I know. There are calls for papers in which it is clearly said that the author should pay, usually, a high amount of money. This is a bad development and should be stopped.

All publishers want to exploit authors and make money, and I know that running a journal has its own expenses, but it is abusive to ask for such amount of money.

This is an interesting article dealing about Predatory journals: The dark side of publishing. The explosion in open-access publishing has fuelled the rise of questionable operators. By Declan Butler. 28 March 2013. Vol 495. Nature 433-435.

An interesting data from the article: 2012 was the year of the predatory publisher; that was when they really exploded

I think 2012 was not THE year as the article says. It only means that they are increasing in number. Their number will rise in 2013, 2014 etc. if there is no action. There are agencies which supervise and evaluate the journals. I am member of the one. In Europe, we have CERES/EADI system which evaluates journals.

In Mexico, the president of the Mexican Academy of Sciences has issued an e-mail alert against this type of journals and their fraudulent activities, recommending Academy members read the following pages:

www.nature.com/news/investigating-journals-the-dark-side-of-publishing-1.12666

www.nytimes.com/2013/04/08/health/for-scientists-an-exploding-world-of-pseudo-academia.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&

Open access is an alternative way for publishing and accessing the matters in which the reader does not pay any money for accessing the information .We know that in most of the world the students and their institutions can not supply the information expenses and it is a better solution. From another point of view the author's institution or researcher's fund should pay the journal fees and if the board of journals keep their scientific regulations, it may be a chance to dissiminate the whole information to all.

It's also worth remembering that the majority of open access journals do NOT require a fee to publish. A good indicator is the Directory of Open Access Journals which can now filters their journals by publication fee (article processing charge) http://www.doaj.org/doaj?func=byPublicationFee&uiLanguage=en

Predatory Journals (many of them working as Open journals) have been described as:

Typically, these publishers spam professional email lists, broadly soliciting article submissions for the clear purpose of gaining additional income. Operating essentially as vanity presses, these publishers typically have a low article acceptance threshold, with a false-front or non-existent peer review process. Unlike professional publishing operations, whether subscription-based or ethically-sound open access, these predatory publishers add little value to scholarship, pay little attention to digital preservation, and operate using fly-by-night, unsustainable business models.

Interesting topic: I didn't know that!

Is there an official/non official list of those Predatory Journals?

Thank you

Anyone aware of good Open Access Journals indexed in scientific databases like ISI and SCOPUS?

Alessandro

Maybe want to review the following address: http://laikaspoetnik.wordpress.com/2011/12/19/jeffrey-bealls-list-of-predatory-open-access-publishers-2012-edition/

Many of the major publishers offer the Open acces system in their journals indexed in the Journal Citation Report ans Scopus

The list of questionable, scholarly open-access journals (also called Jeffrey Beall’s List of Predatory, Open-Access Publishers) as well as the criteria for determining predatory journals can be read in the next address:

http://scholarlyoa.com/individual-journals/

Dear Jose, thanks for your answer! I am aware that several major publishers now offer both a traditional and an open-access publishing method (even though the fees charged are sometimes unbearable (e.g. 1.800 $ for publishing for turining your paper published by some Elsevier journals into an open access publication).

I was wondering if anyone is aware of purely Open Access Journals currently indexed in JCR (ISI) and/or Scopus.

Dear Antonio, maybe want to review the following address

http://wowter.net/2011/01/06/the-impact-factor-of-open-access-journals/

Dear Jose, thanks a lot, this was really helpful!

By scanning this list, I noticed that only 4 items refer to the "Business and Management" subject (that's my own field of research, together with ).

If anyone has first-hand experience of Open Access journals focusing on the subjects of Business/Management/Innovation that are idexed in Scopus and or JCR (ISI), please let me know.

Interesting is the fact that Dr. Beall include Baishideng in its list of pOA publishers, while many of that publisher's journal are ISI indexed. Scopus-indexed journals like EuroJournals also appear on that list. To me it is equivalent of saying that publishers may function based on a predatory techniques which are unethical, but some of them are nonetheless publishing scientifically sound materials.

Please read John Bovannon's article (Science, 4 Oct. 2013, http://www.sciencemag.org/content/342/6154/60.full.pdf ) , which describes how an obviously bad paper got accepted to predatory (and other) journals. Beall's list can be found at http://scholarlyoa.com/publishers/ .

Dear Srinivas,

I fully agree with you, I was just to mention your above mentioned link for Prof. Beall.

Regards, Emad

 Dear José Alberto Ramírez de León

Predatory open-access publishers are those that unprofessionally exploit the gold open-access model for their own profit. That is to say, they operate as scholarly vanity presses and publish articles in exchange for the author fee. They are characterized by various level of deception and lack of transparency in their operations. For example, some publishers may misrepresent their location, , or they may claim a stringent peer-review where none really exists."  Predatory publishers may also claim to be included in directories and indexes when they are not and include faculty on their editorial boards who have not agreed to serve. Predatory publishers began profilerating in the past few years with the increase in open access publishing .

 Thank you

I think there isnt much difference in terms of quality of review between open access and print journals. Except otherwise the journal is of course a Predatory journal. 

Just would like to note that the original Beall's list web site (scholarly-oa.com) does not host the lists of predatory journals and predatory publishers anymore anyway but I have recently found a web site https://predatoryjournals.com/ which claims to build on it and expand this list (see https://predatoryjournals.com/about/ )

See also the question concerning this site

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

There is also a related RG project

https://www.researchgate.net/project/ETHICAL-AND-QUESTIONABLE-PRACTICES-IN-RESEARCH-AND-PUBLISHING

Jose, I urge caution with continued reliance on Beall's blacklists, or any other derivative that has relied on those lists. Because they are inaccurate. Relying on an inaccurate source of information to base scholarly decisions can be equated with misconduct.