty Publishing Concerns with Open Access Journal Quality Indicators". Journal of Librarianship and Scholarly Communication. 2 (2): eP1133. doi:10.7710/2162-3309.1133.
  64. ↑ "Predatory Publishers: What Editors Need to Know." Nurse Author & Editor, September 2014. . Republished as open access in: "Predatory Publishing". Journal of Midwifery & Women's Health. 59 (6): 569–571. 2014. doi:10.1111/jmwh.12273.
  65. ↑ Wehrmeijer, M (2014-08-27). Exposing the predators. Methods to stop predatory journals (Master's). Leiden University.
  66. ↑ Caplan, Arthur L. (2015). "The Problem of Publication-Pollution Denialism". Mayo Clinic Proceedings. 90 (5): 565–566. doi:10.1016/j.mayocp.2015.02.017. ISSN 0025-6196.
  67. ↑ Anderson R. Should We Retire the Term "Predatory Publishing"? The Scholarly Kitchen. May 11, 2015. http://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2015/05/11/should-we-retire-the-term-predatory-publishing/ Retrieved September 25, 2015.
  68. ↑ Listed as on a "watchlist" but not as a confirmed predatory publisher in 2012: Beall, Jeffrey, Beall's List of Predatory, Open-Access Publishers, 2012 Edition (PDF). See also Butler (2013): "A set of Hindawi's journals appeared on a version of Beall's list because he had concerns about their editorial process, but has since been removed."

External links

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