5 ms·

I'm not familiar with this story but I'd like to learn more about it. Any of you HN readers can explain and/or link to more detailed summary?

an_hn_reader 10y ago
On predatory open access journals and Beall's list: http://science.sciencemag.org/content/342/6154/60.full http://science.sciencemag.org/content/342/6154/60.full quote "There is another list—one that journals fear. It is curated by Jeffrey Beall, a library scientist at the University of Colorado, Denver. His list is a single page on the Internet that names and shames what he calls "predatory" publishers. The term is a catchall for what Beall views as unprofessional practices, from undisclosed charges and poorly defined editorial hierarchy to poor English—criteria that critics say stack the deck against non-U.S. publishers."
- Isamu 10y ago
  Thanks for that link! I was unaware of this trend: "the data from this sting operation reveal the contours of an emerging Wild West in academic publishing. "From humble and idealistic beginnings a decade ago, open-access scientific journals have mushroomed into a global industry, driven by author publication fees rather than traditional subscriptions. Most of the players are murky. The identity and location of the journals' editors, as well as the financial workings of their publishers, are often purposefully obscured.
FabHK 10y ago
Some background: 1) Traditional Journals: author submits papers for free. Libraries pay to subscribe to journals. Articles are available online only for (very high) fees. The author typically has to sign over the copyright to the publishers, so now the publisher owns the final article, which often was entirely publicly funded (research, writing, peer review), yet there is no open access. There are thousands of journals, but a few big publishers (Elsevier, Springer, Wiley, Taylor Francis) own most, and you might have come across their paywalls. They make obscene profits - their inputs are basically free (articles, peer review), and they charge the libraries extortionate amounts, often through bundling (you want the prestigious journal you must have? well, you got to subscribe to all the other crap we publish, too), literally dollars per page. 2) Resistance. Scientists/librarians etc. noticed and objected. However, it is not easy to change: Scientists need to publish, and they need to publish in high prestige/impact journals, and the prestige/impact is tied to the title, and the publishers own the titles. (The margins of academic publishers are abnormally high, indicating some sort of market failure.) Nevertheless, an alternative emerged: 3) Open Access journals. They follow a different model - author retains copyright, and the journal allows open access to the finished article (by putting it on the web, say). As they don’t/can’t make money from subscriptions, they normally charge the author for publication. So, this is a much better model in terms of, well, open access. Good thing. And, in fact, many grant giving entities (government bodies, Gates foundation, etc.) now stipulate that the research they sponsor has to be published with open access (and they often then cover publication fees). However, now: 4) Predators: Where previously the journal had an incentive to make the bar for acceptance high (because they needed to sell the result), now, if you get the author to pay and don’t care about sales, you have an incentive to make the bar low. Thus, predatory OA journals emerged that would basically take the author’s money, say, “yes, nice article, accepted”, and put it on some shoddy website. The author would put it on their publication list - which they now can blow up for a few hundred or thousand dollars. "Beall's List" just listed these predatory journals of questionable quality that would just take your money and give you a "publication" to put on your CV. It was well know among librarians and scientists that cared, and apparently now it's gone. (As a sidenote, there also seem to be conferences that are expensive and accept anything, typically in nice locations. So, you basically submit a talk/paper/poster, get a few days vacation, ideally get a travel grant, and then put it on your CV, too.)
- metaphorm 10y ago
  thanks for the summary. what, do you suppose, is the purpose of an open-access journal? why wouldn't an author just self-publish on the web, or on their university department's web-site? do you have an opinion on what exactly has caused the market failure in traditional journals? if fees are extortionate then why are there no competitors with more reasonable fees?
  - FabHK 10y ago
    2) why the market failure? Because the scientific reputation (and career prospects) are tied to publications in reputable journals, to certain titles. And the titles belong to the publishers. There has been considerable consolidation over time, the big 4 or 5 have just bought up smaller publishers over time, and it's now run not by idealistic academics, but (by all appearances) by cold-blooded money guys trying to squeeze out as much as they can. Competitors can't just enter - there's a signalling problem: how do you distinguish scientists that don't publish in the top journal because they're idealistically opposed to their closed-access practices, from those that cannot get published there because their work is not up to standards? 1) Open Access Journals: the editors do some editing and vetting, and, crucially, peer review. If you put an article on your website, it doesn't have the same standing, "it doesn't count" as a real article or for your publication list. So, in terms of scientific reputation, for now: Traditional journal > OA journal > self-published. The challenge is to get OA >= traditional, and that takes a lot of time, or, rather, coordination: Don Knuth sent a letter in 2003 to the editors of the Journal of Algorithms to persuade them to collectively resign and move to a different journal. People of that stature are needed to break the power of despicable academic publishers (Elsevier is particularly revolting, btw.) See http://theoryofcomputing.org/crisis.html http://theoryofcomputing.org/crisis.html Here some more background: https://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2015/08/17/deceptive-publishing-why-we-need-a-blacklist-and-some-suggestions-on-how-to-do-it-right/ https://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2015/08/17/deceptive-pub... (So, Beall's was a black list, and the DOAJ has sort of a white list.)

an_hn_reader 10y ago

On predatory open access journals and Beall's list: http://science.sciencemag.org/content/342/6154/60.full http://science.sciencemag.org/content/342/6154/60.full quote "There is another list—one that journals fear. It is curated by Jeffrey Beall, a library scientist at the University of Colorado, Denver. His list is a single page on the Internet that names and shames what he calls "predatory" publishers. The term is a catchall for what Beall views as unprofessional practices, from undisclosed charges and poorly defined editorial hierarchy to poor English—criteria that critics say stack the deck against non-U.S. publishers."

Isamu 10y ago
Thanks for that link! I was unaware of this trend: "the data from this sting operation reveal the contours of an emerging Wild West in academic publishing. "From humble and idealistic beginnings a decade ago, open-access scientific journals have mushroomed into a global industry, driven by author publication fees rather than traditional subscriptions. Most of the players are murky. The identity and location of the journals' editors, as well as the financial workings of their publishers, are often purposefully obscured.

FabHK 10y ago

Some background: 1) Traditional Journals: author submits papers for free. Libraries pay to subscribe to journals. Articles are available online only for (very high) fees. The author typically has to sign over the copyright to the publishers, so now the publisher owns the final article, which often was entirely publicly funded (research, writing, peer review), yet there is no open access. There are thousands of journals, but a few big publishers (Elsevier, Springer, Wiley, Taylor Francis) own most, and you might have come across their paywalls. They make obscene profits - their inputs are basically free (articles, peer review), and they charge the libraries extortionate amounts, often through bundling (you want the prestigious journal you must have? well, you got to subscribe to all the other crap we publish, too), literally dollars per page. 2) Resistance. Scientists/librarians etc. noticed and objected. However, it is not easy to change: Scientists need to publish, and they need to publish in high prestige/impact journals, and the prestige/impact is tied to the title, and the publishers own the titles. (The margins of academic publishers are abnormally high, indicating some sort of market failure.) Nevertheless, an alternative emerged: 3) Open Access journals. They follow a different model - author retains copyright, and the journal allows open access to the finished article (by putting it on the web, say). As they don’t/can’t make money from subscriptions, they normally charge the author for publication. So, this is a much better model in terms of, well, open access. Good thing. And, in fact, many grant giving entities (government bodies, Gates foundation, etc.) now stipulate that the research they sponsor has to be published with open access (and they often then cover publication fees). However, now: 4) Predators: Where previously the journal had an incentive to make the bar for acceptance high (because they needed to sell the result), now, if you get the author to pay and don’t care about sales, you have an incentive to make the bar low. Thus, predatory OA journals emerged that would basically take the author’s money, say, “yes, nice article, accepted”, and put it on some shoddy website. The author would put it on their publication list - which they now can blow up for a few hundred or thousand dollars. "Beall's List" just listed these predatory journals of questionable quality that would just take your money and give you a "publication" to put on your CV. It was well know among librarians and scientists that cared, and apparently now it's gone. (As a sidenote, there also seem to be conferences that are expensive and accept anything, typically in nice locations. So, you basically submit a talk/paper/poster, get a few days vacation, ideally get a travel grant, and then put it on your CV, too.)

metaphorm 10y ago
thanks for the summary. what, do you suppose, is the purpose of an open-access journal? why wouldn't an author just self-publish on the web, or on their university department's web-site? do you have an opinion on what exactly has caused the market failure in traditional journals? if fees are extortionate then why are there no competitors with more reasonable fees?
- FabHK 10y ago
  2) why the market failure? Because the scientific reputation (and career prospects) are tied to publications in reputable journals, to certain titles. And the titles belong to the publishers. There has been considerable consolidation over time, the big 4 or 5 have just bought up smaller publishers over time, and it's now run not by idealistic academics, but (by all appearances) by cold-blooded money guys trying to squeeze out as much as they can. Competitors can't just enter - there's a signalling problem: how do you distinguish scientists that don't publish in the top journal because they're idealistically opposed to their closed-access practices, from those that cannot get published there because their work is not up to standards? 1) Open Access Journals: the editors do some editing and vetting, and, crucially, peer review. If you put an article on your website, it doesn't have the same standing, "it doesn't count" as a real article or for your publication list. So, in terms of scientific reputation, for now: Traditional journal > OA journal > self-published. The challenge is to get OA >= traditional, and that takes a lot of time, or, rather, coordination: Don Knuth sent a letter in 2003 to the editors of the Journal of Algorithms to persuade them to collectively resign and move to a different journal. People of that stature are needed to break the power of despicable academic publishers (Elsevier is particularly revolting, btw.) See http://theoryofcomputing.org/crisis.html http://theoryofcomputing.org/crisis.html Here some more background: https://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2015/08/17/deceptive-publishing-why-we-need-a-blacklist-and-some-suggestions-on-how-to-do-it-right/ https://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2015/08/17/deceptive-pub... (So, Beall's was a black list, and the DOAJ has sort of a white list.)