Keeping Track of

Predatory
Publishers
Jeffrey Beall
University of Colorado Denver

ORCID ID 0000-0001-9012-5330

What I Will Cover
Scholarly publishing distribution models
Predatory publishers
My work with predatory publishers
Why predatory publishers are problematic
Research Misconduct
Scholarly metrics



Spam email from a
predatory mega-journal

ISSN
Quick acceptance
Indexing
International

Distribution models for scholarly
publishing
The traditional model
Validation function
The open-access movement
The gold open-access model (APCs)
Green open-access model
Platinum open-access model
The Big Deal in libraries


Predatory Publishers
Use the gold open-access model
Conflict of interest: more papers = more income
Not all OA journals are bad; not all traditional ones are good
Monetary transactions between authors and publishers are fraught
with troubles



How predatory publishers operate
They lie; they are counterfeit publishers
They are often one-man operations
Author-oriented vs. reader oriented
Customers include unlucky honest folks and complicit folks
Chiefly in Asia and Africa, but also many in the UK, Ontario, Australia,
and the US
They also operate bogus conferences
Journals with broad coverage
How predatory publishers operate
(continued)
Bogus metrics companies
Other spam comes from article promotion companies, Lambert,
hijacked journals
My work with predatory publishers
First became interested in 2009 via spam
Coined term predatory publisher in summer, 2010
Blog with three lists: publishers, standalone journals, misleading
metrics. Commentary
My work has been less than perfect
http://scholarlyoa.com
Predatory
identification
Criteria
Lack of transparency (hiding
information conventionally given by
publishers)
Deception
Dont follow industry standards
Why predatory publishers are
problematic
They corrupt open-access and give it a bad name
Possibly have increased the occurrence of research
misconduct
Threaten demarcation and the cumulative nature of
research
Bogus research has affected societal institutions
They have fostered the creation of predatory
conferences
General public has access to bad science
They dont back up their content
Scholarly metrics
Traditional: Impact factor
Used for tenure and promotion decisions
Measure the journal, the researcher, the article
ORCID
Altmetrics
Attention metrics
Abstracting and indexing services
Other
Retraction Watch
Using predatory journals to promote bogus science
Be wary of researchers that approach you with new science
Many still unaware of predatory publishers
Academic misconduct
Data and image manipulation
Plagiarism


Thanks jeffrey.beall@ucdenver.edu