Dear Takele, You seem to have answered your own question, giving both sides of people's fears. Now you should argue for a YES or a NO or a MAYBE, and give your conclusions and recommendations. Fix your grammar before submitting your assignment.

PS How reliable must something be before we can label it reliable?

I do not want to vote for Beall's list, but as far as I know, it was built upon a pre-defined criteria to identify predatory publishes. In my view, it used pre-identified, common characteristics of predatory publishers to guess potential, possible, and probable predatory publishers, which are unlabeled as predatory so far. Therefore, I think, the reliability of the list depends on the reliability of the criteria defined and how it was handled.

We humans are constantly trying to label each other's work, divide it into categories, and we often quarrel about such classifications/definitions even more than about the original work.

Like this "predatory publishers" stuff. So, who/what is a predator? Somebody/something that tries to catch a prey. And who/what is a prey? Somebody/something that is being hunted by (some) predator(s).

The prey might be an Institution, an Association, a group of people, even a single individual, but also an idea/paradigm, money, IP, notoriety (glory), power, and, above all, survival. Everybody tries to survive, even the "regular" old-fashioned Publishers!

Consequently, All Publishers are Predatory.

What discriminates the "regular" ones from the "open-access" ones is the kind of prey they are after. The "regular" ones are after cash, be it private or public, and IP (an author must wave ALL his rights to publish there). The "open access" ones are more after notoriety (though, well, nobody disdains cash). They all demagogically pump up any trifle argument that might help their survival. Above all, they all claim to be The Guardians of some Holy principles.

As a scientist, I do not give a damn about those principles. I read a lot, and much of what I read is, IMO, a nonsense. So what? Even if I read it, it does not make me go blind or something, right? Occasionally, I find something really good and I put it aside to remember. When I do so, I do not give a damn about the Publisher, it is the contents that interest me, and I want to judge that one MYSELF. I also hate to dole out 30$ every time I wish to read what somebody else has written.

@Peter

Whatever the name (i.e. criteria, framework, guideline) used to describe the basis of Beall's list, I just wanted to emphasize that this list had a basis. Yes, as you said, may be it was developed after extensive observations on how the journals (both genuine and fake) behave and how they were managed. However, I am not going to argue whether the basis was reasonable or not. It seems to me that it did not intentionally targets poor journals, and the conditions were defined prior to the list. New readers can check the following link for the basis.

https://beallslist.weebly.com/how-to-recognize-predatory-journals.html

Dear Stan, ......hmm...yes, as you said, all publishers are predatory, one way or the other. Some of them try to catch an author as the prey while others try to catch a reader as the prey. This is not only valid for journals, but also true for all business fields, because they are profit oriented. However, there can be (rare) exceptions even in the field of scholarly publishing.

Experienced authors/researchers could identify where publish, what to read, and what not to do so, because they have the sense of that kind. However, this is not true for all, specially, for the fresh authors. I've seen myself how many of them were hunted by the predatory/pseudo journals. Not all/many readers enthusiastic to read articles published in the journals, which are labelled as predatory. Consequently, the efforts made by the preys are wasted, even if the article is worth. Thus, in my view, availability of guidelines for selecting proper channels to publish is promising at least for freshers.

Dear Peter Breuer ,

You are absolutely right. This question is constructed from parts of the answer of Tewodros Alemneh (August 9th) I came across in an earlier asked question here on Researchgate:

https://www.researchgate.net/post/How_reliable_is_the_Bealls_List_of_predatory_journals

It is a pity that all this take us away from the real issue: How to deal with something like the Beall’s list. For sure the list is not flawless. For me personally I always check whether a particular journal is on the list (or whether the publisher behind is included) and then make my own judgement.

Sometimes the signs (or red flags) are obvious: false claims, useless indexes, no information about APC and so on. Sometimes it is not so straightforward and one has to rely on their own judgement: check a couple of papers and see if you can find them in Google Scholar, is the DOI if assigned legit, general opinion about the quality of earlier published papers, are other journals of the same publisher already properly indexed in services like ESCI, SCI, Scopus and/or PubMed, member of DOAJ and so on.

It still can take some time and effort but why not use the time and energy that someone else has been put in making (and keeping it updated) the list to save yourself some time.

Conclusion: Use the list but always make the decision yourself.

PS. On the risk of getting accused of self-promotion I made a little document about this topic:

Method Predatory journals and publishers: a menace to science and s...

Peter Breuer , you are right, of course, I agree with you. My argument is that, at present, ALL publishers are predatory at least to some extent, some of the majors even to a large extent. Some years ago I have signed up for an Elsevier boycot (it is stiil on the net, but I will not link to it). They behaved most unethically with a friend of mine (a senior Elsevier editor), even while behaving most unethically with would-be authors like me, asking us to give up forever ANY and ALL rights to our work. I do not see any difference between them and the most predatory of predatory Publishers, and let them sue me if they want!

But yes, my argument indeed is nihilistic, in the sense that I do not see how things can be made ethically more acceptable. Publishers have to make ends meet (== profit), authors desire to contribute to Science: how can one force the two things to correlate ???

Most of journals in Beall's list are really predatory by their way of handling manuscripts to publications and almost all refuse retraction. Most of articles in such journals are badly written or authors are out of disciplines. Very few are victim of approximately similar practices and they should claim and be removed as many like Hindawi journals were removed just an example.

The number of predatory publishers is rising exponentially. I think the defunct Bealls list just contains a subset of predatory journals. Many sole money-oriented journals (especially when it comes to APC) are not there. While some inexperienced journals with predatory-like features (though they may not be predatory) are listed. Bealls list though not absolute, but gives some idea. The researcher should investigate the journal before submitting an article. Many things we understand only when we actually deal with the journal.

Apparently, the 2017 discontinued list solely compiled by an individual, anonymously updated and not subject to third party evaluation such as DOAJ and COPE cannot be valid or reliable but only advisory. His obvious prejudice against open access is spurious and cast serious questionable aspersion on his discontinued list. He voluntarily include and exclude some journals. Good that he called it potential predatory and not affirming that they are predatory per se. The list was good but has now out-lived its usefulness and resourcefulness.