1. Are you publishing your research in a questionable open access journal?
Presented by Leena Shah,
Ambassador for DOAJ, India
Webinar at OpenCon Ranchi, India
12th Nov 2016
              This entire work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

2. What is Questionable or Predatory OA Publishing?
'PREDATORY' OPEN ACCESS
Coined by Jeffrey Beall
"The sort of publishers and journals who aims to collect article processing fee, but lack rigorous peer review and proper marking practices"
Jeffrey Beall, Associate Professor and Scholarly Initiatives Librarian,
Auraria Library, University of Colorado Denver,
USA

3. Why does predatory publishing flourish?
A steady rise of Gold* OA journals increasing due to innovation in digital technologies, librarian and publishers support:
Easy to exploit the Gold OA publishing by charging authors a processing fee and offering no peer review for their article in exchange
The gold (author pays) open-access model has given rise to a great many new online publishers. Many of these publishers are corrupt and exist only to make money off the author processing charges that are billed to authors upon acceptance of their scientific manuscripts."
*Author-Pay model
Poltronieri et. al., (2016)

4. How do questionable publishers operate?
Victim selection & Intensive marketing
Researcher submits article along with Article Processing charges and/or submission fees
Publisher may accept and publish flawed manuscripts with little or no peer review
Article is available online on a Hijacked or ‘fake’ journal website
Questionable Publishers
May accept flawed manuscripts in terms of scientific and/or scholarly quality

5. Outcome of questionable publishing practices
Questionable OA publishing
Production of low-quality research published in a primary source of information i.e. journals
Undermines OA model and risk for inexperienced authors
These unethical practices have led to negative publicity to OA publishing in general
For the researcher:
Your research may be published alongside other sub-standard work
Withdrawal of article may be charged or may not be allowed if you have transferred copyright /publishing rights

6. Why do researchers fall prey to unethical OA publishing practices?
Desire (and need) to Publish (or perish)
Short publishing time
Early career researchers
Lack of awareness
Lack of skill & knowledge to detect unethical OA publishing

7. Learn to detect unethical OA publishing practices
Some common practices by questionable publishers are:
Inappropriate marketing practices
Unsolicited spam s
Advertise a very quick publishing time
Advertise a relative low publication fees
Journal titles does not match its origin e.g. “International”, “American” or “European”
Fake impact factors. Check Journal Citation Reports to confirm.
No or little quality control of contents
Low-standard peer review process or even don’t have peer review at all

8. Learn to detect unethical OA publishing practices
Journal website does not identify a formal editorial board with their affiliations
Information regarding article processing charges may be hidden or missing from the website
‘Contact Us’ has a web form and does not reveal location
Publisher publishes journals that combine 2 or more disciplines not normally treated together

9. Tools to help detect unethical OA publishing practices
DOAJ
Think, Check, Submit
Beall’s list

10. References
Shen, C. (2016). Questionable Open Access Publishing [Power Point Slides]. Presented online for Latin America as DOAJ Ambassador for China.
Tin, L., Ivana, B., Biljana, B., Ljubica, I. B., Dragan, M., & Dušan, S. (2014). Predatory and fake scientific journals/publishers–a global outbreak with rising trend: a review. Geographica Pannonica, 18(3),
Beall, J. (2015, January 1). Criteria for Determining Predatory Open-Access Publishers. Retrieved November 10, 2016, from
Shen, C., & Björk, B. C. (2015). ‘Predatory’open access: a longitudinal study of article volumes and market characteristics. BMC medicine, 13(1), 1.
Ward, S. M. (2016). The rise of predatory publishing: How to avoid being scammed. Weed Science, 64(4),

11. DOAJ Ambassador for India
Thank you!
Leena Shah
DOAJ Ambassador for India