I recently followed a link to a call for book chapter proposals from IGI Global. It took less than 24 hours for a confirmation email to be accepted after submitting a proposal for the chapter. It was utterly unexpected to receive a response so quickly and with such forewarning. When you search for their reputation, the first thing you notice is that one of the most popular search terms is “IGI GLOBAL PREDATORY”. Then there’s a long list of warnings from multiple writers and blogs.

Then I have tried to explore this more seriously. I have read the experience shared by Professor Dr. Ahmad R Pratama of Universitas Islam Indonesia. I am copying his post below:

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"In my country (Indonesia), Scopus and Web of Science are used as a whitelist system (in addition to SINTA, the national indexing system for domestic publications only). Both by universities and the ministry of education (yes, the government decides who gets to be an assistant/associate/full professor). But they also use Beall’sBeall’s List (including the new one with an anonymous author behind it) as a blacklist system.

Publishing an article in a journal on the blacklist is far worse than publishing a paper, not on the whitelist. And if a journal is listed on the whitelist, but the publisher is listed on the blacklist, the blacklist wins! Today, I learned it the hard way.

I submitted an article to an IGI Global journal last year (Oct 2019), got a significant revision in Dec 2019, accepted in Feb 2020, and finally published earlier this month. It is hurting my career in academia instead of helping me build my reputation and advance my career, at least in this country.

The worse part is that the new Beall’s List doesn’t list IGI Global as predatory publishers but as “Vanity Press’. It defines it as “a type of publishing, where authors pay to have their work published; either in money or – more often – in the author’s publication rights. During the publication process, no peer-review is promised by the publisher and no quality control is done. Vanity press usually does no editing, and the authors are left to do all the formatting and spell-checking by themselves. Their works are then published in self-publishing outlets, such as Amazon, and physical copies of their books have outrageously high prices. The authors, of course, get no income from the sales.”

https://beallslist.net/vanity-press/

It also adds a note, stating, “this publisher is a member of COPE, which should mean they adhere to their ethical standards; please read this, this and this, and decide by yourself”.

I followed the links and found out that the primary sources behind the Vanity Press label are two blog posts from 2007 and 2008:

• https://copy-shake-paste.blogspot.com/2007/12/write-only-publications.html?fbclid=IwAR03mNvjoJnYVd-JgUYCGpA9oDk8ADcH1qsqQ4qeW2J3xD63_kl9L6j7E6w
• http://bogost.com/writing/blog/writeonly_publication/

One thing is clear; they are questioning the book publication practice that has nothing to do with the journal counterpart. Publishers like Scopus, WoS, and COPE have indexed the journal (as many other IGI Global journals). I didn’t spend a penny to get my article published in that journal as I didn’t opt for open access. The publisher did the copy editing, sent me proof before publication, and made some correction based on the author queries. It’s similar to my experience with other publishers like Springer, Nature, or Emerald. So basically, nothing on the Vanity Press definition is applicable.

But yeah, none of the facts above matters. If it’s on the blacklist, it is on the blacklist.

I tried to reach out to the anonymous author of that new Beall’s List, hoping to make them realize that as much as I believe they are helping academia avoid predatory journals, the false-positive harms some others.

Sorry for the long rant. I need to vent my frustration, and I am not sure where else to post it."

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IGI issued a response in April 2020, but it doesn’t matter many. It is still on the new list, it doesn’t matter if predatory or vanity press; it is on the blacklist!

• https://www.igi-global.com/newsroom/archive/igi-global-response-irresponsible-vanity/4557/?fbclid=IwAR0nr44E9n8heS8vNOWAt5PBA9hQCyyAUM2RQr4vQm2_3QqFeGffsFpJKpA

I often get an email invitation to Guest Edit a special issue of their journal or handbook. After seeing all these discussions on the web, I prefer not to go with them. Has anyone here published for them? It doesn’t seem to be peer-reviewed properly?

I would appreciate your thoughts. Thanks in advance!