Predatory Publishing and the Promise of Open Access Success

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’.

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.”