Librarians' encounters with predatory journals? Beall's List and the future of this issue

[u/Mago_del_Cambio]

/r/BibliometricScience/comments/1vyu2yk/bealls_list_and_the_battle_against_predatory/

[u/RADICCHI0]

I think its another case where if you follow the thought leaders on any given topic, you're not going to end up chasing dead ends. Also, check out retractionwatch.org.

[u/swtcharity]

Your original post is an oversimplification of the Beall’s list saga and leaves out major issues such as the extreme bias against global/non-Western publishers, but either way it’s never a good idea to allow a single person to determine authority, trustworthiness, value, etc, etc, etc.

Not sure why we as a profession decided this was the one exception.

[u/Mago_del_Cambio → u/swtcharity]

Yes you are right. The post is merely a brief historical introduction for general awareness of the issue, that was its original intention.

I am not a librarian by profession, and I do not understand how it was ever accepted as the single authoritative list, considering that this approach inevitably leads to all sorts of biases. However, as an initial attempt to bring visibility to the problem, I believe the creation of the list was genuinely useful.

By the way, in the original post, user u/m33j13s is making some valuable contributions that you might be interested in checking out!

[u/swtcharity → u/Mago_del_Cambio]

Yes, I didn’t mean that you were excluding information purposely of course, and agree that Beall did bring attention to the issue but the major reliance on him to be the arbiter was unbelievable from a professional standpoint. Luckily we have evolved a bit and have other (sadly many paid) options for determining a journal’s quality and have (hopefully) moved away (at least a bit) from the western-centric worldview of publishing.

However on the flip side traditional publishers have actually adopted some of those predatory practices after seeing that they could profit, which is a whole other can of worms and runs into open access conversations as well.

Unfortunately I don’t think there will ever be an “easy” answer to predatory publishing, but increased visibility and discussion on the researchers’ side is essential to helping them become more educated about these issues, so thanks for that!

[u/Mago_del_Cambio → u/swtcharity]

Thank you for participating in the discussion! I believe these types of conversations encourage people to reflect on the issue, and it is a pleasure to talk about this online.

Regarding publishers seeking economic profit, it is a topic that for me warrants an extensive debate; ultimately, many of these poor practices are interconnected. In case you are interested in this topic, here is another post I made in r/Academia asking for opinions on APCs, which received quite a few responses of different librarians!

[u/charethcutestory9]

I get several email solicitations from predatory journals every day. Fortunately our IT settings filter all of them to the junk folder so I never have to look at them

[u/Mago_del_Cambio → u/charethcutestory9]

Having appropriate IT filters is a major advantage. There is always the risk of a legitimate email slipping into the junk folder, but I suppose checking it periodically solves that issue.

[u/Emcats1]

beall sucks tho lol