[GOAL] Interview with Ahmed Hindawi, founder of Hindawi Publishing Corporation

[Richard Poynder]

Founded in 1997, Hindawi Publishing Corporation was the first subscription
publisher to convert its entire portfolio of journals to Open Access (OA).
This has enabled the company to grow very rapidly and today it publishes
over 400 OA journals. 

 

The speed of Hindawi's growth, which included creating many new journals in
a short space of time and mass mailing researchers, led to suspicion that it
was a "predatory" organisation. Today, however, most of its detractors have
been won round and - bar the occasional hiccup - Hindawi is viewed as a
respectable and responsible publisher. 

 

Nevertheless, Hindawi's story poses a number of questions. First, how do
researchers distinguish between good and bad publishers in today's
Internet-fuelled publishing revolution, and what constitutes acceptable
practice anyway? Second, does today's Western-centric publishing culture
tend to discriminate against publishers based in the developing world?
Third, might the author-side payment model fast becoming the norm in OA
publishing turn out to be flawed? Finally, can we expect OA publishing to
prove less expensive than subscription publishing? If not, what are the
implications? 

 

These at least were some of the questions that occurred to me during my
interview with Ahmed Hindawi.

 

The interview can be read here:
http://poynder.blogspot.fi/2012/09/the-oa-interviews-ahmed-hindawi-founder.h
tml

 

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