Scientific writing 3.0: A reader and writer's guide - Jean-Luc Lebrun, Justin Lebrun 2021
Predatory open access journals
Strategic writing
The reading toolkit
The fear of not being published is always present, but is especially strong in new investigators. So how wonderful would you feel if the following happened to you?
You open up your inbox to find an email from the XYZ Society Journal, inviting you to submit your next paper. You look up the journal online, and it seems like it has a pretty reputable board of directors. The journal has only been around for a year, but it seems like it might be up-andcoming. You decide to submit your article. A few days later, you start to worry. You just received an email from the editor explaining that your manuscript was in excellent form, and aside from a little grammatical tweak here and there, the paper is ready for publication. You still haven’t received reviewer comments, nor does it seem you will (or you did, and all the reviewers wrote, “no concerns!”) You always thought you were a good writer, but none of your peers had any concerns about your paper? Soon after, the editor emails you again to tell you that your paper has been accepted for publication but that you need to pay a $1500 publishing fee. Should you? Let’s say you take the risk and go ahead. Your paper garners some citations over the next two years, but then one day, you receive an email from a colleague: your paper is no longer available online. Where did it go? You go to the journal’s website, and it too has disappeared. Meanwhile, somewhere else in the world, a new journal has just been launched, the journal of XYZ International …
A subscription-based journal must maintain a relatively high standard of publishing and peer review, as its revenue is contingent on this. In the open access model, money comes from the authors upfront, so there isn’t necessarily a strong requirement for quality down the line. Traditional journals are ranked based on their impact factor, but since this is only measured after 3 years, some predatory journals disappear once the metric comes into play, only to reopen somewhere else under a different name. And as for the “fact” that the journal’s editorial board is made up of reputable members? These people may have no idea whatsoever that they are allegedly sitting on these committees!
There are many trustworthy open-access journals, including recently established ones! An open access journal that has at its heart a true commitment to furthering scientific progress is a worthy tool. But like most tools, the hand and motivation of the wielder can be destructive. It is not our intention to dissuade you from embracing open access publishing but rather to encourage careful consideration before accepting tempting offers. To combat the problem of predatory journals, new resources have emerged: blacklists and whitelists.
The first blacklist was created and updated by academic librarian and researcher Jeffrey Beall from the University of Colorado in 2008. The (very long) list included the names of journals and publishers that he considered predatory, based on his own research and the feedback of researchers who had been conned. Though Beall couldn’t always distinguish between predatory and amateurish journals, resulting in some miscategorizations, the list was largely considered accurate. Unfortunately, Beall became the victim of smear campaigns directed by predatory journals, so he stopped updating the list in January 2017. His supporters have continued his work by posting updated anonymous lists on the internet.13
The second approach to dealing with predatory journals is the opposite of the blacklist. Most recently, associations like the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ.org) and Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association (OASPA.org) have established whitelists of journals that meet their quality criteria. In this way, authors can quickly look up any journal they find questionable and see if it has already been vetted by a larger body.
So what steps can you take to protect yourself?
1. If the journal is well-known or has been around for a while, there is no need to worry.
2. If in doubt, check the whitelists to see if it has been vetted by an association such as the Directory of Open Access Journals.
3. If you don’t find the journal on these lists, check the blacklist to see if it has ever been identified as predatory.
4. If the journal is not on any of these lists, you are likely dealing with a new journal. That does not necessarily imply it is a bad place to publish, but you will have to do a little more work first. You could read the recent issues of the journal to assess the quality of the articles published there, or you could research the editorial board and contact some of its members to inquire about their experiences with the journal or publisher. No matter what, the adage holds: if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.