"Predatory" open access publishers
The Charleston Adviser has published an interesting analysis of some of the recent open access 'upstarts', titled "“Predatory” Open-Access Scholarly Publishers". They include some that I've noted before such as Bentham Open and Scientific Journals International.
As I would have expected, Libertas Academica and its sister publisher Dove Press do better than the others included in this review, but they are still far from passing with flying colours. The reviewer, Jeffrey Beall of Auraria Library, University of Colorado Denver, places a very clear "author beware" sign on:
- Academic Journals
- Academic Journals
- ANSINetswork
- Bentham Open
- Insight Knowledge
- Knowledgia Review
- Science Publications
- Scientific Journals International
"These publishers are predatory because their mission is not to promote, preserve, and make available scholarship; instead, their mission is to exploit the author-pays, Open-Access model for their own profit.
They work by spamming scholarly e-mail lists, with calls for papers and invitations to serve on nominal editorial boards. If you subscribe to any professional e-mail lists, you likely have received some of these solicitations. Also, these publishers typically provide little or no peer-review. In fact, in most cases, their peer review process is a façade.
None of these publishers mentions digital preservation. Indeed, any of these publishers could disappear at a moment’s notice, resulting in the loss of its content."
