[GOAL] The OA Interviews: Jeffrey Beall, University of Colorado Denver

[Richard Poynder]

Jeffrey Beall, a metadata librarian at the University of Colorado Denver,
maintains a list of what he calls "predatory publishers". That is,
publishers who, as Beall puts it, "unprofessionally exploit the gold
open-access model for their own profit." Amongst other things, this can mean
that papers are subjected to little or no peer review before they are
published.

 

Currently, Beall's blog list of predatory publishers lists over 100 separate
companies, and 38 independent journals. And the list is growing by 3 to 4
new publishers each week.

 

Beall's opening salvo against predatory publishers came in 2009, when he
published a review of the OA publisher Bentham Open for The Charleston
Advisor. Since then, he has written further articles on the topic, and has
been featured twice in The Chronicle of Higher Education. 

 

His work on predatory publishers has caused Beall to become seriously
concerned about the risks attached to gold OA. And he is surprised at how
little attention these risks get from the research community. As he puts it,
"I am dismayed that most discussions of gold open-access fail to include the
quality problems I have documented. Too many OA commenters look only at the
theory and ignore the practice. We must 'maintain the integrity of the
academic record', and I am doubtful that gold open-access is the best
long-term way to accomplish that."

 

An interview with Jeffrey Beall is available here:

 

http://poynder.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/oa-interviews-jeffrey-beall-university
.html

 

 

 

 

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