Are you publishing your research in a questionable open access journal? Presented by Leena Shah, DOAJ Ambassador

1. Are you publishing your research in
a questionable open access journal?
Presented by Leena Shah,
Ambassador for DOAJ, India
Webinar at OpenCon 2016 @ 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"

3. Why does predatory publishing flourish?
A steady rise of Gold* OA journals increasing due to innovation in
digital technologies, librarian and publishers support:
*Author-Pay model Poltronieri et. al., (2016)
 Easy to exploit the Gold OA
publishing by charging authors a
processing fee and offering no
peer review for their article in
exchange

4. Victim selection & Intensive e-mail
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
How do questionable publishers operate?
Questionable
Publishers

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
- 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
For the researcher:

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. Some common practices by questionable publishers are:
– Inappropriate marketing practices
• Unsolicited spam emails
• 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
Learn to detect unethical OA publishing practices

8. • 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
Learn to detect unethical OA publishing practices

9. • DOAJ http://doaj.org
• Think, Check, Submit http://thinkchecksubmit.org
• Beall’s list https://scholarlyoa.com/publishers/
Tools to help detect unethical OA publishing
practices

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), 69-81.
• Beall, J. (2015, January 1). Criteria for Determining Predatory Open-Access
Publishers. Retrieved November 10, 2016, from https://scholarlyoa.com/
• 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), 772-778.

11. Thank you!
Leena Shah
DOAJ Ambassador for India
leena@doaj.org