Beall's List

Beall's List was a prominent list of predatory open-access publishers that was maintained by University of Colorado librarian Jeffrey Beall on his blog Scholarly Open Access. The list aimed to document open-access publishers who did not perform real peer review, effectively publishing any article as long as the authors pay the open access fee. Originally started as a personal endeavor in 2008, Beall's List became a widely followed piece of work by the mid-2010s. Its influence led some publishers on the list to threaten defamation lawsuits against Beall, as well as to lodge official complaints against Beall's work to the University of Colorado. As a result, Beall deactivated his blog and the list in January 2017.

The list was used by scientists to identify exploitative publishers and detect publisher spam.[1][2] The closure of Beall's List was cited by some as a tragedy,[3] and successors have set out to continue Beall's work.

History

Beall first became interested in predatory open-access journals (a term he coined) in 2008, when he started to receive numerous requests from dubious journals to serve on their editorial boards. He said that he "immediately became fascinated because most of the e-mails contained numerous grammatical errors."[4] Starting in 2008, he maintained a list of what he stated were "potential, possible, or probable predatory scholarly open-access publishers".[5][6][7] In 2011, Beall's list had 18 publishers on it; by December 29, 2016, this number had grown to 923.[8]

In February 2013, the open-access publisher Canadian Center for Science and Education sent a letter to Beall stating that Beall's inclusion of its company on his list of questionable open-access publishers amounted to defamation. The letter also stated that if Beall did not remove the company from his list, it would subject him to "civil action".[9]

In 2013, the OMICS Publishing Group threatened to sue Beall for $1 billion for his "ridiculous, baseless, [and] impertinent" inclusion of it on his list, which "smacks of literal unprofessionalism and arrogance".[10] An unedited sentence from the letter read: "Let us at the outset warn you that this is a very perilous journey for you and you will be completely exposing yourself to serious legal implications including criminal cases lunched against you in INDIA and USA."[11] Beall responded that the letter was "poorly written and personally threatening" and expressed his opinion that the letter "is an attempt to detract from the enormity of OMICS's editorial practices".[12] OMICS' lawyers stated that damages were being pursued under section 66A of India's Information Technology Act, 2000, which makes it illegal to use a computer to publish "any information that is grossly offensive or has menacing character" or to publish false information.[13] The letter stated that three years in prison was a possible penalty, although a U.S. lawyer said that the threats seemed to be a "publicity stunt" that was meant to "intimidate".[10]

Who's Afraid of Peer Review?
Main article: Who's Afraid of Peer Review?

In 2013, Science correspondent John Bohannon submitted 304 fake scientific articles to various open access journals, many of which were published by publishers on Beall's List. Among these publishers that completed the review process, 82% accepted the paper. Bohannon stated "the results show that Beall is good at spotting publishers with poor quality control". Beall stated that the results support his claim to be identifying "predatory" publishers.[14] However, the remaining 18% of publishers identified by Beall as predatory rejected the fake paper, leading science communicator Phil Davis to state "That means that Beall is falsely accusing nearly one in five".[15]

Notable publishing groups to pass this sting operation include PLoS One, Hindawi, and Frontiers Media.[14][16] Frontiers Media would later be added to Beall's list in 2015, sparking a controversy that is credited as a major reason for Beall eventually retracting his list.[1][17]

"Dr Fraud" experiment

In 2015, four researchers created a fictitious sub-par scientist named Anna O. Szust (oszust is Polish for "fraud"), and applied on her behalf for an editor position to 360 scholarly journals. Szust's qualifications were dismal for the role of an editor; she had never published a single article and had no editorial experience. The books and book chapters listed on her CV were made-up, as were the publishing houses that published the books.

One-third of the journals to which Szust applied were sampled from Beall's List. Forty of these predatory journals accepted Szust as editor without any background vetting and often within days or even hours. By comparison, she received minimal to no positive response from the "control" journals which "must meet certain standards of quality, including ethical publishing practices."[18] Among journals sampled from the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), 8 of 120 accepted Szust. The DOAJ has since removed some of the affected journals in a 2016 purge. None of the 120 sampled journals listed in Journal Citation Reports (JCR) offered Szust the position.

The results of the experiment were published in Nature in March 2017,[19] and widely presented in the press.[20][21][22]

Removal

On January 15, 2017, the entire content of Beall's Scholarly Open Access website was removed, along with Beall's faculty page on the University of Colorado's website.[23] The removal was first noticed on social media, with speculation on whether the removal was due to migration of the list to the stewardship of Cabell's International.[24] The company later denied any relationship, and its vice president of business development declared that Beall "was forced to shut down blog due to threats and politics".[24] The University of Colorado also declared that the decision to take down the list was a personal decision from Beall.[25] Beall later wrote that he had taken down his blog because of pressure from the University of Colorado, which threatened his job security.[26] Beall's supervisor, Shea Swauger, wrote that the university had supported Beall's work and had not threatened his academic freedom.[27] A demand by Frontiers Media to open a research misconduct case against Beall, to which the University of Colorado acquiesced, is reported as the immediate reason for Beall to take down the list. The university's investigation was closed with no findings.[1][17] Beall has not reactivated the list.

Successors

Since "Beall's List" closed, similar lists have been started by others,[28] including CSIR-Structural Engineering Research Centre, and an anonymous group at Stop Predatory Journals.[28][29] Cabell's International, a company that offers scholarly publishing analytics and other scholarly services, has also offered both a black list and a white list for subscription on their website.[30][31]

Criteria for inclusion

Beall applied a diverse set of criteria before including a publisher or journal on his lists. Examples included:[32]

  • Two or more journals have duplicate editorial boards (i.e., same editorial board for more than one journal).
  • There is little or no geographical diversity among the editorial board members, especially for journals that claim to be international in scope or coverage.
  • The publisher has no policies or practices for digital preservation, meaning that if the journal ceases operations, all of the content disappears from the internet.
  • The publisher copy-proofs (locks) their PDFs, thus making it harder to check for plagiarism.
  • The name of a journal is incongruent with the journal's mission.
  • The publisher falsely claims to have its content indexed in legitimate abstracting and indexing services or claims that its content is indexed in resources that are not abstracting and indexing services.

Criticism

The list's 82% accuracy rate in the Who's Afraid of Peer Review? sting operation led Phil Davis to state that "Beall is falsely accusing nearly one in five as being a 'potential, possible, or probable predatory scholarly open access publisher' on appearances alone."[15] He wrote that Beall "should reconsider listing publishers on his 'predatory' list until he has evidence of wrongdoing. Being mislabeled as a 'potential, possible, or probable predatory publisher' by circumstantial evidence alone is like the sheriff of a Wild West town throwing a cowboy into jail just 'cuz he's a little funny lookin.' Civility requires due process."[15]

Joseph Esposito wrote in The Scholarly Kitchen that he had been following some of Beall's work with "growing unease",[33] and that Beall's "broader critique (really an assault) of Gold OA and those who advocate it" had "crossed the line".[33]

City University of New York librarians Monica Berger and Jill Cirasella wrote that his views were biased against open-access journals from less economically-developed countries.[34] Berger and Cirasella argued that "imperfect English or a predominantly non-Western editorial board does not make a journal predatory".[34] They stated that "the criteria he uses for his list are an excellent starting point for thinking about the hallmarks of predatory publishers and journals",[34] and suggested that "given the fuzziness between low-quality and predatory publishers, whitelisting, or listing publishers and journals that have been vetted and verified as satisfying certain standards, may be a better solution than blacklisting."[34] For researchers in developing countries, the list has also been described as having been particularly important, as a result of lower access to institutional support for guidance on predatory publishers.[35]

Rick Anderson, associate dean in the J. Willard Marriott Library, University of Utah, challenged the term "predatory open access publishing" itself: "what do we mean when we say 'predatory,' and is that term even still useful?... This question has become relevant because of that common refrain heard among Beall's critics: that he only examines one kind of predation—the kind that naturally crops up in the context of author-pays OA."[36] Anderson suggested that the term "predatory" be retired in the context of scholarly publishing: "It's a nice, attention-grabbing word, but I'm not sure it's helpfully descriptive... it generates more heat than light."[36] In its place, he proposed the term "deceptive publishing".[36]

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References
  1. Basken, Paul (September 12, 2017). "Why Beall's List Died — and What It Left Unresolved About Open Access". The Chronicle of Higher Education.
  2. Watson, Roger (2017). "Beall's list of predatory open access journals: RIP". Nursing Open. 4 (2): 60. doi:10.1002/nop2.78. ISSN 2054-1058. PMC 5340161. PMID 28286661. It provided an easy checklist against the flood of uninvited emails from unknown publishers…
  3. Spears, Tom (January 17, 2017). "World's main list of 'predatory' science publishers vanishes with no warning". Ottawa Citizen. Retrieved January 18, 2017.
  4. Butler, D. (2013). "Investigating journals: The dark side of publishing". Nature. 495 (7442): 433–435. Bibcode:2013Natur.495..433B. doi:10.1038/495433a. PMID 23538810.
  5. Beall, Jeffrey. "Beall's List: Potential, possible, or probable predatory scholarly open-access publishers". Scholarly Open Access (last archived ed.). Archived from the original on January 12, 2017.
  6. Kolata, Gina (April 7, 2013). "Scientific Articles Accepted (Personal Checks, Too)". The New York Times. Retrieved January 18, 2014.
  7. Jump, Paul (August 2, 2012). "Research Intelligence – 'Predators' who lurk in plain cite". Times Higher Education. Retrieved August 29, 2015.
  8. Carey, Kevin (December 29, 2016). "A Peek Inside the Strange World of Fake Academia". Upshot. The New York Times.
  9. Flaherty, Colleen (February 15, 2013). "Librarians and Lawyers". Inside Higher Ed. Retrieved December 8, 2014.
  10. New, Jake (May 15, 2013). "Publisher Threatens to Sue Blogger for $1-Billion". Chronicle of Higher Education. Retrieved October 22, 2016.
  11. Anderson, Rick (May 20, 2013). "High Noon – A Publisher Threatens to 'Lunch' a Criminal Case Against Librarian Critic". Scholarly Kitchen. Retrieved October 24, 2016.
  12. Chappell, Bill (May 15, 2013). "Publisher Threatens Librarian With $1 Billion Lawsuit". NPR. Retrieved October 2, 2016.
  13. Venkataramakrishnan, Rohan (May 19, 2013). "Send Section 66A bullies home". India Today. Retrieved October 24, 2016.
  14. Beall, Jeffrey. "Science Magazine Conducts Sting Operation on OA Publishers". Scholarly Open Access. Archived from the original on 12 October 2013. Retrieved 22 October 2013.
  15. Davis, Phil (October 4, 2013). "Open Access "Sting" Reveals Deception, Missed Opportunities". The Scholarly Kitchen.
  16. Quinn, David; Wiesmann, Daniel. "Who's afraid of peer review". Who does peer review. Science. Retrieved November 14, 2019.
  17. Basken, Paul (September 22, 2017). "Why Beall's blacklist of predatory journals died". University World News.
  18. Sorokowski, Piotr (March 22, 2017). "Predatory journals recruit fake editor". Nature. 543 (7646): 481–483. Bibcode:2017Natur.543..481S. doi:10.1038/543481a. PMID 28332542.
  19. Sorokowski, Piotr; Kulczycki, Emanuel; Sorokowska, Agnieszka; Pisanski, Katarzyna (March 23, 2017). "Predatory journals recruit fake editor". Nature. 543 (7646): 481–483. Bibcode:2017Natur.543..481S. doi:10.1038/543481a. PMID 28332542.
  20. Kluger, Jeffrey. "Dozens of Scientific Journals Offered Her a Job. But She Didn't Exist". Time. Retrieved March 22, 2017.
  21. Kolata, Gina. "A Scholarly Sting Operation Shines a Light on 'Predatory' Journals". The New York Times. Retrieved March 22, 2017.
  22. Burdick, Alan. "A Scholarly Sting Operation Shines a Light on 'Predatory' Journals". The New Yorker. Retrieved March 22, 2017.
  23. "Why did Beall's List of potential predatory publishers go dark?". Retraction Watch. January 17, 2017. Archived from the original on April 18, 2018. Retrieved January 18, 2017.
  24. "Librarian's list of 'predatory' journals reportedly removed due to 'threats and politics'". Inside Higher Ed. January 18, 2017. Retrieved January 25, 2017.
  25. Singh Chawla, Dalmeet (January 17, 2017). "Mystery as controversial list of predatory publishers disappears". Science. American Association for the Advancement of Science. Retrieved January 18, 2017.
  26. Beall, Jeffrey (2017). "What I learned from predatory publishers". Biochemia Medica. 27 (2): 273–279. doi:10.11613/BM.2017.029. PMC 5493177. PMID 28694718.
  27. Swauger, Shea (December 1, 2017). "Open access, power, and privilege: A response to 'What I learned from predatory publishing'". College & Research Libraries News. 78 (11): 603–606. doi:10.5860/crln.78.11.603.
  28. "The precarious prevalence of predatory journals". Research Matters. January 28, 2018. Retrieved March 16, 2018.
  29. Siegfried, Elaine (June 16, 2017). "Fake Medical News". Dermatology Times. Archived from the original on March 16, 2018. Retrieved August 16, 2018.
  30. "Cabell's New Predatory Journal Blacklist: A Review". The Scholarly Kitchen. July 25, 2017. Archived from the original on September 21, 2017. Retrieved December 7, 2017.
  31. "Cabell's International". Archived from the original on December 8, 2017. Retrieved December 7, 2017.
  32. Beall, Jeffrey (January 1, 2015). "Criteria for Determining Predatory Open-Access Publishers (3rd ed.)" (PDF). Beall's List. Retrieved May 31, 2020.
  33. Esposito, Joseph (December 16, 2013). "Parting Company with Jeffrey Beall". The Scholarly Kitchen.
  34. Berger, Monica; Cirasella, Jill (2015). "Beyond Beall's List: Better Understanding Predatory Publishers". College & Research Libraries News. 76 (3): 132–135. doi:10.5860/crln.76.3.9277. Retrieved August 1, 2015.
  35. Kakamad, Fahmi H.; Mohammed, Shvan H.; Najar, Kayhan A.; Qadr, Goran A.; Ahmed, Jaafar O.; Mohammed, Karukh K.; Salih, Rawezh Q.; Hassan, Marwan N.; Mikael, Tomas M.; Kakamad, Suhaib H.; Baba, Hiwa O.; Aziz, Masrur S.; Rahim, Hawbash M.; Ahmmad, Dlshad R.; Hussein, Dahat A.; Ali, Rebwar A.; Hammood, Zuhair D.; Essa, Rawand A.; Hassan, Hunar Ali (2019). "Kscien's list; a new strategy to hoist predatory journals and publishers". International Journal of Surgery Open. 17: 5–7. doi:10.1016/j.ijso.2019.01.002. ISSN 2405-8572.
  36. Anderson, Rick (May 11, 2015). "Should We Retire the Term 'Predatory Publishing'?". The Scholarly Kitchen. Retrieved September 20, 2015.
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