Dear friends
There was a time when hardly 100 journals existed throughout the world. Now I believe may be we are running in thousand's and it appears is a non-stop phenomenon, unless we react to this unwarranted and highly damaging journal publishing activity.
WE are already seeing overlapping journal titles, degrading publishing quality, publication for money......
If we don't put a check on this the next generation might be facing a problem with increasing low standard journal publications.
PUBLICATION FOR THE SAKE OF PUBLICATION-STOP THIS TREND
Freedom of literary and academic expression is very important to the academic community, in my view. Journals of ostensibly inferior quality (or prestige, which is not the same as quality) may fulfil vital functions, such as:
(1) giving authors who do not wish to follow the generally accepted consensus a place to air their ideas (thus avoiding the censorship of established gatekeepers);
(2) providing a place for young academics, including students, to practice playing the journal game; and
(3) providing a forum where readers can see in one place the production of a specific community of scholars; this is the case of many journals edited by academic departments, divisions, and research institutes.
Scholars learn by experience which journals are the most reliable in their fields, although sometimes we can be surprised by the low quality of work published in prestigious journals, or by innovative work appearing in low-prestige journals.
Fraudulent journals, especially those with profit as their main goal, will tend to be ignored by serious scholars (and especially by committees evaluating the production of a scholar). Most academics will boycott such publications automatically, although I cannot see how they could be banned without setting a dangerous precedent for limiting freedom of speech. Librarian Jeffrey Beall has published a list of "Potential, possible, or probable predatory scholarly open-access publishers," saving us the time-consuming task of evaluating these publications:
http://scholarlyoa.com/publishers/
I agree with your diagnostics. Not, however with what you say about trusting this coming next generation. I do trust her, no question about this. I can see very good young scholars almost everywhere that are promising and tenacious.
Maintaining quality in higher education and framing norms is the major responsibility of University Grant Commission (UGC). In this context UGC framed norms related to minimum qualification of direct recruitments and promotion of faculty. Under these norms one key word was API. After the implementation of recent norms and API, a number of publications were made by the academicians and researchers. Various reports in journals like BMC Medicine, Current Science have alarmed the low quality of publications. The practice of publishing in bogus journals spread like wildfire. In this context, UGC has taken a step of making a list of UGC approved journals. After the first list which includes around 38,653 journals, Recently UGC have uploaded newly added journal’s list on the official website. In this paper author has tried to explain the rationale behind these lists, criticism of the lists from different aspects, future of these lists and some suggestions from experiences at ground zero level to improve quality of research publications.
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