doathon
doathon copied to clipboard
sparcopen
How might we stop predatory publishers from corrupting open access?
Confused? New to Github? Visit the GitHub help page on our site for more information!
At a glance
- Submission Name: How might we stop predatory publishers from corrupting open access?
- Contact Lead: @MahdiMoqri , [email protected]
- ** Region:** #Global
- Issue Area: #OpenAccess, #OpenData
- Issue Type: #Challenge
Description
Predatory publishers are corrupting open access [1] and polluting the science [2]. Predatory publishing is on the rise [3]. Blacklists do not seem to work [4]. Whitelists are challenging [5]. How might we stop predatory publishers?
How can others contribute?
Let's discuss this issue here!
This post is part of the OpenCon 2017 Do-A-Thon. Not sure what's going on? Head here.
Four critical pieces of background reading on this issue: https://insights.uksg.org/articles/10.1629/uksg.388/ http://crl.acrl.org/index.php/crl/article/view/16614/18060 http://www.triple-c.at/index.php/tripleC/article/view/867/1042 http://www.triple-c.at/index.php/tripleC/article/view/870
My opinion:
First of all, just like email scammers, one has to accept "predatory journals" , "predatory conferences" and other deceptive money-seeking cons will always exist. You can't stop someone making a website and emailing people.
Once we accept that, the focus should really be on the institutions that employ academics. Why do institutions let their academics submit work to shady journals? Why don't institutions provide their employees and students more help and training about scholarly communications? Clearly training and awareness raising is needed.
Does anyone know of any incidences in which an institutional employee has received a warning (from the institution) for publishing in a fake journal that doesn't actually do peer review, despite claiming to do so? Institutions seem remarkably lax about all this so far...
@asbtariq Even if all legitimate APC (“author pays”) journals suddenly converted to non-APC models, the scam journals will still operate the way they currently do. The real problem in my opinion is a lack of transparent demonstration that proper peer review has been undertaken. If all legitimate journals adopted transparent, public, open peer review — it would be a lot easier to see which journals conduct proper peer review and which journals don’t conduct peer review.
The essence of predatory publishing is: putting a work online under the false pretense that it has been properly peer reviewed by experts.
The fact that predatory publishing is so prevalent reveals volumes about how untransparent most legitimate journals are when it comes to peer review. In big journals like Nature, Cell and Science you literally have to just trust the publisher that the work has been properly reviewed. This isn’t good enough.
The F1000Research system of open, public and transparent peer review is a great way to demonstrate that proper peer review has been conducted on a work. If all legitimate journals operated like this, many fewer authors would mistakenly submit to deceptive publishers. Good, detailed public peer review by named reviewers is very hard to fake & if you tried to fake it, it could easily be found-out.
in weaker institutions or countries with weaker academic standards "predatory" publishers are thriving and in some places even the institutional leadership is prey. Many, in such situations, once they themselves have published with such a publisher, no longer remain keen to act against such publication.
@asbtariq great point, I agree. Some individuals and institutions become complicit in deceptive practices once they have become involved themselves. How do we break that cycle?
I am interested in the topic from the perspective of Research Integrity, ethics e.g Salami Slicings, Harzing, Recycle in the knowledge production. Who are the real predators? What is the main concept of Predatory publishers? The cycle should bee see from the different actors in the system. I am total interesting to follow the discussion and participate in it. That interesting to analyze Jeffrey Bell case
