Predatory open access

Title: ‘Predatory’ open access: a longitudinal study of article volumes and market characteristics

Publication Date: October 1 2015

Authors: Cenyu Shen, Bo-Christer Björk

Links: Paper / New Yorker article

Summary:

• predatory journals have rapidly increased their publication volumes from 53,000 in 2010 to an estimated 420,000 articles in 2014, published by around 8,000 active journals
• chose journals based on a (controversial) list by Jeffrey Beall, a professor/librarian at the University of Colorado who made a list of these journals based on his own criteria but which he has since taken down
• large share of articles in engineering journals (97,000 articles), followed by biomedicine with around 70,000 articles
• distribution of publishers is highly skewed, with 27% publishing in India. When comparing ratio of predatory:real articles, USA had a low ratio of 6%, Iran 70%, India 277% and Nigeria a staggering 1,580%
• we believe that most authors are not necessarily tricked into publishing in predatory journals; they probably submit to them well aware of the circumstances and take a calculated risk
• global North-South dilemma where institutions in developing countries are unable to break free from the increasingly globalized and homogenized view of academic excellence based on ‘where` one publishes..these authors and their institutions are part of a structurally unjust global system that excludes them from publishing in ‘high quality’ journals on the one hand and confines them to publish in dubious journals on the other