Questioning Dr. Beall’s List of Predatory Publishers: Myths and Truths

Predatory Open Access Publishers are those which unethically exploit the author-pays model of open-access publishing for their own benefit. Usually these publishers spam professional e-mail lists, broadly soliciting article submissions with an obvious intention of gaining additional income. These publishers normally follow fake or non-accurate peer-reviewing procedures.

Beall`s List is a regularly updated report by Jeffrey Beall that includes 225 publishers that he labels are predatory. This list has received much attention from the press as well as researchers and librarians around the world.

However, there are always two sides to a coin, and Dr. Beall’s list of predatory publishers is not entirely irrefutable. Many publishers, especially those who think they have been unjustly alleged as predatory are clearly not pleased¹. Even many representing bodies of publishers have criticized him for jumping to conclusions without adequate investigation. For instance, Beall has not actually worked with many of the publishers he has branded as predatory, and only an analysis of their websites does not entitle him to pass such a judgment against them. Moreover, Dr. Beall has also declared certain newly founded but otherwise genuine journals as predatory², which further raises doubts on his list of predatory open access publishers.

There are certain important issues affecting the publishing industry. The emergence of Open Access Journal Publishers Association (OAJPA), which is believed to be based in India, has again been condemned by Jeffery Beall. We can see a trend here that mostly publishers that are small, new to the industry or based in the third world are targeted and labeled as predatory. On the contrary, many traditional, giant publishers from the developed world are known for charging excessively for their open access journals. They typically have a portfolio of thousands of open access journals, a huge number by any standards. Still, these publishers are seldom labeled exploitative and they never appear in the lists of predatory publishing.

The responsibility of regulating the industry standards for adequate checks and balance lies with the authorities as well as the various players in the industry: the researchers, academic institutions, research institutions, libraries and the publishers themselves. A central body for regulations and control is the need of the day, as expressed by Richard Poynder in his blog: Open and Shut?

“The nub of the matter is that the author-pays OA publishing model has encouraged unscrupulous publishers to enter the scholarly publishing market. Yet no one has come up with an adequate way of delineating the good from the bad. We have Beall’s unsatisfactory binary approach — where OA publishers are essentially assumed to be ok, or predatory — and we have the inherent assumption behind OASPA (Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association) that probity is coterminous with membership of its exclusive club.”