Not All OA Publishers Are the Same

An avenue around traditional subscription-based publishing probably sounds like a good idea to many faculty members. The problem is that not all scholarly open-access (OA) publishing firms are equal.

That’s where Jeffrey Beall can help. Beall, academic librarian at Auraria Library, University of Colorado, Denver, has created a list of publishers that he feels do not meet sufficient standards and a blog to spread the word. The list is very long, with more than 120 companies listed as “questionable, scholarly open publishers” in the “A” section alone.

“Too many open-access advocates think that because OA is not a problem for them personally, they’re not a problem at all,” Beall told Inside Higher Education last October. “This is absolutely not true. Research published in predatory journals is polluting the entire scholarly publishing ecosystem.”

Beall’s list is updated regularly and the criteria for inclusion are about as long as the list of publishers.

“Unfortunately, the pressure to publish in the academic system is liable to keep scholars eagerly looking for outlets,” British poet Paul St. John Mackintosh wrote in a post for TeleRead. “Said scholars, however, would be well advised to look over the criteria for Beall’s list and the list itself. Clearly, not all open is good.”