[GOAL] Re: Predatory Publishing: A Modest Proposal

[Richard Poynder]

Hi David,

 

Even if anyone knows the answers to your questions they will not capture the
nature and size of the problem of predatory publishing, not least because
the way in which these companies extract money from researchers is mutating
all the time. 

 

For instance, some have started to impose "withdrawal fees". This means that
when a researcher suddenly realises that they have submitted their paper to
a publisher they would have been advised not to do business with, or when
their institution says that it is not prepared to pay the APC because the
publisher is on Beall's list, then the researcher will want to withdraw it.
But when they try to do so they may suddenly discover that their paper is
now a hostage. They will be told they must either pay the APC, or pay a
withdrawal fee. Since the latter will be lower than the former, this is
likely the option they will go for. 

 

Clearly, the latter transaction will be invisible, yet the researcher will
be out of pocket and the publisher will have increased its revenue, and will
as a result be able to grow and expand as a result, and devise new ways of
extracting money as it grows.

 

If we are only concerned about how many papers are being published in
journals listed by Beall relative to all papers being published then your
questions may be good and relevant ones. But if we are concerned about the
impact that this activity is having on individuals then I think your
questions do not go far enough.

 

For more on this see: http://goo.gl/gybP9G

 

If the above link does not take you directly to the comments I am referring
to, they are the last 5 comments below the interview.

 

Richard Poynder

 

 

From: goal-bounces at eprints.org [mailto:goal-bounces at eprints.org] On Behalf
Of David Prosser
Sent: 09 September 2015 11:25
To: Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci) <goal at eprints.org>
Subject: [GOAL] Re: Predatory Publishing: A Modest Proposal

 

To get an idea of the size of the problem of 'predatory' publishers, does
anybody know: 

 

a) the proportion of papers published each year in 'predatory' publishers
compared to the total number of papers published worldwide; or even

 

b) the proportion of papers published each year in 'predatory' publishers
compared to the total number of papers published as Gold OA worldwide.

 

 

If I had to guess, I would say that both proportions are tiny. 

 

David

 

 

 

On 9 Sep 2015, at 09:42, Richard Poynder <richard.poynder at cantab.net
<mailto:richard.poynder at cantab.net> > wrote:





What many now refer to as predatory publishing first came to my attention 7
years ago, when I interviewed a publisher who - I had been told - was
bombarding researchers with invitations to submit papers to, and sit on the
editorial boards of, the hundreds of new OA journals it was launching.

 

Since then I have undertaken a number of other such interviews, and with
each interview the allegations have tended to become more worrying - e.g.
that the publisher is levying article-processing charges but not actually
sending papers out for review, that it is publishing junk science, that it
is claiming to be a member of a publishing organisation when in reality it
is not a member, that it is deliberately choosing journal titles that are
the same, or very similar, to those of prestigious journals (or even
directly cloning titles) in order to fool researchers into submitting papers
to it etc. etc.

 

The number of predatory publishers continues to grow year by year, and yet
far too little is still being done to address the issue. 

 

Discussion of the problem invariably focuses on the publishers. But in order
to practise their trade predatory publishers depend on the co-operation of
researchers, not least because they have to persuade a sufficient number to
sit on their editorial boards in order to have any credibility. Without an
editorial board a journal will struggle to attract many submissions.

 

Is it time to approach the problem from a different direction? 

 

More here:
http://poynder.blogspot.co.uk/2015/09/predatory-publishing-modest-proposal.h
tml

 

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