THE CHANGING NATURE OF OA JOURNALS The Good, The Bad, and the Political Charleston Conference 2015

CONTACT INFORMATION Susan Ariew Matt Torrence Charleston Conference 2015

Session Objectives Identifying types of OA journals Identifying the politics of OA Identifying the work of Jeffrey Beall and others in identifying predatory OA journals Discussing the role of academic librarians and scholarly communications, particularly in assisting researchers Discussing the future of OA Charleston Conference 2015

CATEGORIES FOR THE DISCUSSION: Types of OA Journals The Politics of Open Access (OA) The Politics of Beall’s List The Pragmatic Solutions to OA Gold Issues Charleston Conference 2015

Types of OA Journals Hybrid—subscription journals that are supposed to offer free access to some articles for which extra, usually very high, fees have been paid. Green—Self-Archiving: Option of an author self-archiving the manuscript version after a 12 month embargo period from publication Gold—Assigns costs to the authors and not the library or reader Platinum—OA journals with no fees (does this exist?) See Open Access Oxford: Charleston Conference 2015

Think, Pair, Share Turn to your neighbor, introduce yourself, and for three minutes brainstorm about what are some of the challenges you or someone you know encountered associated with OA and the OA movement What are some major themes, issues, and/or topics related to the politics of OA and OA publishing? Charleston Conference 2015

The Political: The OA Movement Why would the OA Movement be considered a political movement? Charleston Conference 2015

The Political: The OA Movement Free exchange of knowledge A response to the pricing and business models of traditional publishing Charleston Conference 2015

The Political: The OA Movement Anti-corporation More open to publisher misconduct and/or low(er) quality Charleston Conference 2015

The Political: The OA Movement Have OA proponents ignored potential problems/pitfalls as they relate to promotion and tenure applications? Should all outcomes of publicly funded research be free? Charleston Conference 2015

Question for Audience What have you heard about either predatory open access journals or Beall’s List? What are characteristics of predatory OA journals? Charleston Conference 2015

A Few General Characteristics of Predatory OA Journals “ Owner” of publishing doubles as editor for all journals No formal editorial or review board identified No academic information about editors, nor evidence of expertise Author fees hidden or inadequate Journal title misleading and unrelated to true journal origin (or no clear subject focus for a publication) Publisher spams researchers False impact factors cited No bona fide peer review or copyediting in evidence Example of a possible predatory title (Beall, 2015). Example Charleston Conference 2015

Recent Statistics on Predatory Publishers Recent work in BMC Medicine Journal (2015) Shen and Björk estimate $75 million in revenues last year 420,000 articles published in 2014 with an average APC of $178 See: Shen, C., & Björk B. C. (2015). 'Predatory' open access: A longitudinal study of article volumes and market characteristics. BMC Medicine, 13, doi: /s Charleston Conference 2015

ENTER WATCHDOG JEFFREY BEALL Beall’s List of Predatory Publishers Beall’s List of Predatory Standalone Journals Criteria for Inclusion Blog articles/Discussions Charleston Conference 2015

Small Group Exercise What do you know about Beall and Beall’s List? What politics have shaped the list? Work with your group to list any issues or concerns: Work with your table/group to summarize what you know, or don’t know about Beall’s list of predatory titles Charleston Conference 2015

The Political: Beall’s List Beall’s list has been characterized by some as openly hostile to all APC models and virtually all models of OA Beall is charged with unfairly targeting OA Publishers in developing areas of the globe and is Euro-Western Centric in his biases Charleston Conference 2015

Purpose of Beall’s List To assist librarians and scholars in recognizing scholarly publishing scams and avoid them To expose academic misconduct in scholarly communications (Nature, p. 434) Jeffrey Beall on “Predatory Open Access”. Retrieved from beall-on-predatory-open-access/ beall-on-predatory-open-access/ Charleston Conference 2015

What Are the Politics of Beall’s List? Challenging many of the processes and facets of the Gold OA Movement Charging OA enthusiasts with bias and glossing over the problems related to the Gold OA business model Charleston Conference 2015

Beall’s Attack on OA Gold Generally Beall asserts that “the monetary transactions between Gold OA journal publishers and authors poisons the waters with regard to ethics and quality.” Examples: Junk science articles published and bought by unethical authors to support corporate interests and political agendas (anti-climate change, etc.). Charleston Conference 2015

Beall’s Support of Traditional Publishing Traditional publishing models where publishers live or die based on subscriptions encourages quality, oversight, and innovation Potential for exploitation of authors and publishing staff is higher with OA journals Believes that fraudulent journals are worse than greedy corporations and have no commitment to the long-term Charleston Conference 2015

Talk to Someone New! What solutions might reduce the risk of publisher misconduct in selecting publication targets? List any ideas from your group! Charleston Conference 2015

Role of Librarians: Instruction/Consultation Are librarians involved at your institution in offering information to scholars about journal quality? If so, in what way? Charleston Conference 2015

The Role of Librarians and Academic Scholarship Maintaining digital repositories/OA institutionally sponsored e-journals Educating faculty about impact and journals rankings Warning authors about predatory journals Charleston Conference 2015

The Pragmatic Is a “Platinum” model of OA feasible? Are Green OA solutions a better alternative to Gold OA and “Megajournals”? Charleston Conference 2015

The Pragmatic This is a business…are hybrid and Gold OA funding models inherently bad? The “author pays” model may work well for certain disciplines and titles (e.g. Biology and PLoS One) but not others. Charleston Conference 2015

The Pragmatic Beall’s list provides something not otherwise offered by the library and/or publishing community While controversial, Beall’s list has generally shown itself to be accurate in terms of items on it meeting the general criteria (Shen & Björk, 2015). I would use it unapologetically despite controversies (trust but verify) Charleston Conference 2015

THE FUTURE! And a Few Conclusions… Charleston Conference 2015

Possible Solutions Repositories and libraries as publishing agents Continued vigilance in the evaluation of all journal titles OA Advocates need to address the issue of predatory OA journals directly and offer solutions, or they may lose credibility. Charleston Conference 2015

The Future of OA and Librarians As Berger and Cirasella further argue in their work, there is fuzziness between new/low quality titles and those that are predatory Is a vetted whitelist a better solution than Beall’s blacklist? What are we/you doing right now? Charleston Conference 2015

Selected References Beall, J. (2015). Criteria for determining predatory open-access publishers. Scholarly Open Access Pdf,(Accessed ) Pdf,(Accessed Berger, M., & Cirasella, J. (2015). SCHOLARLY COMMUNICATION beyond Beall's list better understanding predatory publishers. College and Research Libraries News, 76(3), Butler, D. (2013). The dark side of publishing. Nature, 495(7442), Shen, C., & Björk, B. C. (2015). 'Predatory' open access: A longitudinal study of article volumes and market characteristics. BMC Medicine, 13, doi: /s Wills, S. (August 15, 2013). Scholarly kitchen podcast: Jeffrey Beall on “Predatory Open Access”. Retrieved from jeffrey-beall-on-predatory-open-access / jeffrey-beall-on-predatory-open-access / Charleston Conference 2015