1.
Questionable Open Access
Publishing
Presented by
Cenyu Shen DOAJ Ambassador for China
Phd Candidate, Hanken School of Economics, Finland
cenyu@doaj.org

2.
Agenda
• Introduction to Gold OA publishing market
• Background to questionable OA publishing
• Main results of my ealier research on questionable
OA publishing
• Reflections upon this issue

3.
Gold OA Publishing Market

4.
»Why?
»Innovation in digital
technologies
»Librarians’ support
»Publishers’ support
Poltronieri et. al., (2016)

5.
What is quesionable OA publishing?

6.
•Jeffrey Beall coined the term “predatory publishers”
•John Bohannon's experiment
• Definition:
“The sort of OA publishers and journals who only aims to
collect article processing charges (APCs), but they lack
RIGOROUS peer review and PROPER marketing practices”

7.
How to identify questionable OA
publishers and/or journals?

8.
•Two major characteristics:
•Inappropriate marketing practices
•Spam emails
•Journal titles with “International”, “American” or “European”
•Fake impact factors
•Advertise a very short publishing time
•Advertise a relative low publication fees
•No or little quality control of contents
•Low-standard peer review process or even don’t have peer
review at all
•Other typical characteristics

9.
Eariler Research:
‘Predatory’ Open Access: A longitudinal
Study of Article Volumes and Market
Characteristics
(Shen and Björk, 2015)

10.
•Earlier research about questionable 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 our study is to provide a comprehensive
understanding of questionable publishers and/or journals in
terms of
•distribution of publishers and authors acorss regions
•the number of journals
•the number of articles published over the past five years
•APC costs
•publication time

11.
Main Results
-Country of publishers

12.
•38.7% - Asia (27.1%
from India)
•0.5% - South America
•26.8% -Impossible to
determine

13.
Main Results
-Development of article volumes

14.
Total article volumes:
2010: 53,000
2014: 420,000
In South America,
≈ 2100

15.
Main Results
-Average number of articles per
journal

16.
Main Results
-Subject fields

17.
Main Results
-Country of authors

18.
•60.3% - Asia (34.7%
from India)
•2.3% - South America
•16.4% - Africa

19.
• To conclude, between 2010 and 2014, there was a
dramatic rise in the number of questionable OA journals
and articles published by them with exceptional low APCs
of 300 USD per journal and a short publishing time
between 2-3 months.
• The problem of questionable OA publishing is highly
limited and regional to a few developing countries, where
‘international publication’ is a prerequisite for academic
appointment, more funding, or promotion.

20.
Reflections

21.
•Questionable OA publishers and/or journals has (1) caused
negative publicity to OA publishing in general (‘pay to
publish’) and (2) posed a danger to the landscape of
Science (‘production of low-quality research’)
•What can we do to combat the fast growth of
questionable OA publishing market?
•It's critical to (1) every stakeholder need to play a role (2)
call for collaborative efforts from various key stakeholders
to find the effective solutions.

22.
•Resources
•DOAJ http://doaj.org
•Think, Check, Submit http://thinkchecksubmit.org
•Beall’s list https://scholarlyoa.com/publishers/

23.
Thank you!
Cenyu Shen
DOAJ Ambassador for China
Phd Candidate, Hanken School of Economics, Finland
cenyu@doaj.org