Most
publishers of medical, technical and science literature offer Open Access and
Gold Open Access publication options. The idea is to provide free access to
scientific information and research to all, where the author pays for the
research to be published rather than the consumer paying for using it. This
way, we have a system where the consumer (often medical students, doctors and
researchers from the third world) benefit from the free dissemination of
valuable scientific knowledge.
However,
there are certain factions in the industry that misuse the Open Access model
for their own gains. We have been hearing these two words “Predatory
Publishers” quite a lot these days. In fact, there is a long list of publishers
and journals that have been branded as predatory, sometimes incorrectly.
Actually
the problem is neither with the model itself nor with a number of these
publishers which have been wrongly accused of abusing the model. Open Access
options are available by all major STM publishers, for example Elsevier which
publishes 1600 Open Access titles. The problem lies with the authorities which
have not been able to organize the standards and guidelines which can oust the
fake or exploitative publishers from the business while preserving the
integrity of the publishing industry.
The
problem here is deeper than meets the eye. First of all, the publisher who is
abusing the Open Access model is detrimental to the author community as well as
the readers and student body. Research suffers and so does its consumers. When
an author undergoes a bad publishing experience where she has been taken
advantage of, we can expect that she won’t be using the Open Access option any
time soon. Which means she will turn back to the traditional subscription based
printing for publishing her research. A clear loss for the reader who will find
he is now charged, often unfairly and excessively, for the same research. This
is clear from the fact that libraries have come to unite against and even
boycott in some instances the traditional publishers who are known to exploit
them through unfair
pricing, shoddy
bundling offers and low-quality research such as sponsored journals. The
libraries and their patrons are not happy at all with the situation, as is
evident from the case of the University of California when at one time it was obliged
to pay $8 million a year for accessing Elsevier journals.
The
other side of the problem is the labeling of a number of legitimate Open Access
journals as predatory by certain splinter groups. Richard Poynder gives a
detailed analysis of predatory publishing questions in his blog Open
and Shut? , which will shed light on the various points-of-view involved in
the controversies. The publishers which have been accused as predatory by Dr
Beall’s have actually been in the publishing business for decades. One case is
that of Bentham Science Publishers, who have been blacklisted in a Crap Paper
controversy, which suggests that the publishers are fake and predatory in
nature for a paper they never even published. Bentham is known to process and
publish 20,000 research articles a year, and is rather a medium sized publishing
company in STM publications.
These
days, it is difficult to go by a day without hearing someone’s name in a
conflict. The age of the internet has lead to controversies being the oxygen of
our lungs. One day you see a company’s name in the “don’ts” list, and the other
day it is named as the “best-thing-that-has-happened-to-you”.
While
going through a thread of blogs and publishing industry news, I came across a
blog by one of the most discussed names of the past years (in reference to
controversy), Phil
Davis, who declared in his personal blog
that neither the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) nor Beall’s list is
your go-to list for the names
of ‘tainted Open Access journals’. His statement relies on the Sting Operation
done by John Bohannan.
He assessed many of the OA journals, which were ready to accept his fake
article. Based on Bohannon’s work, Davis has clarified that the long list of
publishers in the DOAJ and Beall are not based on any scientific or rational
evidence and proof. Critics like Beall should be careful in tagging quality
publishers as ‘predatory’. No doubt, there are many fake contacts and websites
who rip off authors but one should make sure whether they are authentic or not,
before naming the valued OA journals as ‘predatory’.
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