Open Access Journals – take note of predatory OA publishers

As more researchers embrace the idea and attractions of publishing their papers in open access (OA) journals, they are faced with a wide selection of journals to choose from.

Among these OA journals, there are titles that are managed by reputable publishers and others that were recently established and run by unfamiliar publishing houses. Despite the pressure to publish, scholars still need to be highly selective and submit their manuscripts to OA journals of good standing.

There isn’t a prescriptive list of reputable OA journals but there is a list of OA publishers with questionable practices.

Jeffrey Beall, a librarian at the University of Colorado Denver, has been closely watching the OA publishing scene and have identified a number of dubious or questionable OA publishers. He refers to them as predatory publishers and provided a list of publishers on his blog. In addition, he provided some criteria for determining predatory OA publishers.

We strongly recommend that scholars read the reviews, assessments and descriptions provided in his blog, and decide whether they want to submit articles, serve as editors or on editorial boards.