Predatory publishers: the bane
of Open Access publishing
Dr Carina van Zyl
CSIR Information Services
4 June 2014
Roadmap
• Where to publish
• Definition of predatory & imposter publishers
• Jeffrey Beall’s list of predatory publishers
– Criteria to evaluate publishers
• Case studies
– Evidence of lack of peer review process
• Quality of conferences
• Summary
• References
Closed access vs. Open Access vs. Predator
Where to publish
• CSIR guidelines
– Proof of peer review
– Editorial board members
– Lists of accredited journals
• Funders punish open access dodgers
– Wellcome Trust
– NIH
– UK universities
Spam e-mail
Predatory and imposter publishers
• Predatory publishers use deception to appear legitimate,
entrapping researchers into submitting their work and then charging
them to publish it
– exploit the author-pays model of open-access publishing for
their own profit
– spam professional e-mail lists to solicit manuscripts and editorial
board memberships
– operate with a false-front or non-existent peer review process
– pay little attention to digital preservation
• Imposter publishers create fake websites of real journals and
collect money from authors without even publishing the work
Useful links
•
Beall’s List of Predatory Open Access Publishers
http://scholarlyoa.com/publishers/
•
Article in The Scientist with comments by researchers
http://www.thescientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/32426/title/Predatory-Publishing/
“Poor quality OA publishers funded by article processing fees (APCs)
are a problem, but it is nowhere near as serious as Beall asserts”
Criteria to evaluate publishers
Determine whether the publisher commits any of the following
practices that are known to be committed by predatory publishers:
Editor and staff
• Editorial board members without affiliation, experience or contact
detail
• Have the same board for more than one journal
• Include scholars on an editorial board without their knowledge
Business management
• Have no policies or practices for digital preservation
• Begin operations with a large fleet of journals, often using a
template of an existing journal to quickly create each journal’s
home page
Criteria to evaluate publishers (cont 1)
Integrity
• Falsely claim to have an impact factor (e.g. view factor)
• Use spam e-mail requesting peer reviews from scholars
unqualified to review submitted manuscripts
• Falsely claim to have the publisher’s content indexed in legitimate
abstracting and indexing services
• Falsely claim to have a peer review process
• Evidence of repeated cases of plagiarism
Other practices of poor journal standards (not always equal to
predatory criteria)
• Poorly maintained websites including dead links & grammatical
errors
Criteria to evaluate publishers (cont 2)
•
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Publish broad journals and combine fields not normally treated
together e.g. International Journal of Business, Humanities and
Technology
Require immediate copyright transfer on submission
Lack of published article retraction policy, no corrections are
published
Use e-mail addresses that ends in .gmail.com, .yahoo.com or other
free e-mail suppliers
Display prominent statements that promise rapid publication,
quick review
Focus on authors (not readers) and on getting their fees, providing
no value adds to readers such as RSS feeds, hot-linked
references, links to data
InTech Open Access Publisher
• Croatia-based publisher with clever disguise. Anybody can, for a
price, get their work published
• Several name changes: I-Tech Education and Publishing to In-Tech
to Sciyo to InTech
• Beall: “If your colleagues want to publish there, that's fine.
Personally, I would not publish with them.”
http://poynder.blogspot.com/2011/10/oa-interviews-intechs-nicolarylett.html
• InTech reply: “However, this is something that unfortunately we
must contend with and we shall continue to engage with Mr. Beall in
the hope that he will reverse his position and ensure that his readers
are informed rather than misinformed.”
Proof-ofpeer-review
•
Although not on Beall’s list, not recommended as they do
not have a peer review process
•
Publisher:
reply: “Perform only a process of in-house review, i.e. we
assess the actuality of the topic, the marketability of the book and the
readers' interest toward the topic. Thus, we do not perform a peer-review.
Nevertheless we always try to publish only high-end manuscripts, which
have already been assessed by experts and parts of which have already
been published in peer-reviewed journals.”
•
http://chrisnf.blogspot.com/2010/06/lambert-academic-publishingcontinues.html
•
The Australian Higher Education Research Data Collection (HERDC)
explicitly excludes Lambert books
Journal of Cloud Computing
•
Two publishers each have a journal with the same title:
•
Journal of Cloud Computing by SpringerOpen started in 2012, has 19
articles, a large editorial board and several editors . The price to publish is
$785 and it is not on Beall’s list
•
Journal of Cloud Computing by IBIMA Publishing started in 2011, has 2
articles and only an editor-in-chief. The price to publish is $295 and it is on
the Beall’s list.
Journal of Cloud Computing
On the predatory list of Beall
Not predatory
Started in 2011 (claimed?)
Started in 2012
Only has 2 articles
19 articles
Only one editor-in-chief
Large editorial board and
several editors
Price to publish $295
Price to publish $785
Cost of Open Access publishing
• Average cost $1,450 for 24 respondents (9 with a fund
set up and several had subscriptions which greatly
reduce OA fees) - Survey, Megan Jaskowiak, Bradley
University, Peoria IL, 2014
• PLoS fees vary from $1,350 to $2,900
http://www.plos.org/publish/pricing-policy/publicationfees
• Selective list of open access fees, University of
California Berkeley
http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/scholarlycommunication/oa_f
ees.html
Tangled web. The location of a journal's publisher, editor, and bank account are often
continents apart.
J Bohannon Science 2013;342:60-65
Published by AAAS
http://scim.ag/OA-Sting
Results from case study on fake article
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304 articles submitted in 2013
– 29 websites abandoned by their creators
– 20 paper still under review
255 sub-total submitted
– 157 accepted (62%)
– 98 rejected (38%)
– 36 review comments on scientific problems
– 16 accepted despite damning reviews
82% of publishers on Beall’s list accepted the article
45% of publishers on Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) accepted
http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2013/10/03/228859954/some-onlinejournals-will-publish-fake-science-for-a-fee
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/342/6154/60.full
Reaction of publishers
•
Wolters Kluwer bought into OA Medknow journals
– committed to OA code of conduct and closed down Journal of Natural
Pharmaceuticals
•
SAGE Journal of International Medical Research
– requested $3100 before 2nd phase of detailed technical editing
– took responsibility, but said acceptance would not have guaranteed
publication
– an element of trust is needed for research carried out in disadvantaged
countries and Bohannon’s activities detracted from that trust
•
Kobe Journal of Medical Sciences
– the author withdrew the paper upon receiving the letter of acceptance
and therefore our letter of acceptance...has no effect whatsoever
Reaction of publishers (cont)
•
Drug Invention Today published by Elsevier, but not owned by them
– Elsevier applies a set of criteria to all journals before hosting them and
will conduct another review on their criteria
•
PLoS ONE from Public Library of Science
– ethical problems noted
– rejected the paper 2 weeks later on basis of its scientific quality
•
Hindawi rejected the article
– it is a relief that our system is working
Caution: One in every five publishers on Beall’s list is also in the Directory of
Open Access Journals (DOAJ)
What about the quality of conferences?
• Flattering e-mail and not selective. Why am I invited? Am I being
asked to chair a session not in my field?
• Check scientific / programme committee & affiliations
• Evaluate the conference programme
• Check that the venue exists
• Ask for printed material and signed documents to be mailed to
you. Always ask for an official receipt of payment
• Contact keynote speakers to make sure they are / were affiliated
with the conference. Ask them about the quality of previous
conferences
• Beware if the registration fee includes travel packages, hotel &
meals by a profit company
Summary
• “Scientific literacy must include the ability to recognize
publishing fraud.” Nature 489, 179,13 Sep 2012
• At the CSIR we educate our researchers to:
– be able to make informed decisions when submitting an article or
serving on an editorial board
– also evaluate the content of articles and journals
– use the CSIR criteria, the lists of accredited journals, Beall’s list
of predatory Open Access journals and the criteria for the
evaluation of publishers, the impact factor of journals
– contact an information specialist when in doubt and to speak to
their mentors / colleagues
References
Articles / links marked with an asterisk are highly recommended for reading
1. Funders punish open-access dodgers. Richard van Noorden. Nature, 508
(7495), 161, 10 Apr 2014. http://www.nature.com/news/funders-punishopen-access-dodgers-1.15007
2. *Beall’s list: Potential, possible, or probable predatory scholarly open-access
publishers. http://scholarlyoa.com/publishers/
3. Predatory publishing. Jeffrey Beall, The Scientist, 1 Aug 2012.
http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/32426/title/PredatoryPublishing/
4. *Some Online Journals Will Publish Fake Science, For A Fee. Richard Knox,
Shots Health news from NPR, 3 Oct 2013.
http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2013/10/03/228859954/some-onlinejournals-will-publish-fake-science-for-a-fee
References (cont)
5. *Who's Afraid of Peer Review? John Bohannon, Science, 342 (6154), 60-65,
4 Oct 2013. http://www.sciencemag.org/content/342/6154/60.full Explore an
interactive version of the map at http://scim.ag/OA-Sting
6. The OA Interviews: InTech’s Nicola Rylett, 25 Oct 2011.
http://poynder.blogspot.com/2011/10/oa-interviews-intechs-nicola-rylett.html
7. Lambert Academic Publishing continues to spam, 7 Jun 2010.
http://chrisnf.blogspot.com/2010/06/lambert-academic-publishingcontinues.html
8. Australian Higher Education Research Data Collection (HERDC) criteria and
verification requirements
http://www.csu.edu.au/research/performance/herdc/criteria
9. Predatory publishers are corrupting open access. Jeffrey Beall, Nature 489,
179,13 Sep 2012: http://www.nature.com/news/predatory-publishers-arecorrupting-open-access-1.11385
References on conferences
10. Science Podcast , 4 Oct 2013. Jon Cohen talks with Sarah Crespi about
sparsely attended conferences that maybe taking advantage of
unsuspecting scientists
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/342/6154/133.2.full
11. Personal communication, 2013. Criteria adapted from Elsevier and IEEE
checklists that are being used before indexing conferences/ proceedings.
12. *Union of International Associations, Fraud Monitor
http://www.uia.org/fraud-monitor
13. *Union of International Associations, Checklist to help identify fraudulent
conference announcements http://www.uia.org/fraud-checklist
Any questions?