<div dir="ltr">Hi everyone,<div><br></div><div>Walt Crawford published data from his DOAJ/Beall journal list evaluations on Figshare, and I built a rough app to browse the datasets. Richard's post spurred me to make some improvements. It's still rather buggy but it appears:</div><div><ul><li>Roughly 10% of the journals (some ~1,200 out of ~14,000) included have an APC and Crawford ranked as "Highly Questionable" (he manually scanned each journal website where available). </li><li>Another ~4,000 he ranked "Apparently Good", and some 75% of those have no APC.</li><li>Crawford found that nearly half (~3,000 out of ~7,000) of the Journal's on Beall's List that are not on the DOAJ he labeled "Ceased", "Apparently Dying", "Hiatus", "Empty", "Empty/Ceased", or "Unreachable/Unworkable", suggesting that many Beall-listed titles are shortlived.</li></ul></div><div>I'd love to hear feedback from anyone who tries out the app, I still have a few improvements I'd like to add when I have a chance (for example, there are journals in the DOAJ dataset that are also on Beall's but they are not identified as such in the dataset, so it's not possible yet to get a clear view of the entire Beall list).</div><div><a href="https://davesgonechina.shinyapps.io/OAJournals2014">https://davesgonechina.shinyapps.io/OAJournals2014</a><br></div><div><br></div><div>Richard's suggestion of a database of editorial board members is a clever one, this strikes me as very labor intensive if gathered from journal websites. Do OA journals typically publish a masthead as an article in databases such as PubMed?</div><div><br></div><div>Like David Prosser, I think of predatory journals as the academic equivalent of 419 scammers. Attempting to track elusive moving targets is not as effective as creating a set of general rules a researcher can follow to avoid poor publishing investments in general, OA or not. What Beall does is similar to manually adding addresses to Google's spam filters, a neverending Sisyphean task that might be less crucial if we taught everyone to check email headers and not open attachments from strangers.</div><div><br></div><div>Dave</div><div><br></div><div class="gmail_extra"><br clear="all"><div><div class="gmail_signature"><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.5;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-family:Georgia;color:rgb(0,0,0);font-weight:bold;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap;background-color:transparent">Dave Lyons</span><span style="font-family:Georgia;color:rgb(0,0,0);vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap;background-color:transparent"> | Data Integration Architect</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.5;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-family:Georgia;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap;background-color:transparent">+86 </span><span 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<br><div class="gmail_quote">On Wed, Sep 9, 2015 at 9:46 PM, Stevan Harnad <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:amsciforum@gmail.com" target="_blank">amsciforum@gmail.com</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div dir="ltr"><span class="">On Wed, Sep 9, 2015 at 9:07 AM, Lars Bjørnshauge <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:lars@arl.org" target="_blank">lars@arl.org</a>></span> wrote:<br></span><div class="gmail_extra"><div class="gmail_quote"><span class=""><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);border-left-style:solid;padding-left:1ex"><div dir="ltr">Hi all<div><br></div><div>if you look at Walt Crawfords fantastic work on OA-journals (<a href="http://citesandinsights.info/" target="_blank">http://citesandinsights.info/</a>) I think it fair to say that we are talking about 5% of papers published in fully OA-journals charging APCs - I have not done the exact calculations</div></div></blockquote><div><br></div></span><div>The PDF is hard to navigate, but I don't see how even a ball-park of 5% is the figure for the ratio of predatory-paid-gold to paid-gold articles published (annually, of course).</div><div><br></div><div>How was the calculation done? and for what time-base?</div><div><br></div><div>If the ratio turned out to be 5% I would call it small (not "tiny," but small!), especially because the ratio of paid-gold articles (not all gold articles) to all articles annually is probably also small.</div><div><br></div><div>But instead of discussing likely adjectives, would it not be more useful to see and discuss the data?</div><span class="HOEnZb"><font color="#888888"><div><br></div><div>SH</div></font></span><div><div class="h5"><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);border-left-style:solid;padding-left:1ex"><div dir="ltr"><div><br></div><div>cheers</div><div><br></div><div>Lars Bjørnshauge</div><div class="gmail_extra"><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Wed, Sep 9, 2015 at 2:46 PM, David Prosser <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:david.prosser@rluk.ac.uk" target="_blank">david.prosser@rluk.ac.uk</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);border-left-style:solid;padding-left:1ex">
<div style="word-wrap:break-word">
Of course being trapped by a predatory publisher is a terrible thing for an individual. Just as sending your bank details to a Nigerian oil scammer and ending up being ripped off is a terrible thing. And some of these ‘publishers’ are behaving reprehensibly.
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<div>But I think we have the right to know the size of the problem. Is this happening to tens, hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands of authors? You are asking us as a community to invest time and effort into providing solutions - let’s know how much of
a problem it is first.</div><span><font color="#888888">
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<div>David</div></font></span><div><div>
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<div>On 9 Sep 2015, at 13:29, Richard Poynder <<a href="mailto:ricky@richardpoynder.co.uk" target="_blank">ricky@richardpoynder.co.uk</a>> wrote:</div>
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Hi David,<u></u><u></u></p>
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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.
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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.
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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.<u></u><u></u></p>
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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.<u></u><u></u></p>
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For more on this see: <a href="http://goo.gl/gybP9G" target="_blank">http://goo.gl/gybP9G</a><u></u><u></u></p>
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<u></u> <u></u></p>
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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.<u></u><u></u></p>
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<u></u> <u></u></p>
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Richard Poynder<u></u><u></u></p>
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<u></u> <u></u></p>
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<b><span lang="EN-US">From:</span></b><span lang="EN-US">
<a href="mailto:goal-bounces@eprints.org" target="_blank">goal-bounces@eprints.org</a> [<a href="mailto:goal-bounces@eprints.org" target="_blank">mailto:goal-bounces@eprints.org</a>]
<b>On Behalf Of </b>David Prosser<br>
<b>Sent:</b> 09 September 2015 11:25<br>
<b>To:</b> Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci) <<a href="mailto:goal@eprints.org" target="_blank">goal@eprints.org</a>><br>
<b>Subject:</b> [GOAL] Re: Predatory Publishing: A Modest Proposal<u></u><u></u></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal">To get an idea of the size of the problem of ‘predatory' publishers, does anybody know:
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<p class="MsoNormal">a) the proportion of papers published each year in ‘predatory’ publishers compared to the total number of papers published worldwide; or even<u></u><u></u></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal">b) the proportion of papers published each year in ‘predatory’ publishers compared to the total number of papers published as Gold OA worldwide.<u></u><u></u></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal">If I had to guess, I would say that both proportions are tiny. <u></u><u></u></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal">David<u></u><u></u></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal">On 9 Sep 2015, at 09:42, Richard Poynder <<a href="mailto:richard.poynder@cantab.net" target="_blank">richard.poynder@cantab.net</a>> wrote:<u></u><u></u></p>
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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.<u></u><u></u></p>
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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.<u></u><u></u></p>
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The number of predatory publishers continues to grow year by year, and yet far too little is still being done to address the issue.
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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.<u></u><u></u></p>
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<u></u><u></u></p>
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Is it time to approach the problem from a different direction? <u></u><u></u></p>
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<u></u><u></u></p>
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More here: <a href="http://poynder.blogspot.co.uk/2015/09/predatory-publishing-modest-proposal.html" target="_blank">
http://poynder.blogspot.co.uk/2015/09/predatory-publishing-modest-proposal.html</a><u></u><u></u></p>
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<span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:'Times New Roman',serif">_______________________________________________<br>
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</blockquote>
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<span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:'Times New Roman',serif"> </span></p>
</div>
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<br></blockquote></div><span><font color="#888888"><br><br clear="all"><div><br></div>-- <br><div><div dir="ltr"><div><div>Lars Bjørnshauge<br><br>Managing Director DOAJ – <a href="http://www.doaj.org" target="_blank">www.doaj.org</a><br>mobile phone: <a href="tel:%2B45%2053%2051%2006%2003" value="+4553510603" target="_blank">+45 53 51 06 03</a><br>Skype-Id: lbj-lub0603 - Twitter: elbjoern0603<br>e.mail: <a href="mailto:lars@arl.org" target="_blank">e</a><a href="mailto:lbjoern0603@gmail.com" target="_blank">lbjoern0603@gmail.com</a><br></div><div></div></div></div></div>
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