Almost every day letters come from open acces journals to publish papers - with paying of course. Do you read them to decide whether these are from ethical journals or journals which ones only paying (without reviewing) ?
I find this to be an excellent question, the reason being that I never actually considered reading those e-mails. The question opened my eyes for what is been called "predatory journals". There is actually a list of possible journals in this category:
http://scholarlyoa.com/2014/01/02/list-of-predatory-publishers-2014/
Probably not the only one.
Thank you László Kótai for your question. I don't have an answer to it, but now that I know this is an issue, I will pay closer attention to it.
My personal conviction is that publishing should be intentional and purposeful. I think that scholars would do well to reflect and consider the intended audience for their scholarship and make calculated decisions based on values and career goals. I acknowledge the dynamic nature of the publishing arena, and the potential opportunities that may open from newly established journals and their audience. But, I think that as scholars we have a responsibility in this domain that manifests in sending our scholarship to outlets that promote our values and career goals. Personally, I do read such e-mails in order to familiarize myself with the new outlets, and in order to advise my students better (including who to beware of), but I do not consider them as outlets for my scholarship.
Dear Dr. Siddhart, Open access generally means paying for the publication because everybody can download the open access papers free anywhere, anytime and any times. It is the main purpose of the open access, and somebody has to cover the publication costs.
I deleted them. They can be ghost sites. A colleague published an article, has paid and found that ... it was a pirate site.
Dear Simone, The question is, how you can distinguish the real journals from the ghosts ? If you delete everything without checking, you will lost the real and good journals as well. A question, what kind of tools could be used to distinguish these pirate sites form the real journals.
I am the editor-in-chief of an open access journal called, Frontiers in sleep and chronobiology, which is part of nature publishing company, UK. Nature has launched handful of open access journals for which you have to pay fee to get published:
http://www.frontiersin.org/Sleep_and_Chronobiology/editorialboard
https://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/25925
Sure there are predatory publishers are out there, who would publish anything if you're willing to pay a fee.
http://scholarlyoa.com/2014/01/02/list-of-predatory-publishers-2014/
http://www.nature.com/news/predatory-publishers-are-corrupting-open-access-1.11385
http://scholarlyoa.com/2014/11/20/bogus-journal-accepts-profanity-laced-anti-spam-paper/
There are good open access journals while there are many predatory journals and publishers. One has to be very careful. Despite my specialty in sleep medicine, I have been invited to join the editorial board of many predatory journals which has nothing to do with my specialty - such as Nanotechnogy to advanced computing.
Many open access journals and predatory journals might not make ISI-index or pubmed index.
People can publish in open access journals and if they are funded by NIH, the paper actually will be available in pubmed.
In our case, we have the option to publish in non-open access journals only in the cases when the research work behind the paper is NOT supported by one of our major research funding agencies. With money from a governmental agency we always have to publish in journals that have an open access option - and pay that fee to make our research available to all. Since we prefer to publish in journals with a very good reputation, and also to publish where our research friends publish, we tend to take the decision to pay the extra amount to our normal outlets and therefore still publish there. It is quite seldom that one of the "open access only" journals are chosen.
Dear Juha,
It seems to be a good method, although this big publishers generally ask high publication costs.
From seven messages, four are identified spam. The other three do not read them.
I read some of them, at first, and review period is very short. Varies between 7-10 days. The journals have scientific committee and reviewing process lasts over 2 months.
I prefer to look on sites known journals ... but I'm just getting started ...
Dear Simona, Thank you for your answer. Even one thing is, I suggest never paying before the publication (or minimum getting galley proof) to avoid problems you mentioned previously. An other sign is about correctness of the journal when the journal sends back some request to revise something or the reviewer's revise some grammar in the text. These means, the paper was read and really reviewed. An other possibility, if there is a paper from your country in the editorial board/scientific committee, and you can take a contact with him/her. In my journalk - which is an existing journal with deep reviewing - the reviewing time is ca. 4 weeks, before the reviewer's have to finish their work within two weeks. Including administrations it takes max 4 weeks, it can be longer only if the reviewer does not give any answer and we have to ask a new one. It happened only once during three years.
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