Ponderings on predatory journals


I originally posted this as a response in a post that Paul Prinsloo wrote on facebook (in response to this Chronicle Article on Beall's list and why it died), but it seemed lengthy enough to cross-post as a blog post :-)
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So many issues to dissect and analyze is such a (relatively) brief article. It is important to see and analyze predatory journals (and academic publishing) in general systematically with other trends in academia. This includes the fetishization of publish or perish, and the increased research requirements to even get a job in academia (see recent article on daily noos as an example)

One thing that bugged me was this line --"Good journals are not going to come to you and beg you for your articles. That should be your first clue." There are legitimate journals out there that are new, and hence don't have any current readership because they are new, so they can't necessarily rely on the word of mouth to get submissions for review. I am helping a colleague get submissions for for upcoming issues (shameless plug: http://scholarworks.umb.edu/ciee/ ), and we certainly solicit submissions from within our social network (and the extended social network). We don't spam people (perhaps that the difference), but the social network is used for such purposes.

I also don't like the idea of categorization of 'high quality' and 'low quality' . Anecdotally I'd say that what passes as high quality tends to (at least) correlate with how long they've been in the market, the readership they've amassed over the years, and the exclusivity they have developed because of this (many submissions, few spots for publication). Exclusivity doesn't necessarily mean high quality, and a high quality journal doesn't necessarily mean that a specific article is high quality (but we tend to view it under that halo effect).

At the end of the day, to me it seems that academics are equally susceptible to corporate interests as other professionals. True freedom to say what you need to say sometimes requires a pseudonym - sort of like the Annoyed Librarian...

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