Beall's List of Predatory Publishers

[Eigen]

Saw this posted on the CHE forums, and though it would be good to share it here as well:

 

http://scholarlyoa.com/2012/12/06/bealls-list-of-predatory-publishers-2013/

 

Shamelessly taken from the CHE forums at: 

 

http://chronicle.com/forums/index.php/topic,141657.0/topicseen.html

 

Discuss, or file away for future use. 

[mandarin.orange]

In case titles such as "Business Journalz" or "Wudpecker Research Journals" were not red flags... 

 

OK admittedly I saw those specific ones called out in the CHE thread.

 

What makes them predatory? Is it authors having to pay fees? I kind of expected to see, say, Elsevier journals, based on their for-profit model (and a whole lot of bad press recently) but none of theirs in my specialty are listed. I published in an Elsevier journal and actually found them very professional, lots of support for authors, and top-notch copy editing, but I believe its more of a problem re. what they will charge univ libraries to purchase their journals (often cost-prohibitive for non-R1s). 

 

Do these journals actually send spammy/unsolicited emails to grads and researchers, in the same way as shady for-profit conferences? (I've gotten several of the latter.)

Edited June 24, 2013 by mandarin.orange

[fuzzylogician]

Do these journals actually send spammy/unsolicited emails to grads and researchers, in the same way as shady for-profit conferences? (I've gotten several of the latter.)

 

Yes, that happens, I get these emails occasionally. They're obvious scams. They send these emails that are clear form-letters that they insert authors' names and paper titles into. Here's the most recent one I received, about 10 days ago (anonymized). Now that I actually read the whole thing, I noticed this one didn't even bother to pick a paper. FWIW, the organizations that are mentioned in this email are not on Beal's List. 

 

 

Dear FUZZY,

I learned about your affiliation with the MY UNIVERSITY within the framework of your postgraduate studies.

XXXX PUBLISHING is a member of an international group having nearly 10 years of experience in the publication of high-quality research works from well-known institutions worldwide. I am therefore wondering if, you would also be interested to be one of our authors by publishing your manuscript with us.

For your information, our company is an associate member of the American BLAH Association (website link here) and the BLAH Association (website link here too) of the UK and Ireland.

Upon a successful in-house evaluation of your work, we propose to make it available globally and market across the globe through more than 80,000 booksellers worldwide at no cost.

Kindly confirm your interest in receiving more information about our offer in form of a detailed brochure as attachment.

Kindly let know if you would be interested in receiving more detailed information in this respect.

I am looking forward to hearing from you.

Best regards,

SOME NAME

Acquisition Editor

CONTACT INFO

[Eigen]

Fuzzy nailed it. 

 

Interestingly, Beal is getting sued for a billion dollars by one of the India publishers on the list. 

 

Because that's going to help their reputation, going after a blogger. 

[mandarin.orange]

Sounds like vanity publishing!

 

I wonder if this works - if ever a junior prof has paid the fee and published this way, multiple times and perhaps knowingly, to slide an impressive-looking CV by a tenure committee...?

[lewin]

Tenure committees usually require 2-5 letters from experts in the field who can comment on one's publications and the quality of the journals. I expect the candidate would get eviscerated, unless there was deliberate deception going on (e.g., one CV to the experts, another CV to the committee).