A university will not allow your papers published in dubious journals to be recognised, so you are wasting your time submitting to them. You would be better off writing a popular article for a local newspaper. The dubious titles and their publishers are catalogued in Beall's well-researched List, the best we have to date. The university's reason is simple: the dubious journals do not have peer review. Peer review is mandatory to ensure the quality of scientific work. This peer review is given by referees from Learned Societies and University housed Journals. Such prestigious journals do not need to look for research papers. They do not approach you asking for you to submit a paper. You choose to write for one based on its closeness to your field of research, and your admiration for it. There are different funding models for journals. Some are fully funded by foundations or by subscribers. Others request a nominal fee on acceptance of your paper. This accceptance fee will easily be covered by your research budget. This fact is known by the 1) the vanity press, 2) fake publishers, and 3) predatory publishers.

A university will not allow your papers published in dubious journals to be recognised, so you are wasting your time submitting to them. You would be better off writing a popular article for a local newspaper. The dubious titles and their publishers are catalogued in Beall's well-researched List, the best we have to date. The university's reason is simple: the dubious journals do not have peer review. Peer review is mandatory to ensure the quality of scientific work. This peer review is given by referees from Learned Societies and University housed Journals. Such prestigious journals do not need to look for research papers. They do not approach you asking for you to submit a paper. You choose to write for one based on its closeness to your field of research, and your admiration for it. There are different funding models for journals. Some are fully funded by foundations or by subscribers. Others request a nominal fee on acceptance of your paper. This accceptance fee will easily be covered by your research budget. This fact is known by the 1) the vanity press, 2) fake publishers, and 3) predatory publishers.

I thank Ian for his comprehensive response to your question. You will be wise to heed his advice.

Many thanks,

Debra

Thanks all for your response particularly Ian. I thank Derek for providing the relevant links. I understand the danger and lose of publishing in predatory outlets. But i don't agree with one of the statement provided by Ian " The dubious titles and their publishers are well catalogued in Beall's List." The title are randomly incorporated by Beall. Which results its removal from the internet . The term “predatory” was also challenged. when Beall was asked “could you please clarify the difference between potential, possible, or probable predatory publishers, for instance a potential or possible would not have same detrimental effects as if confirmed?” In the answer, Beall did not clarify the difference between “potential” and “confirmed”. Beall continues to remain vague about what is apparently wrong with publishers on his list. My question actually relates with the publication business models. Could we consider asking APC as one of the factor to determine a journal as predatory. Since the model is already accepted by the reputed publication outlets such as Elsevier open and other

Thanks

Hi Jan,

I agree with Ian. However, all publishers have to make money so at some point in the process money has to change hands. This could be through upfront charges or through charging end users, usually libraries at high prices.

There is one model that Ian left out which is the vanity book business where publishers get as many contributors as possible to contribute to a book then publish a short print run and sell copies at very high prices to the contributors libraries, universities and institutions.

The point about predatory publishers is their intention/motivation which is to dishonestly charge authors for services they don't provide. I know the word predatory is disputed but they definitely fall into the category of mad, bad and criminal.

On Beall's list, which has now been taken down, there were of course issues and some criticisms which you can read about here [ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeffrey_Beall ]. Its quite an interesting read. There are always issues with Blacklists and Whitelists. An interesting departure is Cabell's Directory a new pay for view Blacklist that assess journals on a number of transparent criteria [ https://www2.cabells.com/about-blacklist ].

My advice to anyone in assessing predatory journals is to use judgement as well as the various lists. I wrote a guide about this here [ https://ambulance.libguides.com/predatoryjournals ]. There are many other guides on the web as well. The other point is that there are many journals of varying quality that do deliver on their promise of peer-review on the DOAJ [ https://doaj.org/ ] for example. Unless researchers are looking for a potentially career ending publishing quick fix they shouldn't be paddling in these murky waters. BW Matt

I think, that most of the journals, sending you a letter, like "We found your presentation at xxx, please send us a paper..." are predatory.

The reason the Beall removed his primary list from his site was the really real fear of prosecution. It had nothing to do with his list's particular ordering.

If you feel that his list is poorly arranged, feel free to provide a better index into it. By "Well catalogued" I meant that the contents provide the best list available, and the List is still authoritative today.

I have now polished my sentence above to say "The dubious titles and their publishers are catalogued in Beall's well-researched List, the best we have to date." I had difficulty composing the sentence, as I had to avoid using the word "exemplary" in it which might cause confusion. "Well-researched" is the right word. Thanks for your comment.

We distinguish real publishers from predatory publishers by their quality, not by their financial model. "Degree of predatoriness" is a variable you may fruitfully wish to include in your metaindex study. But be prior warned, It will not be an easy job to operationalise it. Nevertheless, let me encourage you to "Out-Beall Beall".

PS. An article processing charge (APC), also known as a publication fee, is a fee which is sometimes charged to authors to make a work available open access in either an open access journal or hybrid journal. This fee is usually paid by an author's institution or research funder rather than by the author themselves. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article_processing_charge

Here's an article and discussion thread on ResearchGate related to Beall's list:

Article The illicit and illegitimate continued use of Jeffrey Beall'...

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/324215514_The_illicit_and_illegitimate_continued_use_of_Jeffrey_Beall's_predatory_open_access_black_lists

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/324215514_The_illicit_and_illegitimate_continued_use_of_Jeffrey_Beall's_predatory_open_access_black_lists/comments

Bjørn Petter Jelle da Silva is biassed in that the author uses the rhetoric that using a list like Bealls is contrary to free speech. This hypothesis has no foundation. Researchers are free to publish wherever they wish, in Newspapers or in Nature. Researchers should be gently coaxed to publish only in the best destinations.

In the discussion thread

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/324215514_The_illicit_and_illegitimate_continued_use_of_Jeffrey_Beall's_predatory_open_access_black_lists/comments

I commented the following in two posts:

"I got a request to comment on this. I see both the benefits and the disadvantages with such lists. The growing number of so-called predatory publishers and journals may be a problem for many and somehow that should be addressed, but such lists banning various publishers and journals may also result in that many of them will be judged wrongly - and who is to judge? - and who determines the "punishment"? - especially when the criteria for being placed into these lists may not be that clear."

"You know, human beings have a tendency to judge from outer appearance, e.g. judging you from what clothes you’re using and the look of yourself, especially when they don’t know you yet, don’t know the inner core of you.

This may be an analogy for the judgement of articles.

That is, articles may be judged according to what journals they have been published in and by what publishers, especially if these articles are figuring on various lists for predatory journals and publishers. Thus, these articles, no matter how good they may be, are judged according to their outer appearance (i.e. what journals and publishers) and not according to the actual content in these articles.

Is this really happening? Yes, indeed so.

In fact, e.g. in the Norwegian publishing system, articles published in several journals and by various publishers don’t receive any credit any longer with the argument that these journals and publishers are listed in Beall’s list and hence termed predatory journals."

I also posted the following as an answer to one question from Jaime A. Teixeira da Silva (somehow I can't find that question thread link at ResearhGate now - if some of you come over it please send the link to me so I know where it is and can also update this post):

"Dear Jaime A. Teixeira da Silva, maybe I phrased my comments about the usage of Beall's list in a way which could be misleading. I haven't seen and I don't know if Beall's list is figuring in any official document about assessing journals and publishers within the Norwegian publishing system where journals currently are ranked as level 0 (gives no publication points), level 1 (gives publication points) and level 2 (gives most publication points, considered as "best"). These journals may be searched for at this weblink, and two other weblinks with criteria and procedures:

https://dbh.nsd.uib.no/publiseringskanaler/Forside.action?request_locale=en

https://dbh.nsd.uib.no/publiseringskanaler/OmKriterier.action

https://dbh.nsd.uib.no/publiseringskanaler/OmProsedyrer

Within this system persons may suggest journals for all these levels, i.e. suggesting new journals not already in the system and promoting or degrading journals already in the system. The evaluations and decisions are carried out by a publishing committee. I know very little about any details from the processes within this system.

However, through talking and e-mails from a librarian who knows this much better than me, I've heard that Beall's list has been used as an argument for not including journals at level 1 or 2 or for degrading journals in the system to level 0, e.g. by persons submitting suggestions for degrading journals down to level 0. Not as an absolute list, but as an indicative list. And as far as I've read and remember from various discussions on the web (e.g. also ResearchGate), Beall's list is still being used for putting different journals into categories which are not positive for these journals. In addition, there are also various other lists. I was told that it seems that currently all or most of journals in Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), see e.g. the following weblink:

https://doaj.org/

which are suggested for approval as level 1 or level 2 journals are being approved as level 1 or level 2 in the Norwegian publishing system.

Furthermore, I've also read that an unofficial whitelist, i.e.

https://oaspa.org/membership/members/

and an unofficial blacklist, i.e.

http://scholarlyoa.com/publishers/

are used as a basis for further check of journals/publishers.

By the way - for thus of you with interest - about the Norwegian incentive system for publication - Haugen and Sandnes have written the following article:

Kjetil K. Haugen and Frode E. Sandnes, "The new Norwegian incentive system for publication: from bad to worse", Scientometrics, 109, 1299-1306, 2016 (Springer, DOI 10.1007/s11192-016-2075-2).

Anyway, as commented by me earlier in another post in this thread, I see both the benefits and the disadvantages with such lists, and for the time being I don't have any strong opinion about them, also due to the fact that I don't know so much about these aspects and their details which could justify any strong opinion. Naturally, journals and publishers which are scientifically sound will find it very unfair to be placed in such predatory publishing lists."

In another question thread on ResearchGate, i.e. the following:

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

there are among other stuff given this weblink:

http://www.scholarlyoa.net/

which I find rather offensive towards Jeffrey Beall no matter if Beall was right or wrong (or all the shades in between) with publishing his blacklist - in fact so very offensive that I was not sure if I should repost this weblink here. It seems the temperature on both sides of this discussion may get way too hot.

So as Ian Kennedy mentioned in another post here, Beall may have removed his list due to fear of prosecution. Seeing such webpages and who knows what all bad stuff Beall has received through various channels, he may have felt that he had stuck his hands in the wasps' nest and found it best to withdraw from it all for the sake of his peace of mind. I guess most would maybe have done the same in such a situation.

Dear Jan R ,

I think you answered your question so rightfully yourself: paying a fee is part of the Open Access publishing model and by itself not a sign of predatory.

The Beall’s list is/was, no matter what you think of it, useful in creating awareness of the “predatory” and/or vanity press behaviour of numerous journals and publishers as an unwanted side-effect of the Open Access model.

Several replies indicated useful links such as:

https://beallslist.weebly.com/

And the pretty well balanced link that summarizes the pros and cons of the use of this list and the vivid discussion around it:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beall%27s_List

As you said yourself it is dubious that so little efforts has been put in making a clear distinction between confirmed predatory and possible predatory looking at the implications all this have for researchers who've got linked to this matter in one way or the other.

The unconditional use of the list as a ‘holy bible’ is questionable to say the least. Not saying that Jeffrey Beall didn’t expose a significant number of players that use unfair practices but the focus has been too much on expanding the list instead of making it more solid (meaning that wrongfully assigned journals or publishers such as Frontiers should be removed).

Best regards.

PS. On the risk of getting accused of self-promotion I give a link to a little document I wrote about the use and interpretation of the Beall’s list:

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