‘Predatory’ Open Access -
A longitudinal study of
article volumes and market
characteristics
Cenyu Shen
Phd Candidate
cenyu.shen@hanken.fi
Information Systems Science
Hanken School of Economics

BACKGROUND
»OPEN ACCESS
»Journals and articles on DOAJ
» over 10,000 OA journals
» over 2 million searchable OA articles

BACKGROUND
»'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"

RESEARCH PURPOSE
»Earlier research about 'predatory' OA publishing have so far mainly
concentrated on exposing lacking peer review and scandals involving
publishers and journals.
»There is a lack of serious studies about several aspects of this phenomenon,
including extent and regional effects.
»The aim of this study is to provide a comprehensive understanding of
'predatory' publishers and/or journals in terms of
» the number of journals
» article volumes published over the past five years
» APC costs
» Publication time
» Regional distribution of publishers and authors

RESEARCH DESIGN
Sampling process: we take Beall's list of 'predatory' publishers as our
starting point and sample a total of 613 journals
•Remove dead
publishers
•Collect basic
information
Clean &
Collect
the data
(1)
Four strata
(100+,10-99, 2-9,
Single)
Stratify
and
Sample
•Article volumes
over time
•APC costs
•Presence in
major indexing
services
•Publishing time
•Country of
authors
Collect
the data
(2)

MAIN RESULTS
development of article volumes

MAIN RESULTS
average number of articles per journal

MAIN RESULTS
average article processing fee
The average APC over journals is estimated
to be 304 USD, but calculated for articles
turns out to be only 178 USD.

MAIN RESULTS
country of publishers
»38.7% -Asia
»26.8% -Impossible to
determine
» 17.5% - North America

MAIN RESULTS
country of authors
»60.3% - Asia
» 34.7% - India
»16.4% - Africa

CONCLUSIONS
» Over the past five years, there was a dramatic rise in the
number of article published by 'predatory' journals with
exceptional low APCs of 178 USD per article and a
short publishing time between 2-3 months.
» The problem of ‘predator’ is highly limited and regional
to a few developing countries, where ‘international
publication’ is a prerequisite for academic appointment,
more funding, or promotion.