[Edling] Beall's List of Predatory Publishers 2017

[Dave Sayers]

Hi all,

Followup to my message last year on the excellent free resource 'Beall's list' of 
predatory journals (now sadly mothballed due to legal pressure and lack of university 
legal support). There's a new list and it seems an important successor to Beall's 
(though irritatingly proprietary): Cabell’s Blacklist, https://wp.me/p84tsU-d00.

Aside from any such lists though, there's some basic free advice I'd give to any grad 
student or early-career researcher on choosing a journal: 1) No legitimate journal 
will *ever* contact you out of the blue asking you to write for them; 2) Ask at least 
two senior colleagues whether they would publish in the journal you're considering (I 
say at least two because, naming no names, I have seen some near misses...!).

Stay safe folks.

Dave

--
Dr. Dave Sayers, ORCID no. 0000-0003-1124-7132
Senior Lecturer, Dept Humanities, Sheffield Hallam University | www.shu.ac.uk
Honorary Research Fellow, Cardiff University & WISERD | www.wiserd.ac.uk
Communications Secretary, BAAL Language Policy group | www.langpol.ac.uk
dave.sayers at cantab.net | http://shu.academia.edu/DaveSayers


On 03/01/2017 19:08, Dave Sayers wrote:
> Today (3 Jan) saw the release of the latest edition of this excellent free resource, 
> on the website 'Scholarly Open Access', maintained voluntarily by Jeffrey Beall, a 
> librarian at the University of Colorado, Denver: https://goo.gl/qk2o6W.
> 
> The issue of fraud in academic publishing recently made the mainstream news in a New 
> York Times article which has been doing the rounds: https://goo.gl/A1G9jI. (Beall is 
> quoted in that article.) The rapid increase in fake or otherwise shady publishers is 
> alarming and a cause for heightened wariness, especially rise of 'hijacked' 
> publications as noted on scholarlyoa.com.
> 
> I would add that there's some debate out there about Beall's methods - particularly 
> concerns about proficiency in English sometimes being a factor in determining the 
> authenticity of a journal. This can potentially cast doubt on journals in countries 
> with distinct varieties of English, somewhat unfairly. (The varied debate about his 
> methods is captured quite nicely within Beall's Wikipedia entry: 
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeffrey_Beall.) Amusingly on that note, the NYT article 
> linked above ends with a correction about a typo in another article!
> 
> Anyway, in the main, scholarlyoa.com is a very useful resource to help piece together 
> the authenticity or otherwise of a publisher/publication, and this year's updated 
> List is an essential resource - albeit with the above caveats.
> 
> And please, as with so many of these things, if you find it useful yourself then tell 
> your grad students and junior colleagues! Too many inexperienced folks get duped by 
> obsequious emails from predatory publishers, and they're typically the worst affected 
> by the scams, both financially and because usually once you publish with one journal 
> you can't publish the same data with another (legitimate) journal.
> 
> Happy new year all, stay safe out there!
> 
> Dave
> 
> -- 
> Dr. Dave Sayers, ORCID no. 0000-0003-1124-7132
> Senior Lecturer, Dept Humanities, Sheffield Hallam University | www.shu.ac.uk
> Honorary Research Fellow, Cardiff University & WISERD | www.wiserd.ac.uk
> dave.sayers at cantab.net | http://shu.academia.edu/DaveSayers
> 
> 
> ---
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