Jeffery Beall Exposed

Jeffery Beall
Academic terrorist
Beall is not a recognized authority in evaluating
scholarly Journals. Man with no credibility. Alcoholic
and drug addict has no affiliation to any governing
body or organization accredited to scholarly
publishing. This is an important key element that
needs to be considered when analyzing his blog. He
is just a single individual writing a blog (full of
nonsense) same as many others do over the
internet. His blog is his personal opinion and has not
been tested for its validity and as such has no
authority whatsoever.
This book contains few articles about Jeffery Beall

from the web which exposes this terrorist.
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Jeffrey Beall
Potential, possible, or probable a predatory
blogger
Beall has no real substantial authority to evaluate scholarly Journals

Jeffrey Bealls blog has no affiliation to any governing body or organization accredited
to scholarly publishing. This is an important key element that needs to be considered
when analyzing his blog. He is just single individual writing a blog (full of nonsense)
same as many others do over the internet. His blog is his personal opinion and has not
been tested for its validity and as such has no authority whatsoever.
Jack of all trades: Not Academically Inclined

Beall only has a bachelor Degree in Spanish yet he criticizes a wide range of Journals in
the vicinity of Social sciences and medical sciences. He is a jack of all trades and nothing
more. He has no PhD in any discipline.
Self-Proclaimed Journal Critic: No Governing Body

Jeffrey Beall works in the Auraria Library, University of Colorado, Denver, USA. He is an
employee same as everyone else. He began a blog titled scholarly open access
Critical analysis of scholarly open-access publishing in the year 2009. His blog is not
associated with the university and does not represent the university in any way. Beall,
however, utilizes university resources including his university e-mail address for his
activities on the blog. His contact information is posted on the blog as follows, email: jeffrey.beall@ucdenver.edu. He does not post his physical location in his blog.
Jeffrey Beall: Potentially, possibly, or probably a predatory blogger

Open access is a new, digital, revolutionized way of communicating research among
their readers and authors. Not that this has any significance to Beall however, who
maintains a list of publishers and Journals that he considers predatory. His highly
questionable, probably, and possibly predatory blog discredits many involved in
publishing houses. His main targets have been publishing houses and journals from
Asia, Africa, and the Middle East.
Bealls Questionable and Predatory Criteria

Beall himself created his own criteria for evaluating Open access Journals. The issue
here though, is that validity of his criteria has not been tested with any governing
authority associated with scholarly publishing. His blog however, clearly stated many
other criteria when discrediting Journals. For example, article processing fees in US
dollars is one of the reasons he uses to determine when a Journal is predatory. Please
read our articles for more information.
Questionable Bealls Platinum and Gold Predatory Criteria

Beall created two criteria when evaluating journals. In his platinum category, the author
charges article processing fees. On the other hand, in the gold category, authors wont
charge article processing fees and papers are published free of charge.
This categorization has a serious problem since no organization can financially survive
as a publisher without receiving funds for their operation. In order to be successful and
be able to survive financially, it is necessary to have some sort of funding mechanism in
place. The most Open Access publishers charge is article processing fees. There is no
justification for publishing free articles or any mode of publication methods free of
charge.
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University Funds Scammer: Beall is a huge cost to the University of Colorado

system?
Beall heavily utilized the University of Colorados system; including internet, computers,
office space, and maintenance of his office such as electricity, cleaning, furniture, and
even photocopy machines. He works on his blog on the universitys time while he is
being paid by the University to work for them not on his leisure blogging hobby. The
only positive is that at a minimum, he has posted a disclaimer page on his blog in which
he himself declared that the University of Colorado has no affiliation on his blog.
Beall is defrauding the University of Colorados system and should be shamed not of
anyone else, but only of himself. Despite Bealls claims of non-affiliation with the
University of Colorado, all scamming activities have been conducted utilizing the
universitys resources. It appears as though Beall chiefly aims to trade on the University
of Colorados good name to attract people from abroad to justify his claims on his
predatory blog.
Jeffrey Beall's Bogus profile
From the profile (http://library.auraria.edu/directory/staff/beall/jeffrey) ,it is glaringly

evident Jeffrey Beall is not a scholar; he doesnt even have a doctoral degree and has
not published in any leading/reputable journals. In fact, the only publications he has to
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his credit (as reflected in his profile) happens to have been produced in the last two
years (there is nil track record of prior publications). That too ONLY 7 publications
(pretty pathetic track record to claim to be scholarly). He has never served in any
academic or editorial committee. Hence his commentaries and statements are merely
an opinion by a quasi (self anointed) academic and not scholarly. A blatant attempt to
mislead in the pretext of a scholar. Jeffrey Beall should be sponsored by someone to
earn a doctoral degree first before he can even attempt to make a qualified opinion on
scholarly publications. His basic degree is from a state university and a masters from
another state university. That is hardly scholarly. A very weak attempt to mislead by
someone who claims to be an expert with scholarly qualifications. In fact he is trying to
sell his services (please visit http://library.auraria.edu/directory/staff/beall/jeffrey) to
consult and train whereas he himself needs further education before he can rightfully
claim to be an expert.
Academic Fraudster and Imposter

There are numerous cases against Beall, the allegations of which all follow a similar
pattern, as many publishing houses and Open access journalsrevealed their experience
with him. At first, Bealls associate contacted Journals and threatened to blacklist them.
Later, he demanded ransom. If anyone pays this ransom, their journal is removed from
the list. All those who refused to pay ransom are included into Bealls hit list.
Phony Bealls Kangaroo court

Once a blacklisted journal is included into the so-called Beall list, he will provide
opportunity to appeal against his decision. According to his Blog the appeal will hear
before a so-called panel. To make matters worse, the names of the individuals in the
panel are not listed. Furthermore, the appeal process and procedure are also not
published. Their main target is evidently to scam journals and publishing houses. Once
the ransom is received Beall removes the Journal from his hit list.
Beall Conspiracy
Bealls anti Open Access agenda is driven by major publishing houses. Bealls list will
grow until all popular open access journals have been black listed. This will drive
researchers to publish their work in the highly paid open access journals. These groups
will control publications from the Human Sciences field to the medical sciences field.
They want to take back their control over research publications.
Used personal biases, useless blogger

Jeffrey Beall's list is not accurate to believe. There are a lot of personal biases of Jeffrey
Beall. Two OA publishers have been removed in Jeffrey Beall's list recently. There is no
reason given by Jeffrey Beall why they were removed. Jeffrey Beall is naive in his analysis.
His blog has become useless.
Academic terrorist
Jeffrey Beall just simply confusing us to promote his academic terrorism. His list is fully
questionable. His surveying method is not scientific. If he is a real scientist then he must
do everything in standard way without any dispute. He wanted to be famous but he
does not have the right to destroy any company name or brand without proper
allegation. If we support Jeffrey Beall's work then we are also a part of his criminal activity.
Please avoid Jeffrey Beall's fraudulent and criminal activity. Beall utilizes his bribery and
unethical business model.
Not provide sufficient evidence for his claims - Unreliable, unmethodical and
personal opinions
We wish to conclude by expressing that Bealls blacklist in its current form is unnecessary
and unreliable. On the one hand, there are professional indexing databases operating
as watchdogs of journal quality. Professional databases such as the Web of Science,
Scopus or PubMed can be used as whitelists of good journals. Also, professional services
and societies, such as the Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association (OASPA), are
putting in a great deal of effort to distinguish reputable open access journals and their
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publishers from scamming activities. On the other hand, Mr. Beall operates as an
individual person and does not provide sufficient evidence for his claims, does not
attempt to verify his statements for accuracy, nor operate a methodological approach
to his appraisals. Beall also denies the right to defense to those that he attacks. Bealls
judgments are therefore to be considered as unreliable, unmethodical and his personal
opinions.
Bealls academic fraud and activities must end and everyone must now be more vigilant
about these activities.
Jeffrey Beall just simply confusing us

to promote his academic terrorism.
His list is fully questionable. His
surveying method is not scientific. If
he is a real scientist then he must
do everything in standard way
without any dispute. Beall utilizes his
bribery and unethical business
model. If we support Jeffrey Beall's
work then we are also a part of his
criminal activity. Please avoid Jeffrey
Beall's fraudulent and criminal
activity.
Drunken Stupor Jeffery Beall:

Alcoholic and drug addict
Beall utilizes his blog to extort open

access journal publishers to feed his
drug habits. Beall well known among
inner circle as a heavy weed (Marujuvana) smoker and alcoholic.
Be aware, Beall's criminal activities.
Academic Exchange Quarterly

Few years ago Academic Exchange Quarterly has rejected Bealls article.
In return, Beall has labeled this journal Potential, possible, or probable predatory
scholarly open-access journal
http://rapidintellect.com/AEQweb/
Predatory Blogger Beall Exposed

Beall is only mentioned in journals with a conflict of interest because of his views against
open access (conventional journal's main competitors). Beall does not meet any of the
other qualities specifically:
1. The person's research has made significant impact in their scholarly discipline, broadly
construed, as demonstrated by independent reliable sources
Many citations are not in the peer reviewed literature and many are negative.
2. The person has received a highly prestigious academic award or honor at a national
or international level.
NO, Not at all

3. The person is or has been an elected member of a highly selective and prestigious
scholarly society or association (e.g., a National Academy of Sciences or the Royal
Society) or a fellow of a major scholarly society for which that is a highly selective honor
(e.g., the IEEE).
NO, Not at all

4. The person's academic work has made a significant impact in the area of higher
education, affecting a substantial number of academic institutions.
NO, Not at all

5. The person holds or has held a named chair appointment or distinguished professor
appointment at a major institution of higher education and research (or an equivalent
position in countries where named chairs are uncommon).
NO, Not at all

6. The person has held a highest-level elected or appointed academic post at a major
academic institution or major academic society.
NO, Not at all

7. The person has made substantial impact outside academia in their academic capacity.
NO, Not at all

8. The person is or has been the head or chief editor of a major, well-established
academic journal in their subject area.
NO - only a bogus Blog

Therefore we have added Jeffrey Beall to our list as a potential, possible predatory
blogger and Beall's list must be ignored.
Beall is not a recognized authority in evaluating scholarly Journals.

Jeffrey Bealls blog has no affiliation to any governing body or organization accredited
to scholarly publishing. This is an important key element that needs to be considered
when analyzing his blog. He is just a single individual writing a blog (full of nonsense)
same as many others do over the internet. His blog is his personal opinion and has not
been tested for its validity and as such has no authority whatsoever. Even so, Beall
attempted to create a problem that does not exist. When we compare the number of
open access journals around the world, Bealls list is not significant at all. Despite that,
Beall has maliciously discredited many Open access journals and demanded ransom in
exchange for the removal of them from his hit list. This academic crime must end.
Exposed: "Randykitty" is a Jeffrey Beal

I came by Jeffrey Beall's blog while searching for journals. Jeffrey Beall himself is not
qualified as a judge on open access journals.
Most importantly, I have noticed that Jeffrey also uses Wikipedia to promote his
'agenda.' He goes by the username "Randykitty". (I have many reasons to believe why
Randykitty is Jeffrey Beall. The user mainly edits open access journals, monitors his own
entry, and cites Beall's blog,). It gives false impression to many that he is the 'holy' judge
of open access journals.
I think many should know about this. Beall is getting attention much more than he
should have.
Wikipedia is being manipulated to promote Beall and his bogus blog.
People need to know
Beall an Extortionist
Many publishers have written that Beall contacted them demanding money. Our
experience is somewhat different in that Beall offered to provide his professional
services and advice, which presumably would lead to our removal from his list. A
specific dollar amount was not indicated other than a statement that his time was very
valuable to him. I dont know if this constitutes extortion or not, but at a minimum it is
certainly a conflict of interest and unprofessional.
-Josephine Oaakay, USA.
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Beall is a fake Ph.D.

Mr. Jeffrey Beall is a fake professor who is frequently referred to as Dr. Beall yet he does
not correct people when he is addressed as Dr. Beall. Beall does not have a Ph.D. He
is a masters student only who has no more credibility than a disgruntled student writing
on "Rate My Professor". He is a dishonest person. If he posted on his blog that he was
only a student no one would believe him. He needs the Ph.D. to be believable.
-Josephine Oaakay, USA
Beall has no credibility

Walt Crawford has done excellent work on OA-journals, DOAJ and especially on Bealls
list. He has published his works in his Cites and Insights http://citesandinsights.info/.
As to the question regarding how many OA articles have been published with no fee,
Walts data based on an analysis of articles published in 7.301 of the journals listed in
DOAJ (journals without an English language interface excluded (approx.. 2.800 journals)
suggested that from 2012-2014 some 670.000 articles have been published in journals
charging APCs (the numbers do not tell anything about the volume of waivers)! Some
470.000 have been published in OA-journals charging no APCs. That is 60% with APCs
and 40% without APCs. Of the remaining 2.800 OA- journals from DOAJ not included
in Walts study approx.. 80% do not charge APCs.
Please note that we are talking articles published in genuine OA-journals. Articles
published as Hybrid OA articles in subscription journals are out of scope here.
Walts works on Bealls list Ethics and Access 1: The Sad Case of Jeffrey Beall
(http://citesandinsights.info/civ14i4.pdf) and Journals, Journals and Wannabes:
Investigating The List (http://citesandinsights.info/civ14i7.pdf) are really worth reading
if you would like a more detailed look at the list. We have added this article in our
references.
Initially posted on https://blogs.lt.vt.edu/openvt/2015/05/19/a-response-to-jeffreybealls-critique-of-open-access/
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What are your thoughts about Jeff Beall's List? Should it be the only criterion
for rejecting a journal a predatory journal?
Jeff Beall's List of predatory journals is coming under a lot of criticism, as he is more and
more found as being biased primarily towards open-access (online) journals. After
reading much about him, I am moving to the camp of those who believe that it should
not be the primary source to decide on the quality of a scholarly journal. I would like to
find out what is happening in your different institutions of higher education on this list.
-Safary Wa-Mbaleka
Adventist International Institute of Advanced Studies
I used to take Beall's List as "the Bible" until I came across these sources:
1.
Ethics
and
Access
1:
The
Sad
Case
of
Jeffrey
Beal:http://citesandinsights.info/civ14i4.pdf
2. Ethics and Access 2: The So-Called Sting:http://citesandinsights.info/civ14i5on.pdf
3.
Response
to
Mr.
Jeffrey
Beall's
Repeated
Attacks
on
MDPIhttp://www.mdpi.com/about/announcements/534
4. A Publisher Threatens a Librarian (Jeff Beall) with $1 Billion
Lawsuithttp://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2013/05/15/184233141/publisherthreatens-librarian-with-1-billion-lawsuit
5. A Look at Open Access Publication and a Specific Critique of Beall's List of "So-Called"
Predatory
Journals:https://www.academia.edu/7641635/A_Look_at_Open_Access_Publications_an
d_a_Specific_Critique_of_Bealls_list_of_Predatory_Journals/
6.
Journals,
"Journals"
and
Wannabes:
Investigating
the
List:http://citesandinsights.info/civ14i7.pdf
7.
Beyond
Beall's
List:
Better
Understanding
Predatory
Publishers:http://crln.acrl.org/content/76/3/132.full
8. Open Access Publishing - USD5000 Is Enough to Remove Your Publisher's Name
From Beall's List:https://editorjccr.wordpress.com/2012/12/17/open-access-publishingusd-5000-is-enough-to-remove-your-publishers-name-from-bealls-list/
9. Beall's Criteria: Predatory Blogger:http://www.scholarlyoa.net/beall_criteria.htm
10. About Beall: http://www.scholarlyoa.net/about_jeffery_beall.htm
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Initially posted on
https://www.researchgate.net/post/What_are_your_thoughts_about_Jeff_Bealls_List_Sh
ould_it_be_the_only_criterion_for_rejecting_a_journal_a_predatory_journal
Pay and remove your name from Beall's list. Unethical bribery business model
Beall will tell you. He already asked money from IARIA, SCIRP, HINDAWI, TAYLOR and
FRANICS, AIP and several others. There are several places (blogs) and several voices on
the web. Pay and remove your name from Jeffrey Beall's list. Commercial Companies
pay Jeffrey Beall. They are their gold sponsors and transfer the money to Caribbean
Accounts (St.Vicent and Belize).
Beall never addressed any one of these allegations. Beall is an impostor and predatory
blogger. Shame to University of Colorado.
Article initially appeared on http://iaria-highsci.blogspot.ca/2014/01/jeffrey-beall-blacklisted-hindawi-and.html
The only thing I can say here is that Jeff is not an honest man at all
As a bystander, I found Beall's website a few days ago and paid close attention to what
he wrote about MDPI. I also checked up some facts on my own, and posted a few
comments. My comments went through initially. When I checked again today, I noticed
that all my comments are gone. I can only assume that Beall deleted them. Beall is a
predatory blogger.
-Joel Kinnamann
Original quote initially published on https://blogs.ch.cam.ac.uk/pmr/2014/02/18/beallscriticism-of-mdpi-lacks-evidence-and-is-irresponsible/
Beall's criticism of MDPI lacks evidence and is irresponsible
Posted on February 18, 2014
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I have just seen Jeffrey Beall's "analysis" of MDPI

http://scholarlyoa.com/2014/02/18/chinese-publishner-mdpi-added-to-list-ofquestionable-publishers/#more-3072 and wish to respond immediately.
I will not respond to all Beall's criticisms.
Beall has set up a site where he lists questionable (aka predatory) Open Access
publishers who have poor or non-existent quality controls or have questionable
organisations. This is potentially a useful service, though it is inappropriate that it should
be done by a single person, especially one lacking discipline knowledge.
I have no personal involvement with MDPI. I remember when they started as a company
which actually took physical chemical samples and stored them so that people could
check later (the acronym MDPI can also stand for Molecular Diversity Preservation
International). The compounds were linked to a journal, "Molecules" with full text. It has
been going for 17 years. At one stage I wrote to them and asked them to change the
licence from CC-NC to CC-BY and they immediately did.
I have never had any reason to doubt the validity of Molecules. I am now using it as an
Open Access source of material to data-mine. We are doing the same with "Materials"
and "Metabolites".
Beall's criticism that these are "one-word" titles is ridiculous and incompetent. They are
accurate titles.
I have read (as a human) hundreds of articles in these publications. If I were to review a
paper in any of them I would assume it was a reasonably competent, relatively boring,
moderately useful contribution to science. The backbone of knowledge. I would expect
to find errors, as I would in any paper. I reported one in my last post. This wasn't fraud,
it was a product of the awful state of ALL scholarly publishing where paper processes
breed errors.
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It is right that there should be a list of irresponsible journals and publishers. It should be
run by an Open organisation, not Beall. Maybe OASPA? Maybe SPARC? I don't know.
It is wrong that a single person can destroy a publisher's reputation.
It is also right that we should highlight the equally awful (if not worse) practices of closed
access publishers. Why is there no organisation campaigning for reader rights? It seems
to fall to me, an individual.
All publishers have junk articles and fraudulent articles. We don't know the scale. (It's a
pity that they publishers so little to enable technical solutions to this). By default I would
say that a paper in Molecules is no more or less likely to be questionable than one in a
closed access journal from Elsevier or ACS.
The main problem is that the Open Access community has failed to get its act together.
And that the closed access community prevents anyone getting an act together.
Mr. Jeffrey Beall is a librarian at the Auraria Library, University of Denver,

Colorado and has publicly criticized MDPI twice via his blog Scholarly Open
Access.
First, in May 2013, Mr. Beall who has no PhD himself, published scholarly comments on
a biophysics review paper that was published by a senior PhD scientist from the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), USA. The paper was published after the
usual procedure: it was refereed, revised and later approved by both peer-reviewers
and an external, academic editor of the journal after major revisions. The paper is
somewhat hypothetical and controversialhowever, it is up to expert scholars in the
domain of the paper to judge its merits and to provide critical, scholarly comments and
follow-up research.
More recently, Mr. Beall redoubled his attack by publishing an incompetent general
critique of MDPI. As someone forwarded an advance copy of Mr. Beall's post to MDPI,
we have asked Mr. Beall to communicate with us before publishing his critique. Mr. Beall
did not react. Mr. Beall has become known as the maintainer of a list of questionable
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open access journals. However, in December 2013 he expressed personal views highly
critical of open access in general in a piece published in the open access journal TripleC.
Mr. Bealls allegations against MDPI include:
A serious claim that MDPI added Nobelists to its Editorial Board without their approval.
We have provided evidence to Mr. Beall that this is not the case. In particular, a news
story on eCampus News had reported that Professor Capecchi was not aware of his
board membership. After writing to him, the Editor-in-Chief of Biomolecules obtained
a written confirmation from Professor Cappechi that he was indeed aware of his
membership. eCampus News has already updated its story.
A bizarre statement criticizing the use of one-word names for journal titles. MDPI
journals are appropriately named according to the scholarly domains that they cover
and the journals and their websites are easily distinguishable from other journals
covering similar domains. All journals are exclusively published on the www.mdpi.com
website.
A statement that MDPI regularly publishes controversial articles to boost the citations
to its journals. MDPI has published a statement on publishing controversial articles, see
http://www.mdpi.com/about/controversial-articles/. Possibly controversial articles are
marked as such on the abstract page, and the note points to the above statement.
These are few in number, and we do not deliberately seek controversy. Any reputable
publisher sometimes handles such cases and makes a judgment call on what is
interesting to publish. The decision to publish is always made by an external, academic
editor.
A discriminatory statement that the Publisher is Chinese, although MDPI AG is a
formally registered Swiss company, managed in the head office in Basel, Switzerland.
All rights to the journals are owned by MDPI AG.
The posting of a picture of the fast food shop next door claiming these are the MDPI
headquarters. MDPI occupies the entire second floor of the building Klybeckstrasse 64
70, owned and partially used by a major Swiss bank. The entrance to the staircase is at
Klybeckstrasse 64.
Mr. Beall bases his questionable writing on a report that was published by Dr. Xin Ge.
Dr. Ge has been harassing MDPI and its academic editors for several weeks, as MDPI
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twice sponsored a prize against academic fraud in China, which is awarded annually
since 2012 by Dr. Shi-min Fang, see our statement
http://www.mdpi.com/about/announcements/502/. The report is one of many open
letters from Dr. Ge to Nature, after Nature co-sponsored the 2012 John Maddox Prize,
which was jointly awarded to Dr. Shi-min Fang and Professor Sir Simon Wessely. Dr.
Ges open letters have all been ignored by Nature.
Open access publishing is just one of the publishing models and it should maintain the
same professional standard as advocated by societies such as COPE, STM and OASPA.
MDPI strives to fulfill the high standard of publication ethics. We believe that open
access has a significant advantage over other models of publishing: the scientific
community can easily access the literature and make scholarly comments on the papers.
Serious critique of any paper published in our journals is very welcome and should be
addressed to the editors of the journal. Discussions, criticism and proposal to help to
improve other aspects of open access publishing service are also appreciated.
We wish to conclude by expressing that Mr. Bealls blacklist in its current form is
unnecessary and unreliable. On the one hand, there are professional indexing
databases operating as watchdogs of journal quality. Professional databases such as
the Web of Science, Scopus or PubMed can be used as whitelists of good journals. Also,
professional services and societies, such as the Open Access Scholarly Publishers
Association (OASPA), are putting in a great deal of effort to distinguish reputable open
access journals and their publishers from scamming activities. On the other hand, Mr.
Beall operates as an individual person and does not provide sufficient evidence for his
claims, does not attempt to verify his statements for accuracy, nor operate a
methodological approach to his appraisals. Mr. Beall also denies the right to defense to
those that he attacks. Mr. Bealls judgments are therefore to be considered as unreliable,
unmethodical and his personal opinions.
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Beall's criticism that these are "one-word" titles is ridiculous and incompetent
Now that your own credibility is being increasingly challenged, your ability to create
controversy is going to be diminished. Eventually nobody is going to care about your
list anymore.
-Jinhai Gao
Original quote initially published on https://blogs.ch.cam.ac.uk/pmr/2014/02/18/beallscriticism-of-mdpi-lacks-evidence-and-is-irresponsible/
Predatory Bealls so called review board, appeal board has No names, no

school affiliations, no job titles, not even initials.
Predatory Bealls blog meet his own standard for transparency? Not even close.
predatory Bealls review board and appeals board are filled with people only
described as friends. No names, no school affiliations, no job titles, not even initials.
Apparently, none of predatory blogger's friends have a name. This is strange, if not
completely suspicious. However Bealls unnamed friends help decide which journals
are credible and which are not.
-Marty Ludlum, Owner, Mustang Journals, Inc
Original quote initially published on
http://mustangjournals.com/The_Mustang_Story.pdf
Response to Jeffrey Beall

First, have no problem with Mr. Beall and his list of evil-doers. Actually I like his goal,
expose those taking advantage of new academics. My only dispute is if Mustang
Journals fits into his list.
First, Mustang Journals is not making a fortune exploiting faculty. We have not made a
profit. My longterm goal is to have this endeavor break even. Every extra penny from a
conference or journal is used for mailing several thousand flyers and awards for best
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conference papers. There is no pool of money left over. Mustang Journals is not the evil
cash machine that Mr. Beall imagines.
Second, Mustang Journals is not owned by a printer with no academic background. I
started college teaching in 1991, and currently am a tenured professor at the University
of Central Oklahoma, where I teach legal studies. I am an academic by choice. I am
fortunate to have a school that supports me financially. I do not need Mustang Journals
to pay my bills. Just the opposite is true. I pay the bills for
Mustang Journals (largely through my grandfathers generosity). Third, my reviewers
(advisory editors) are not imaginary people who I pulled from the old high school
yearbooks or non-academics. All of them are professors, and most are close personal
friends. Im sure many of them are smarter than me. I respect each and every one of
them. Fourth, the papers that appear in Mustang Journals are not the low quality articles
rejected by other journals. I read each paper, even those outside my academic area.
However, unlike most journals, I offer suggestions on how to make the articles better,
even if the submission is only 10% of the way there. I want to help the new academics.
That is my goal. Some papers get submitted several times before they reach the point
of publication. I consider that process a success. There is nothing I find more rewarding
than allowing a new professor to get their first publication. That boost of confidence
will help them in future endeavors, even if those future plans do not include Mustang
Journals.
-Marty Ludlum
Owner, Mustang Journals, Inc
The best way to judge any academic paper is to read it. Not to refer predatory
blogger Beall's List
I could write for days about the double standards and vague criteria used by Bogus
Beall, but why? Hes just not worth it. My happiness in life does not depend on the
approval of some Denver librarian. Yours should not either. For those who are adamant
at supporting his non-transparent blog as though it was biblical prophecy, I can only
remind you, at one time Bernie Madoff was worshiped on Wall Street. His fifteen
minutes has also long since expired. The best way to judge any academic paper is to
read it.
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-Marty Ludlum
Owner, Mustang Journals, Inc.
MustangJournals@aol.com
Original quote initially published on
http://mustangjournals.com/The_Mustang_Story.pdf
Beall's criteria almost laughable

I did look at Beall criteria as a whole. Some like the one I pointed out above just seem
like ranting or in some cases almost laughable, Have a contact address that turns out
to be somebodys apartment. That may be a good example but not a published criteria
for determining whether a journal/publisher is predatory. Try something along the lines
of having a verifiable business address and phone number.
Thats what I mean by nonsense. Maybe not the best term, and if so, I apologize but
hopefully Beall get my point.
In my view a list of poor quality publishers isnt very helpful beyond publicizing the
problem. Certifying legitimate publishers based on a clear, objective, and verifiable set
of standards developed by a broad range of stakeholders is far more effective
particularly if funding agencies start requiring publishers to be certified before they will
pay APCs to the publisher. That is what we should be working to address this problem.
David Solomon, a professor in the department of medicine at Michigan State University
and a founding member of OASPA
Original article published
academic-crime-fighter/
on
http://blog.scirp.org/scirp-2/jeffrey-beall-i-am-an-
Beall should quit this nonsense

David Solomon, a professor in the department of medicine at Michigan State University
and a founding member of OASPA concludes his comment with respect to Bealls
20
criteria: I think you [Beall] have made your point but it is either time to do something
constructive or quit this nonsense.
on
Beall lists should be ignored

Beall [is] acting as prosecutor, judge and jury on whos predatory and whos not.
Remarkably, hundreds if not thousands of librarians and others seem to take Bealls
word as gospel. (Crawford 2014a) But it seems he has been going too far and people
have started to turn away from him. the lists should be ignored. (Crawford 2014b)
on
Jeffrey Beall is not an academic of any standing nor a scholar

Jeffrey Beall is not an academic of any standing nor a scholar. Doesnt have a PhD. See
below an article by Beall which is absolute rubbish and doesnt have any academic
content and rigour. Pretty pathetic and a desperate attempt to list it as a publication in
his profile/CV. We wonder who reviewed this article and accepted to be published.
http://triplec.at/index.php/tripleC/article/view/525/514
Original article published on
https://jeffreybeallbogus.wordpress.com/2013/11/13/jeffreybeallbogus/
Beall does not want that the whole world know about his crime
Mr Beall disseminated his list via website, so, publishers that feel inappropriately judged
by Mr beall should counter-attack via web site. Good luck. This website is a beginning.
I tried to paste websites like this into Mr bealls website, but unfortunately they are
removed, instead of defending himself. This make me think that all this counter-webs
21
contain true information, and Mr Beall does not want that the whole world know about
his crime.
-Jeanne A. Pawitan
Beall is not a scholar promote his (unqualified) services

Complete agreement that Jeffrey Beall is neither a scholar nor has any relevant
academic credentials to make any credible statement of fact/opinion. Merely trying to
leverage from free Internet as a means to promote his (unqualified) services. This is the
ugly downside of unregulated Internet commentaries.
-Prof Newman
Bogus Jeffrey Beall

Jeffrey Beall is on a crusade of his own. It is baffling that someone w/o any substantive
track record in research can make sweeping comments about other scholars, scientists,
renowned academics and organizations of standing and reputation. His commentaries
are without basis and frivolous. His claims are bogus. This blog invites scholars,
academics and researchers to comment about this individual who under the pretext of
serving the academic community is merely distorting facts with baseless commentaries
and without any scientific or scholarly expertise. Jeffrey Beall has no prior track record
in research, research publications and / or has not severed as an editor in any reputable
journal of standing. He is merely an assistant librarian. We are equally
surprised/disappointed that his university permits such unprofessional conduct by a
quasi academic (at best).
22
Original
article
published
on
Not provide sufficient evince for his claims - Unreliable, unmethodical and
personal opinions
We wish to conclude by expressing that Bealls blacklist in its current form is unnecessary
and unreliable. On the one hand, there are professional indexing databases operating
as watchdogs of journal quality. Professional databases such as the Web of Science,
Scopus or PubMed can be used as whitelists of good journals. Also, professional services
and societies, such as the Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association (OASPA), are
putting in a great deal of effort to distinguish reputable open access journals and their
publishers from scamming activities. On the other hand, Mr. Beall operates as an
individual person and does not provide sufficient evidence for his claims, does not
attempt to verify his statements for accuracy, nor operate a methodological approach
to his appraisals. Beall also denies the right to defense to those that he attacks. Bealls
judgments are therefore to be considered as unreliable, unmethodical and his personal
opinions.
Original article published on http://www.mdpi.com/about/announcements/534
Beall has no PhD but in his blog refer him as Dr.

Beall is not a doctor, does not hold a PhD, and should thus never be referred to as Dr.
Unfortunately, Mr. Beall fails to correct the comments posted to his blog that refer to
him as Dr. Beall. He should add a small note, each time, that that information is factually
incorrect, and should correct it. In the same way that Ivan and Adam correct errors in
their comments and in comments made by bloggers at RW.
-Jaime A. Teixeira da Silva
Originally published on http://retractionwatch.com/2014/01/20/jeffrey-beall-scores-aretraction/
23
Beall's stories are not substantiated by sufficient evidence

As you can see, my comments have been wiped off that blog, within 30 minutes of
posting them. This indicates that Mr. Beall is biased, unfair and does not moderate
based on valid criticisms. He is unable to face fair criticism either. Mamuns query (and
concern) is valid. Bealls response is not and the message he has sent that scientist is
not factually correct.
c) I am of the opinion that several of the stories on the Beall blog should be retracted,
because they are not substantiated by sufficient evidence to make the claims he makes.
I can provide a substantial assessment if required, but that in itself would take an entire
book volume to compile.
-Jaime A. Teixeira da Silva
Originally published on http://retractionwatch.com/2014/01/20/jeffrey-beall-scores-aretraction/
Jeffrey Beall is an impostor and academic criminal - Dr. Clement
I recently forwarded an email to him from this Publisher: xyz

Actually this publisher is spamming me everyday and promise rapid publication of my
papers to its conferences and journals. Also, instead of conference proceedings, they
push all the papers from the conferences to their journals which is unacceptable.
I explained to Jeffrey Beall that according his own criteria, a journal that can publish
everything from every science and every scientific field, with a publication fee 500 - 1000
USD must be predatory, because for the same reason, Jeffrey Beall classified as
predatory publishers many other honest and legitimate publishers.
Originally published on http://impostorbeall.blogspot.ca/2014/01/i-also-thing-thatjeffrey-beall-is.html
24
Beall is an academic terrorist

It is a real shame that Jeffrey Beall using Nature.com's blog to promote his predatory
work. Jeffrey Beall just simply confusing us to promote his academic terrorism. His list is
fully questionable. His surveying method is not scientific. If he is a real scientist then he
must do everything in standard way without any dispute. He wanted to be famous but
he does not have the right to destroy any company name or brand without proper
Please avoid Jeffrey Beall's fraudulent and criminal activity.
Now a days anyone can open a blog and start doing things like Jeffrey Beall which is
harmful for science and open access journals. Nature should also be very alert from
Jeffrey Beall who is now using Nature's reputation to broadcast his bribery and unethical
business model.
-Mark Robinson (Acting Editor, Stanford Magazine)
Originally published on http://publishopenaccess.blogspot.ca/2012/01/bealls-list-ofpredatory-open-access.html
Jeffrey Beall's list is not accurate to believe

Beall. Hindawi still uses heavy spam emailing. Versita Open still uses heavy spam
emailing. But these two publishers have been removed in Jeffrey Beall's list recently.
There is no reason given by Jeffrey Beall why they were removed. Jeffrey Beall is naive
in his analysis. I think some other reliable blog should be created to discuss more
fruitfully these issues. His blog has become useless.
Dr Gillian Dooley (Special Collections Librarian at Flinders University)
25
Beall's List of Predatory Publishers or Beall's Predatory Business at the

expenses of Publishers
We have received this email:
--
To whom it may concern
I was surprised when one of our editors told me that the name of Ashdin Publishing is
found in the list of "Beall's List: Potential, possible, or probable predatory scholarly openaccess publishers" (http://scholarlyoa.com/publishers/) and I was surprised because of the
following reasons:
1. The author did not just mention the criteria for determining predatory openaccess publishers, but he insisted on mentioning the full names and details of the
publishers as well.
2. Some of these criteria, for determining predatory open-access publishers, can be
applied on a huge number of publishers (include some of the large and famous
ones), but he did not mention any of them.
3. Some of the publishers names are removed from this list without saying the
reasons for this removal.
After I received the e-mail below, I am not any more surprised. Now, I am sure that the
author, irrespective the good reasons he may has for preparing this list, wants to
blackmail small publishers to pay him.
I invite all of you to read what people say commenting on his article
(http://www.nature.com/news/predatory-publishers-are-corrupting-open-access-1.11385):
Dr Gillian Dooley (Special Collections Librarian at Flinders University):
26
fruitfully
these
issues.
His
blog
has
become
useless.
Mark Robinson (Acting Editor, Stanford Magazine):
business model.
Now, I invite all of you in order to take all precautions and not being misled by this
blackmailer.
Ashry A. Aly
Director
Ashdin Publishing
http://www.ashdin.com
-------- Original Message -------Subject:Open Access Publishing

Date: Mon, 03 Dec 2012 17:39:18 +0000
From: Jeffrey Beall
To:
info@ashdin.com
27
I maintain list of predatory open access publishers in my blog

http://scholarlyoa.com
Your publisher name is also included in 2012 edition of my predatory open
access publishers list. My recent article in Nature journal can be read
below
http://www.nature.com/news/predatory-publishers-are-corrupting-open-access-1.11385
I can consider re-evaluating your journals for 2013 edition of my list. It
takes a lot my time and resources. The fee for re-evaluation of your
publisher is USD 5000. If your publisher name is not in my list, it will
increase trustworthiness to your journals and it will draw more article
submissions. In case you like re-evaluation for your journals, you can
contact me.
Cordially
Jeffrey Beall
Beall's another predatory and scamming activity

My name is Petre Dini and I am the President of IARIA, www.iaria.org
I am also victim of Jeffrey Beall
Actually, this pseudo-scholar Jeffrey Beall is a thug. He uses black lists to create profit. Also he is involved in tax evation and money laundry.
I asked him several times to remove IARIA from his black list and he promised me to re-analyze the site www.iaria.org
There is not any real reason to have our institute IARIA in his pseudo-list.
The cost to re-analyze the portal of my organization www.iaria.org was 100,000 USD,
Exactly "re-analyze" was the verb that he used in our phone conversation. Why re-analyze? Who is he that analyzes or re-analyzes
Academic organizations?
What are his qualifications. I am professor in Electrical Engineering with many publications (in IARIA and outside IARIA). Who is this pseudoprofessor - money hungry thug?
Anyway, Jeffrey Beall gave us two accounts in Tax Heaven Countries: One account in a Bank of St. Vincent and another account in Belize.
We do not pay 100,000 USD for IARIA and so IARIA is still now in his list.
I estimate that Hindawi has paid to pseudo-professor Jeffrey Beall something like 1500000 (1 million and half) $
Somebody must report Jeffrey Beall' activities in American Authorities.
Thanks
Petre Dini
28
Thanks for the thorough work. I did not realise how lunatic Beal was. With
friends like him, non-open access publishers do not need many enemies.
The rant against semantic web was uncalled for though. Semantic Web is working very
well. The technologies are not always the ones envisioned initially. For instance, in
business RDFa that is RDF in HTML- took over RDF/XML for the moment. Also
technology evolves slowly. Triple stores were very slow initially, hence probably the
problem with Mulgara and the semantic web platform of PLoS. But the situation is
getting steadily better (exponentially better), as with every technologies (I still remember
my post-doc, where colleagues told me never to use Java for any serious programming
because it was so slow). EMBL-EBI launched its RDF stores this year, and the potential
for data integration there, where all the databases have different formats, is clear.
-Nicolas Le Novere
See more at: http://www.michaeleisen.org/blog/?p=1500#sthash.mvVhklPX.dpuf
Wow, Bealls article is bad. Unbelievably bad, and that leaves me wondering how he
managed to get a name in the field in the first place? Im guessing this must be the first
time hes published something like this? Because I cant imagine any self-respecting
scientist paying this guy any attention at all if hes previously ranted like this.
Booker
See more at: http://www.michaeleisen.org/blog/?p=1500#sthash.mvVhklPX.dpuf
Perhaps Beall needs to take a short course on Political Economy. I would recommend
Adam Smith and in particular those sections where he takes apart monopolies to
establish the conclusion that the only thing worse than a public sector monopoly is a
private sector one. Oligopolies (or cartels) are not much different.
Dave Fernig
See more at: http://www.michaeleisen.org/blog/?p=1500#sthash.Nr0H6Tmb.dpuf
29
We seem to have reached the third stage of the process described by (a saying
popularly attributed to) Gandhi:
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.
Rhetoric as ridiculous as Bealls will hasten our progress toward the fourth stage.
Ralph Haygood
See more at: http://www.michaeleisen.org/blog/?p=1500#sthash.lrFh5m8G.dpuf
30
Predatory Blogger: Jeffrey Beall
Backlash over journals blacklisting

Backlash over journals blacklisting Researchers on social media are split over the
decision of predatory librarian Jeffrey Beall to add the Frontiers journals to his blacklist
of questionable publishers.
Beall, at the University of Colorado Denver, announced the move in a tweet, saying that
it followed wide disapproval from scientists.
Researchers on social media have been split by the decision of academic librarian Jeffrey
Beall to add the Frontiers journals to his blacklist of questionable publishers.
Beall, at the University of Colorado Denver, announced the move in a tweet:
His website Scholarly Open Access maintains a list of journals that may be predatory
publishers" a term Beall coined to cover publications that charge scientists fees to
publish research papers, but that do not offer standard publishing services such as peer
review or that make misleading claims about their journals on issues such as impact
factors or indexing.
31
Critics spoke out against Bealls blacklisting of Frontiers, maintaining that the openaccess publisher is legitimate and reputable and does offer proper peer review.
Danil Lakens, an experimental psychologist at the Eindhoven University of Technology
in the Netherlands and an associate editor at Frontiers in Cognition, tweeted:
Beall told Nature that he stands by his decision and that he has received dozens of emails from the scientific community outlining bad practices at Frontiers.
Beall names some controversies that he says helped raise concerns about the Frontiers
journals. These include a Frontiers in Psychology paper suggesting that conspiracy
theorists do not believe in climate change and a Frontiers in Public Health paper raising
questions about the link between HIV and AIDS. Both ignited Internet firestorms on
publication.
In a statement, Frontiers said that it was committed to serving the academic community,
was a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics and was also on the whitelist of
legitimate publishers kept by the Directory of Open Access Journals. Dubious actions
as such by an individual with a long history of opposing Open Access publishing serve
only to create confusion that slows down the development of Open Access publishing,
says the statement.
Adding Frontiers to the blacklist may cause problems for researchers who have
previously published in the journals, says Lakens. "It could be, the articles people have
published in Frontiers are no longer judged based on their own quality, but are now
seen as less valuable because Frontiers is on Bealls list," he says. "Having a single
influential individual cast doubt on such a huge journal feels very unfair.
Love it or hate it, Beall's blacklist is the only one out there, and it's providing an
important service, says Neuroskeptic, a pseudonymous neuroscience blogger and
researcher in the United Kingdom. Although he doesnt agree with Bealls decision,
32
Neuroskeptic says that he sees the value and merit of the Scholarly Open Access
website.
"The grand majority of these publishers really are seriously dodgy, and someone needs
to be calling them out," Neuroskeptic says. "The list has helped me I think its
important."
The Holtzbrinck Group, based in Stuttgart, Germany, is a part owner of Frontiers and
also owns a share of Natures parent company, Springer Nature. Frontiers says that
While generally operating as an independent business and publisher, Frontiers now
collaborates with Holtzbrinck businesses including NPG on key initiatives to advance the
cause of Open Science for the benefit of both the research community and the broader
public. Natures news team is editorially independent.
Conclusion, Backlash over journals blacklisting Researchers on social media are split
over the decision of predatory librarian Jeffrey Beall to add the Frontiers journals to his
blacklist of questionable publishers.
Beall, at the University of Colorado Denver, announced the move in a tweet, saying that
it followed wide disapproval from scientists.
Beall acting as a mouthpiece

We are grateful to you for bringing such a serious and funny matter to our notice by
your blog. While going through the matter deeply, we have observed that it is a
framework created by profit making commercial organizations belonging to corporate
33
world with intention to discourage Open Access Journals and Mr. J. Beall, who is acting
as a mouthpiece of group
Motion to repudiate Bealls attack on Open access journals

World stand against Beall's conspiracy and predatory practices against Open
access Journals
Jeffrey Beall, an American librarian who gained notoriety publishing a list of open access
publishers and journals considered as predatory by him, posted in his blog an
unbelievably mistaken and prejudiced article, beginning with its title, Is SciELO a
Publication Favela?1
Based on an ethnocentric and purely commercial point of view, Mr. Beall supposes that,
since the whole ensemble of its publications are not indexed by Thomson Reuters
bibliographic database, and because of the discontinuation of a proposal by a Brazilian
government agency to hire a commercial publisher to disseminate some of the nations
periodicals, SciELOs publications would be hidden from the world (sic).
Seemingly in order to promote commercial publishers, Mr. Beall despises the asset that
the SciELO collection represents, and makes factually incorrect assertions. Contrary to
his statements, the whole collection is already indexed in the Scopus database. Also in
opposition to another of his mistaken affirmations, SciELO has adopted for some time
the Creative Commons license, which means that there is no risk of an article losing its
interest due to authors copyright issues.
One paragraph in particular demonstrates the prejudices, classism, imperialism and
crass commercialism present in the tone of Mr. Bealls diatribe: Thus, commercial
publisher platforms are nice neighborhoods for scholarly publications. On the other
hand, some open-access platforms are more like publication favelas.
As a counterpoint to this neocolonial point of view, a recent article by Vessuri and
colleagues emphasizes the contribution of initiatives such as SciELO and Redalyc (also
targeted by Mr. Beall) to the development of science in Latin America and the world:
In fact, Latin America is using the OA publishing model to a far greater extent than any
other region in the world. Also, because the sense of public mission remains strong
34
among Latin American universities, the effectiveness of open access for knowledge
sharing was heard loud and clear. () These current initiatives demonstrate that the
region contributes more and more to the global knowledge exchange while positioning
research literature as a public good.2
Contrary to the classist disgust that favelas elicit from Mr. Beall, we would like to reiterate
that they are a kind of neighborhood where a sizable portion of the Brazilian population,
which uses the nations healthcare system and is ultimately the source of funding for
the Brazilian science itself, resides. Discrimination and prejudice against these Brazilian
citizens is inadmissible. If the only alternatives for scientific publishing are either
inhabiting the gated communities of the 1% of the world population which concentrates
wealth at the cost of exploiting the other 99%, or being with the people in a favela, long
live the favela.
Article initially posted on
http://blog.scielo.org/en/2015/08/02/motion-to-repudiate-mr-jeffrey-bealls-classistattack-on-scielo/
Jeffrey Beall and Blacklists

Jeffrey Beall is probably best known for his list of predatory scholarly open access
publishers. The list appears to provide a useful service to the academic community in
alerting scholars to questionable publications. However, there are two main problems
with this list.
1. The list is based on the opinions and judgements of a single person and, therefore,
subject to the errors of judgement, prejudices and conflicts of interest inherent in
such an approach;
2. The list only includes open access journals, giving the impression that only this
model of publication is subject to predatory and questionable practices.
The reasons for the increase in questionable publication practices are complex and
outside the scope of this blog, but include the current hyper-competition in science,
35
the dramatic increase in the number of research workers many often poorly trained in
research and publication ethics and the use of journal articles as a currency in deciding
promotion, tenure, hiring or the awarding of grants. These factors together with human
attributes of ingenuity, vanity and greed provide the millieu in which predatory journals
flourish.
It is certainly true that the problem of questionable publications occurs more often with
open access journals, but this is not inherently due to the publishing model. Most
publishers, including the major commercial publishers, have discovered that open
access provides a superior economic model for publishing new journals. The result is
that nearly all new journals use the open access model and predatory publishing
practices often (but not solely) occur in new journals.
Even if the open access model was abolished the phenomenon of predatory journals
would not go away. Those behind these enterprises would find new ways of serving this
market. Subscription publishers have also produced questionable journals, including
some of the main commercial publishers. There also exists a network of non-open
access vanity publishers willing to publish any dissertation or thesis as a scholarly
monograph.
But let us return to Mr Bealls list, an article he recently published makes it clear that his
targeting of open access journals is, in fact, based on his keen dislike of the open access
movement in general, which he believes is a conspiracy led by European socialists aimed
at destroying for- profit publishing. Mr Beall is particularly scathing of gold open access
stating that Scholars should have never allowed a system that requires monetary
transactions between authors and publishers, but appears to have no problem with
subscription journals levying page charges, a clear case of double standards.
Mr Beall also appears to have a deep mistrust of academic publishing in the developing
world. He regularly puts new publishers from these countries on his list until they can
prove their credentials creating added difficulties for publishers in these countries. A
case in point is MedKnow, a publisher of reputable journals in the Middle East and Asia,
including the journal of a regional office of the World Health Organization. This
publisher was added to his watch list, presumably because it was based in India. The
36
publisher was then acquired by Walters-Kluwer and the journals suddenly becoming
safe in Bealls worldview as the publisher disappeared from the watch list.
This combination of dislike of open access publishing and distrust of scholarly publishing
in the developing world has now resulted in his recent blog comparing the SciELO
platform to a favela. Readers of this blog do not need me to describe the outstanding
services provided by SciELO to academic publishing nor the absurdity of his arguments,
however you can find further details in my comments and replies posted on his original
blog1 which provides further evidence of his prejudices and motives.
Blacklists, particularly those created without due process, are morally perilous and it is
time that Bealls list is replaced with a list of reputable journals. Predatory journals are
only one problem in an increasingly ethically challenging publishing environment
particularly for inexperienced researchers. The new list should be impersonal, widely
available for consultation, backed by academic organizations and with transparent
exclusion and inclusion criteria but this is the subject for another post
By Hooman Momen
A Response to Jeffrey Bealls Critique of Open Access

I recently became a member of the American Association of University Professors
(AAUP) and today was dismayed to see Jeffrey Bealls article What the Open-Access
Movement Doesnt Want You to Know in the latest issue of its journal, Academe. (I
joined because as a member of Virginia Techs Faculty Senate, AAUP has been helpful
in advising us on increasing the role of Faculty Senate in university governance.)
For those who may not know, Jeffrey Beall is a librarian at the University of ColoradoDenver, and through his blog Scholarly Open Access exposes academic predatory
publishers (pay-to-publish scams that perform little to no peer review) and other
sketchy doings in academic publishing. While this is a tremendous service to the
scholarly community, he has unfairly blamed these problems on open access as a whole.
It became apparent just how off the rails Beall had gone when he published The OpenAccess Movement is Not Really about Open Access in the journal TripleC (in the non-
37
peer reviewed section; also see Michael Eisens response, Bealls Litter). If you enjoy
right-wing nuttiness (yes, George Soros is involved) you really should read it.
Bealls critiques of open access are not always as factual as they could be, so as an open
access advocate I am concerned when his polemics are presented to an academic
audience that may not know all the facts. So below is my response to selections from his
article:
The open-access movement has been around for more than a dozen years
Actually it has been around longer than that- Stevan Harnad made his subversive
proposal in 1994 on a Virginia Tech email list.
The open-access movement is a coalition that aims to bring down the traditional
scholarly publishing industry and replace it with voluntarism and server space
subsidized by academic libraries and other nonprofits. It is concerned more with the
destruction of existing institutions than with the construction of new and better ones.
This is quite an evidence-free paragraph. Where is the coalition, and where is the goal
stated of bringing down the traditional scholarly publishing industry? Who has said all
we need is voluntarism and server space? No one I know of.
The movement uses argumentum ad populum, stating only the advantages of
providing free access to research and failing to point out the drawbacks (predatory
publishers, fees charged to authors, and low-quality articles).
There is frequent discussion of these problems. Credit Beall for bringing attention to
predatory publishers, but its less of a problem than he makes it out to be (and one
seemingly devoid of data- Beall would strengthen his claims if he could document the
number of authors victimized and/or the amount of money lost). A majority of open
access journals do not charge authors, and those that do usually have waivers. There
are also plenty of high-quality open access journals like PLOS Biology, generally
considered tops in its field. And we know that low-quality articles could never appear
in a subscription journal.
Its hard to argue against freeand free access is the chief selling point of openaccess publishing
Actually open access is not just about free. OA means free as in cost (to the reader)
but also free as in freedom (open licensing). As a librarian, Beall should know the barriers
that copyright presents in the use of scholarship by libraries and researchers. OA
advocates know that scholarly publishing does cost something, and are actively working
on alternatives to the broken subscription model.
38
In the so-called gold open-access model, authors are charged a fee, called the article
processing charge, upon acceptance of a manuscript.
This is simply wrong. Gold open access describes OA journals that publish peerreviewed articles. A majority of them do not have an article processing charge (APC).
APCs are just one model of providing open access. Its true that predatory publishing is
based on this model as a money-making scam. This is why authors need to know
something about the journals where they submit articles.
Some publishers and journals do not charge fees to researchers and still make their
content freely accessible and free to read. These publishers practice platinum open
access, which is free to the authors and free to the readers.
Platinum open access must be Bealls invention, because no one else uses this term.
Open access journals (gold open access) includes journals with fees and those without
fees.
A third variety of open-access publishing, often labeled as green open access, is based
in academic libraries
Lots of libraries do have repositories, but its not accurate to say that all (or even most)
archiving is based there. There are plenty of disciplinary repositories, and for-profit ones
like Academia.edu.
the green open-access movement is seeking to convert these repositories into
scholarly publishing operations. The long-term goal of green open access is to
accustom authors to uploading postprints to repositories in the hope that one day
authors will skip scholarly publishers altogether.
Maybe some think this, but I wouldnt call it widespread. Most scholarly publishing in
libraries (that is, journal or monograph publishing) is a separate operation from article
archiving. And no one thinks peer review can be skipped, which seems to be an
implication here.
Despite sometimes onerous mandates, however, many authors are reluctant to submit
their postprints to repositories.
This is unfortunately true, but Beall doesnt mention that many of the onerous
mandates were passed unanimously by the same faculty members who must observe
them, because they became convinced of the benefits of open access to research.
Moreover, the green open-access model mostly eliminates all the value added that
scholarly publishers provide, such as copyediting and long-term digital preservation.
39
Most OA advocates agree that scholarly publishers provide value- after all, some of
them publish OA journals. But the choice of examples is odd. Im one of many authors
who has had the experience of copy editing actually introducing errors into my carefully
composed article. And in some cases repositories are a better bet for long-term digital
preservation than journals, which can stop publishing without a preservation plan. In
short, the value added that is claimed by many publishers is coming under question,
and rightfully so in my view.
The low quality of the work often published under the gold and green open-access
models provides startling evidence of the value of high-quality scholarly publishing.
This makes little sense. An archived (green) article can be of the highest quality and
may have been published in one of the prestigious journals Beall venerates. And again,
there are many well regarded open access journals.
When authors become the customers in scholarly communication, those with the least
funds are effectively prevented from participating; there is a bias against the
underfunded.
Many OA advocates have identified the same problem with APCs, especially for authors
from the developing world. But many of these journals have waivers, most OA journals
dont have charges, and new models are being developed that subsidize journals
without charge to either author or reader. Its not accurate to portray fee-based
publishing as the only open access model.
Subscription journals have never discriminated on the basis of an authors ability to pay
an article-processing charge.
No, they just discriminate against libraries.
Gold open access devalues the role of the consumer in scholarly research Open access
is making readers secondary players in the scholarly communication process.
This is just laughable. Yes, we should feel sorry for all those readers who can freely
access all the peer-reviewed research that their tax dollars likely paid for.
In the next section of his article, Questioning Peer Review and Impact Factors Beall
mostly critiques the doings of predatory publishers, which no one really disputes. But in
criticizing predatory publishers (again unfairly extending his critique to all open access
publishing) he gives subscription publishing a free pass. If you dont think bad
information has appeared in prestigious peer-reviewed subscription journals, try
searching autism and immunization or arsenic life. Bealls reverence for the journal
impact factor isnt supported by any facts (see my post Removing the Journal Impact
40
Factor from Faculty Evaluation). So predatory publishers using fake journal impact
factors shouldnt be a concern- its a bogus metric to start with. Moreover, Beall fails to
acknowledge that open peer review, in whatever form, would largely solve the problem
of predatory publishing. If a journal claims to do peer review, then lets see it!
If youre an author from a Western country, the novelty and significance of your
research findings are secondary to your ability to pay an article-processing charge and
get your article in print.
Again- waivers are available and the majority of OA journals dont have fees. Its
interesting that Beall uses words like novelty and significance here, as if unaware of
real problems in peer review caused by these assessments (which are not attributable
to predatory publishing).
Open-access advocates like to invoke the supposed lack of access to research in
underdeveloped countries. But these same advocates fail to mention that numerous
programs exist that provide free access to research, such as Research4Life and the
World Health Organizations Health Internetwork Access to Research Initiative. Open
access actually silences researchers in developing and middle-income countries, who
often cannot afford the author fees required to publish in gold open-access journals.
Once again, OA is not all about fees. Its also odd that so many people from the
developing world are huge open access advocates. Beall fails to mention that the large
publishing companies have a lot of control over which countries get access and which
do not. If they decide that India, for example, can afford to pay, then they dont provide
access. Wider open access would make these programs unnecessary. The main thing
silencing researchers in developing countries is basic access to research, which inhibits
their own research efforts.
the top open-access journals will be the ones that are able to command the highest
article-processing charges from authors. The more prestigious the journal, the more
youll have to pay.
There may be some truth to this, and its a concern I share. However, APCs may be
subject to price competition (an odd omission from someone who is so marketoriented). Beall has identified the biggest problem to my mind, which is journal prestige.
Prestige means that mostly we are paying for lots of articles to be rejected, which are
then published elsewhere. Academia needs to determine whether continuing to do this
is very smart, and whether other sources of research quality or impact might be
available.
41
The era of merit in scholarly publishing is ending; the era of money has begun.
Another laugher. Beall must be unaware of his own librarys collections budget, or the
30-40% annual profit made by Elsevier, Wiley, Informa, etc. If he is concerned about
merit (and especially predatory publishing), he ought to be advocating for some form
of open peer review.
Most open-access journals compel authors to sign away intellectual property rights
upon publication, requiring that their content be released under the terms of a very
loose Creative Commons license.
As opposed to subscription journals, most of which which compel authors to transfer
their copyright? Many open access journals allow authors to retain copyright.
Under this license, others can republish your workeven for profitwithout asking for
permission. They can create translations and adaptations, and they can reprint your
work wherever they want, including in places that might offend you.
Wouldnt it be awful to have your work translated or reprinted? I mean, no one actually
wants to disseminate their work, do they? This is mostly scare-mongering about things
that might happen .001% of the time. And because of the ever-so-slight chance
someone might make money from your work, or it might be posted to a site you dont
agree with, we shouldnt share research? This blog is licensed CC BY, and I dont care if
either of those things happen. Whats not logical is for these largely unfounded fears to
lead us back to paywalls and all-rights-reserved copyright.
Scholarly open-access publishing has made many tens of thousands of scholarly articles
freely available, but more information is not necessarily better information.
I dont think anyone has ever claimed this. Even if there were only subscription journals,
there would be new journals and more articles published.
Predatory journals threaten to bring down the whole cumulative system of scholarly
communication
I think there may be some exaggeration here.
In the long term, the open-access movement will be seen as an ephemeral social cause
that tried and failed to topple an industry.
Open access is not looking very ephemeral at the moment. The industry seems to be
trying to find ways to accommodate it so they dont go out of business. Open access
advocates are not necessarily against the industry, just the broken
subscription/paywall model they use. Indeed, traditional publishers like Elsevier and
42
Wiley are profiting handsomely from hybrid open access, and starting OA journals or
converting existing ones to open access.
Be wary of predatory publishers
Finally, something we can agree on!
This article initially published on
https://blogs.lt.vt.edu/openvt/2015/05/19/a-response-to-jeffrey-bealls-critique-ofopen-access/
By Philip Young
Summary:
Most open-access journals compel authors to sign away intellectual property rights upon
publication, requiring that their content be released under the terms of a very loose
Creative Commons license.
As opposed to subscription journals, most of which which compel authors to transfer their
copyright? Many open access journals allow authors to retain copyright.
permission. They can create translations and adaptations, and they can reprint your work
wherever they want, including in places that might offend you.
that might happen .001% of the time. And because of the ever-so-slight chance someone
might make money from your work, or it might be posted to a site you dont agree with,
we shouldnt share research? This blog is licensed CC BY, and I dont care if either of those
things happen. Whats not logical is for these largely unfounded fears to lead us back to
paywalls and all-rights-reserved copyright.
43
communication
Jeffrey Beal
Predatory Blogger
Beall's goes bananas, then predatory practice exposed

Another laugher: Beall academic Joker and Colorado Clown

Beall must be unaware of his own librarys collections budget, or the 30-40% annual
profit made by Elsevier, Wiley, Informa, etc. If he is concerned about merit (and
44
especially predatory publishing), he ought to be advocating for some form of open

peer review.
Beyond Bealls List: We need a better understanding of predatory publishing

without overstating its size and danger.
Although predatory publishers pre-date open access, their recent explosion was
expedited by the emergence of fee-charging OA journals. Monica Berger and Jill
Cirasella argue that librarians can play an important role in helping researchers to
avoid becoming prey. But there remains ambiguity over what makes a publisher
predatory. Librarians can help to counteract the misconceptions and alarmism that
stymie the acceptance of OA.
If you have even a fleeting interest in the evolving landscape of scholarly
communication, youve probably heard of predatory open access (OA) journals. These
are OA journals that exist for the sole purpose of profit, not the dissemination of highquality research findings and furtherance of knowledge. These predators generate
profits by charging author fees, also known as article processing charges (APCs), that
far exceed the cost of running their low-quality, fly-by-night operations.
Charging a fee is not itself a marker of a predatory publisher: many reputable OA
journals use APCs to cover costs, especially in fields where research is often funded by
grants. (Many subscription-based journals also charge authors fees, sometimes per
page or illustration.) However, predatory journals are primarily fee-collecting
operationsthey exist for that purpose and only incidentally publish articles, generally
without rigorous peer review, despite claims to the contrary.
Of course, low-quality publishing is not new. There have long been opportunistic
publishers (e.g., vanity presses and sellers of public domain content) and deceptive
publishing practices (e.g., yellow journalism and advertisements formatted to look like
articles). It is also not unique to OA journals. There are many mediocre subscriptionbased journals, and even respected subscription-based journals have accepted deeply
45
problematic submissions (e.g., Andrew Wakefield et al.s article linking autism to

vaccines in The Lancet and Alan Sokals nonsense article in Social Text).
Although predatory publishers predate OA, their recent explosion was expedited by the
emergence and success of fee-charging OA journals. No matter how strong our urge
to support and defend OA, librarians cannot deny the profusion of predators in the OA
arena;John Bohannons recent sting made abundantly clear (despite
methodological flaws) that there are many bad actors. Rather, we should seek to
understand their methods, track their evolution, and communicate their characteristics
to our patrons.
Blacklists, whitelists, and other defenses against predatory publishers
The highest-profile watchdog of predatory publishers is Jeffrey Beall, a librarian at the
University of Colorado-Denver, who curates a blacklist of potential, possible, or
probablepredatory OA publishers and journals. Bealls list has become a go-to tool
and has even been featured in The New York Times, but it is not the final word on
predatory publishing, partially because Beall himself has a complicated, and not entirely
supportive, attitude toward OA in general.
Without a doubt, Beall has amassed considerable knowledge and greatly increased
awareness of predatory publishing. He is recognized as a leading expert and has gone
largely unchallenged, probably both because nonexperts are eager for blacklists that
seemingly obviate the need for individual analysis of publishers and journals, and
because little empirical research has been done on the phenomenon of predatory
publishing. However, in 2014, Walt Crawford took Beall to task in an article called Ethics
and Access 1: The Sad Case of Jeffrey Beall.

Crawford criticizes Beall for not contextualizing predatory or low-quality publishing as
a phenomenon that predates OA and is not exclusive to OA journals. He also points
out thatBeall favors toll-access publishers, specifically Elsevier, praising its
consistent high quality. However, a simple Google search for fake Elsevier journals
reveals Bealls position as tenuous. Furthermore, Beall conflates OA journals with
author pays journals, and reveals his skepticism, if not hostility, about OA. Politics
aside, Bealls laser-like focus on predatory publishers may prevent him from having a
broader perspective on scholarly communication. Case in point: Beall has blithely
declared the serials crisis to be over, but those of us who manage resources beg
to differ.
46
Another concerning aspect of Bealls work is his evaluation of OA publishers from less
economically developed countries. Crawford, Karen Coyle, and Jill Emery have all
noted Bealls bias against these publishers. Imperfect English or a predominantly nonWestern editorial board does not make a journal predatory. An interesting example is
Hindawi, an Egyptian publisher once considered predatory that improved its practices
and standards over time. If we accept that there is a continuum from devious and
duplicitous to simply low-quality and amateurish, then it is likely, as Crawford
believes, that some of the publishers on Bealls list are not actually predatory. Although
Bealls contributions are arguably compromised by his attitudes about OA, the criteria
he uses for his list are an excellent starting point for thinking about the hallmarks of
predatory publishers and journals. He encourages thorough analysis, including scrutiny
of editorial boards and business practices. Some of his red flags provide a lot of bang
for your buck in that they are both easy to spot and likely to indicate a predatory
operation. These include editors or editorial board members with no or fake academic
affiliations, lack of clarity about fees, publisher names and journal titles with geographic
terms that have no connection to the publishers physical location or journals
geographic scope, bogus impact factor claims and invented metrics, and false claims
about where the journal is indexed.
Beall also lists common practices indicative of low-quality but not necessarily predatory
journals. He is rightfully wary of journals that solicit manuscripts by spamming
researchers, as established publishers generally do not approach scholars, as well as
publishers or editors with email addresses from Gmail, Yahoo, etc. Also, he wisely warns
researchers away from journals with bizarrely broad or disjointed scopes and journals
that boast extremely rapid publication, which usually suggests no or only cursory peer
review.
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. The central player in the
whitelisting movement is the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ). In response to
the Bohannon sting, DOAJ removed 114 journals and revamped its criteria for
inclusion. Journals accepted into DOAJ after March 2014 under the stricter rules are
marked with a green tick symbol, and DOAJ has announced that it will require the
remaining 99% of its listed journals to reapply for acceptance.
47
At the basic level, a journal must be chiefly scholarly; make the content immediately
available (i.e., no embargoes); provide quality control through an editor, editorial board,
and peer review; have a registered International Standard Serial Number (ISSN); and
exercise transparency about APCs. Journals that meet additional requirements, such as
providing external archiving and creating persistent links, are recognized with the DOAJ
Seal. DOAJ receives an assist from the ISSN Centre, which in 2014 added
language reserving the right to deny ISSNs to publishers that provide misleading
information.
An organization that whitelists publishers by accepting them as members is the Open
Access Scholarly Publishers Association (OASPA). Members must apply and pledge to
adhere to a code of conduct that disallows any form of predatory be-havior. OASPA
has made errors in vetting applicants, though: it admitted some publishers that it later
had to reject (e.g., Dove Medical Press).
Of course, no blacklist or whitelist can substitute for head-on investigation of a journal.
Open Access Journal Quality Indicators, a rubric by Sarah Beaubien and Max
Eckard featuring both positive and negative journal characteristics, can help
researchers perform such evaluation. Furthermore, any tool or practice that gives
researchers more information is a boon. For example, altmetrics provide a broad picture
of an articles impact (not necessarily correlated to its quality), and open peer review
i.e., any form of peer review where the reviewers identity is not hiddenincreases
transparency and allows journals to demonstrate their standards.
The role of librarians
As librarians, we need to understand the hallmarks and methods of predatory publishers
for several reasons. Most obviously, we must help researchers avoid becoming prey
and help readers recognize low-quality journals. In addition, we need to counteract the
misconceptions and alarmism that stymie the acceptance of OA.
For example, many researchers conflate journal quality with publication model or
business model, and librarians can help untangle those concepts. To do so, we must
arm ourselves with clear, convincing explanations that quality and reputation are
independent of openness, that OA journals do not necessarily charge fees, and that
fees do not necessarily imply predatoriness. We should be ready with examples of highquality and well-respected OA journals, as well as reassuring facts about fees (e.g., as
of January 2015, 63% of journals listed in DOAJ have no fees) and efforts to marginalize
predatory publishers.
48
Furthermore, we need to make sure that researchers understand that OA can be

achieved not only through OA journals but also through self-archiving in repositories.
Confusion on this point is still rampant, and too many researchers write off OA entirely
because theyve encountered suspect OA journals.
Clarifying the two approaches can reengage these researchers with the prospect of
opening scholarly literature. Of course, it is always strategic to explain the benefits of
OA in general, including increased readership and citations. In other words, we need to
be able to describe the beast, its implications, and its limitationsneither understating
nor overstating its size and danger. By informing ourselves and our patrons, we not
only counter confusion about OA journal publishing but also help starve predators and
therefore contribute to the future of scholarly communication.
More broadly, librarians play an important role as participants in blacklisting, whitelisting,
and other projects endeavoring to deter predatory publishers and promote best
practices. We are key stakeholders in scholarly and professional conversations
reimagining various aspects of scholarly communication.
This originally appeared in the March 2015 issue of College and Research Libraries
News: Berger, Monica, and Jill Cirasella. Beyond Bealls List: Better
Understanding Predatory Publishers. College & Research Libraries News 76.3
(2015): 132-5. This article is reprinted with the authors permission.
Note: This article gives the views of the author, and not the position of the Impact of
Social Science blog, nor of the London School of Economics. Please review
our Comments Policy if you have any concerns on posting a comment below.
About the Authors
Monica Berger is Associate Professor and Electronic Resources and Technical Services
Librarian at New York City College of Technology, CUNY. Her academic interests include
scholarly communications as well as popular music.
Jill Cirasella is the Associate Librarian for Public Services and Scholarly Communication
at the Graduate Center CUNY, where she leads numerous scholarly communications
initiatives, including the GCs new institutional repository, Academic Works. Jill is a
vocal advocate of open access and seeks to promote understanding and adoption of
open access at CUNY and beyond.
49
Jeffrey Beall : Academic terrorist
Beall's black listing; unqualified service does not help researchers

Crawford criticizes Beall for not contextualizing predatory or low-quality publishing as
a phenomenon that predates OA and is not exclusive to OA journals. He also points
out that Beall favors toll-access publishers, specifically Elsevier, praising its consistent high
quality. However, a simple Google search for fake Elsevier journals reveals Bealls
position as tenuous. Furthermore, Beall conflates OA journals with author pays journals, and reveals
his skepticism, if not hostility, about OA. Politics aside, Bealls laser-like focus on
predatory publishers may prevent him from having a broader perspective on scholarly
communication. Case in point: Beall has blithely declared the serials crisis to be over, but
those of us who manage resources beg to differ.
Anti-OA and the Rhetoric of Reaction

Wayne Bivens-Tatum chimed in on December 17, 2013 at Academic Librarianand as
usual his perspective is different, interesting and thought out. The lede: You know when
someone at Scholarly Kitchen thinks your anti-open access rant is excessive youve crossed
some sort of threshold. You also know that when a biologist and a co-founder of the Public
Library of Science bothers to give your article a thorough fisking, you have peoples
attention. Even Roy Tennant seems a little riled, and hes usually pretty calm. Jeffrey Beall
has managed to publish an antiopen access article in an open access journal thats so
poorly argued that I wonder if hell later use the publication as an example of how bad OA
publishing can be. The Beall Hoax.
50
All but one of those links are to items already discussed here; the Roy Tennant post deals
largely with a Beall piece attacking OCLC, and by policy I dont comment on OCLC, so I
didnt include Tennants piece here. (Which does not mean I disagree with what Tennants
saying.) I was going to write a detailed response pointing out, among other things, that
Beall makes a number of outrageous claims about OA advocates without referring to or
citing any of them. Theres absolutely no evidence presented that any OA advocates hold
any of the anti-corporatist (sic) views that Beall attributes to them, which leaves the article
as an eight-page rant against a straw man. Beall claims that a close analysis of the
discourse of the OA advocates reveals that the real goal of the open access movement is
to kill off the for-profit publishers and make scholarly publishing a cooperative and
socialistic enterprise. Needless to say, the close analysis never comes. If it had come, this
article would be a serious contribution to the OA discussion instead of an uninformative
rant, especially if it had analyzed representative passages from numerous OA advocates
instead of cherry-picking juicy but unrepresentative quotes from a handful of alleged
zealots. It wouldnt have proved anything against OA itself, but it might have made for a
good read. [Emphasis added.]
Consider that final sentence. I can certainly find a few OA advocates who are anti-copyright,
but that doesnt even begin to suggest that OA is anticopyright. Even if Beall had some
support for his claims about some advocates, it wouldnt prove a thing about OA. BT didnt
do a detailed critique of the arguments because Michael Eisen did that. Instead, he looks
at the rhetoric. BT quotes a paragraph from Albert O. Hirschmans book The Rhetoric of
Reaction: Perversity, Futility, Jeopardy:
I have come up with another triad: that is, with three principal reactive-reactionary theses,
which I call the perversity thesis or thesis of the perverse effect, the futility thesis, and the
jeopardy thesis. According to the perversity thesis, any purposive action to improve some
feature of the political, social, or economic order only serves to exacerbate the condition
one wishes to remedy. The futility thesis holds that attempts at social transformation will
be unavailing, that they will simply fail to make a dent. Finally, the jeopardy thesis argues
that the code of the proposed chafe or reform is too high as it endangers some previous,
precious accomplishment.
BT finds all three in Bealls article, and explains that; his discussion is worth reading directly.
Ill quote two paragraphs that seem very much on the money, discussing three of the more
51
outrageous sentences in Bealls piece (Randian refers to Ayn Rand, who BT calls a
Manichaen apocalyptic novelist often taken for a political philosopher by teenage boys):
This makes some sense if you share a Randian worldview. In this comforting worldview, the
world is a simple place to understand. Its filled not with flawed human beings acting upon
a variety of motivations trying to make their way through a complex world. No, the world
is made of heroes and villains. The heroes are the people who think as I do and are always
right. The villains are any people who disagree with any part of my ideology. They do so
not because the world is complicated and disagreement natural, but because they are evil
and possibly stupid, and no matter what noble motives they might claim to have, theyre
lying and trying to destroy some beloved institution. Also, theres the faith that commercial
enterprise is always good and free markets (if they ever really exist) always lead to the best
outcome. Challenging this faith in any way leads to an extreme reaction. Its a world of
extremes. Criticizing any area in which private enterprise and free markets maybe dont
give us the outcomes we want is equated with being a collectivist who wants to bring the
capitalist system down. That explains why in the article, criticism of Elsevier or of commercial
science publishing means that one wants to destroy all corporations.
It doesnt make a lot of sense until you look at it through the Randian lens. In this world,
people dont support open access because they think the creation and dissemination of
new knowledge is a public good. They do it because they want to destroy all corporations
and deny freedom to people. This must be their motive because they disagree with Beall
about open access scholarship, and he thinks these things are bad, so they must be
motivated by these evil ideas. Q.E.D. Since there have to be heroes and villains, Beall must
be the hero and everyone who disagrees with him in the slightest a villain who is acting
from evil motives to destroy everything he holds dear. Once you share this worldview,
evidence doesnt matter anymore.
Theres a lot more hereits not a brief post. Go read it. I like BTs syllogistic version of part
of Bealls reasoning:
Some OA publishing is predatory publishing. All predatory publishing is bad. Therefore, all
OA publishing is bad. Sounds about rightnot, to be sure, as a valid syllogism.
52
Characters
This post, by the Library Loon on December 19, 2013 at Gavia Libraria, may be the most
important post in this whole section, because what the Loons saying is true. Its so
important, and so well stated, that Im going to quote the whole post (Gavia Libraria
operates on a CC BY licenseI have to credit the pseudonymous Loon as the original
author, which I of course gladly do):
The open-access movement has always had its characters. Zealots. Kooks. Scary people.
People who just Arent Our Sort, Dearie. Any old loon can start a weblog, after all; at least
one Loon has done so. For all the differences the Loon has with some of OAs other
characters, she stops short of wishing them gone. It takes a certain amount of kookiness
to provide energy sufficient to get anything done sometimes. Moreover, engaging publicly
with kookery is often a fools game, at best analogous to teaching pigs Mozart arias, at
worst lending kooks credibility they do not deserve and should not be permitted to have.
So OA tolerates its kooks, usually with kindness, sometimes with a politely blind eye or deaf
ear and that is largely as it should be.
Why did OA let Beall get away with his act so long? no one has yet asked, probably because
the answer the Loon has just given is so patently obvious to those in the movement as not
to need saying. (If the Loon had to characterize the attitude of those in the OA movement
who noted Bealls deep-seated antipathy toward OA months or even years previously
evidence was available for the persistent and perceptiveshe would say it was oh, him,
hell blow himself up someday. As, in fact, he has.)
Nonetheless, there is a lesson in this that the movement could do with taking to heart: do
not let your enemy control a visible, high-mindshare product or service in your space. If
not for Bealls list, Beall would never have been anything but another easily-ignorable kook.
If a suitable group of individuals, or an organization, had taken on the job of publicly calling
out bad practice, Beall would have sunk back into easily ignorable kookdom. Instead, we
have this, whatever this is; embarrassing evitable mess is the
Loons first instinctive characterization. The Loon will mercilessly mock and possibly savage
any commenter waltzing in here with oh, well, nobody actually believed Beall; he had no
real influence. That is arrant nonsense, and the greatest pity is that it is arrant nonsense
spouted by those most deeply steeped in the OA movement and most desirous of its
success.
53
If the above paragraph describes you, the Loon loves you dearlyyou know she does!
but must remind you that people like you are so few as to be fringe still. It often does not
feel so on Twitter, true, but academic Twitter itself is a rounding error compared to all of
academe. You cannot measure what academe understands by what you understand, nor
how academe gets its news by how you do. (You use a feedreader? You digitallybrainwashed solutionist kook, you.)
In the Loons prior professional world, Bealls list was an enormously valuable convenience,
and because of that, Beall himself enjoyed considerable credibility, such that his least
pronouncement was freely email forwarded everywhere. Every now and then this was
plainly passive aggression against the Loon herself (she has mentioned how deeply her
prior workplace loathed her and all her works, correct?), but by and large, it was ignorance
crossed with homophily among librarians to whom OA and its advocates felt like a threat.
The Loons workplace was no sort of outlierwell, except insofar as many, many academic
libraries still boast insufficient knowledge of or interest in OA to bother forwarding
communiqus about it.
Those OA advocates who wonder why libraries are not more active in the OA movement
need wonder no more. The Loon boggles particularly at one currently- circulating notion
that academic libraries will just take over scholarly publishing wholesale. Not in an
environment where Bealls frothings circulate as freely as water churned up by migrating
flocks of waterfowl! Fortunately, the Loon cant think of any other major OA showpiece
services run by OAs enemies. (OA and hybrid journals at toll-access publishers are
insufficiently influential to count at this juncture.) We can at least hope that an analogous
situation will not arise again. If it does, though, let us please intervene earlier. Keep what is
valuable about such services by all means, but let us not allow their proprietors to fuel
further apathy and anti-OA agitation.
I quoted that in its entirety because I suspect most readers dont click through on most
links and because its relatively short. I wish I could say yes, but but I cant: Theres simply
too much evidence, even now, that Bealls held in high regard and OA is viewed
suspiciouslynot only among academics but among too many librarians and even library
journalists. I will disagree with something the Loon says although in a response to a
comment, not in the piece itself: If academe had found him out, he would have quickly
been laughed to scorn (as has now happened).
54
Unfortunately, as such examples as a January 2014 link from ALA Direct to the latest Bealls
List demonstrates, the scorn hasnt happened effectively. The first link is to Distraction
Watch, a community archive of strange emails from probably-sketchy publishers. Its no
substitute for stronger action from OASPA and others, but its an interesting piece of the
puzzle.
Source: Crawford, W. (2014). Ethics and Access 1: The Sad Case of Jeffrey Beall, Cites &
insights, 14(4), 1-22.
Beall has Gone Bananas: Beall has essentially discredited himself

This one is from Anton Angelo posted on or before December 10, 2013 at
mumbles. (The post doesnt Cites & Insights April 2014 8 include a date, but
I tagged it on December 10 and the first comment appears on that date.) He
leads with this: Jeffrey Beall has essentially discredited himself. The time has
come to take his important work in identifying predatory publishers from him,
and run another list, one that can be trusted.
Angelo appreciated Bealls list and forgave certain amount of selfaggrandizementuntil the triple C article appeared. His argument boils
down to the following: the OA movement is really a monolithic stalking horse
behind which there is a cabal wanting to establish centralised control of
academic publishing. Which is, of course, nonsense. Its a pity, because the
moderates that support OA will see him as a bit of a loony, and will no longer
trust his good work on predatory publishing. Those on the libertarian right
will think hes entertainingly provocative, and those on the infantile left (to
borrow from Lenin) will see him as a traitor.
Theres more, but that may say enough. There are two commentsone from
Joe Esposito, no friend of OA himself (or at least hes never appeared to be)
55
expressing his disappointment in the articleand one from Jeffrey Beall

indulging in a personal attack on Esposito.
Bealls Litter
Michael Eisen responds to Beall in this December 14, 2013 post at it is NOT
junk, and its fair to say that hes not entirely convinced by Beall: The piece is
so ill-informed and angry that I cant really describe it. So Im just going to
reproduce his article here (it was, ironically, published in an open access
journal with a Creative Commons license allowing me to do so), along with
my comments.
There follows a complete reprint of the article with inserted red-text
paragraphs where Eisen feels the need to offer a response. For example,
heres the first commentary, immediately following the first paragraph of the
abstract: It is rather amusing to hear open access described as anticorporatist seeing as the primary push for open access has come from
corporations such as PLOS and BioMed Central, a for profit company
recently purchased by one of the worlds largest publishing houses.
Theres a lot morethis is a very long post, not quite a fisking but close to
it. I wont attempt to include all of Eisens comments (some of which I might
take issue with). Indeed, as I skim through them, I wont include any more:
You should read them in the original, in the context of Bealls article. If you
dont read any other response to Beall, you should read this one.
Parting Company with Jeffrey Beall
I rarely cite the scholarly kitchen just as I rarely cite Jeffrey Bealls blog or
Stevan Harnads lists: in general, I find extremists less useful to consider. But
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this post by Joseph Esposito on December 16, 2013 is an exception, if only

because Esposito not only finds the Beall article over the top but was (like
some of us but not, unfortunately, like Bealls devoted followers) getting
uneasy about Beall in general. It is Esposito and Skitch, so we get this: There
are inherent structural problems with Gold Open Access and sooner or later
unscrupulous people were going to exploit them. Hell, there are inherent
structural problems with Big Deal subscription publishing serious ones
whereas platinum OA (which is to say most actual Gold OA, not including
all the phantom journals) does not invite unscrupulous people. The unstated
equation (that all Gold OA includes article processing charges) continues to
be false and to undermine the credibility of anybody saying it. But lets
proceed:
Since I first became aware of Bealls List, however, I have been following
some of Bealls work with growing unease. Here and there some (to me)
distasteful political ideology peeked through (with my pragmatic mindset,
any kind of ideology makes me queasy), but you dont have to agree with
somebody all the time to agree with them some of the time. But now, in a
recent screed, he has crossed the line. While I continue to admire Bealls List,
the broader critique (really an assault) of Gold OA and those who advocate
it is too strong for me. Sorry, Jeffrey, but Im not with you on this.
The recent screed is, of course, the triple C article. Esposito quotes two
sentences from Bealls conclusion The open-access movement isnt really
about open access. Instead, it is about collectivizing production and denying
the freedom of the press from those who prefer the subscription model of
scholarly publishing.and comments: Its the English major in me who
notes the odd disconnect between the content of these two sentences and
the rhetoric. We are talking about a way of publishing academic articles
not the stuff of a revolutionary, or counter-revolutionary, movement; as my
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kids would say, Bor-ing! But someone is invoking one of the Big Principles,
denying the freedom of the press. If the word collectivizing went by you,
slow down and read again. Yes, the OA movement is out to deny life, liberty,
and the pursuit of happiness. All this blather about open access is the work
of a bunch of commies who have taken over the university. I am not making
this up.
Esposito nails one major issue with Bealls article: characterize[ing] a group
by its most extreme elements. Not unusual and, as he says, an easy
rhetorical trick, but not really helpful. Ah, but then Esposito shows his true
colors: A good part of my disappointment in Bealls latest is that much of
what he says seems to me to be correct, but simply overstated and stuffed
inside a political wrapper. There are in fact predatory publishers, and Gold
OA is more likely to produce them than will traditional publishing. The
traditional form of peer review seems to me to be superior to the
methodology- only policy of PLoS ONE. The economics of Gold OA shuts
out some researchers. The measure of the value of research is its value to
other researchers, not the general public. And citations are the coin of the
realm, which are captured in journal impact factor, not in altmetrics.
In opposing Bealls argument, I am not opposing all of it. But his outrage
clouds his judgment and expression and undermines his best arguments.
[Emphasis added.] Look at the heart of that paragraph, bolded for your
convenience. The first is an opinion that cant be falsified as an opinion (if
someone says say it seems to me the Moon is made of green cheese, you
cant prove that it doesnt seem so to them) but is otherwise arguable. The
second one is simply false for most Gold OA journals: Free is free. The third
is a nice way of pooh-poohing arguments for OA based on the need for
anybody but other researchers to gain access to research articles.
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The fourth is difficult because journal impact factors say nothing about
article quality, only about journals. The post is followed by 57 comments
covering a wild range. If you appreciate which of the commenters are
Skitcheners, there are interesting discussions going on. In the interests of
focus and keeping this essay from being way too long, I wont attempt to
comment on the comments (that might be another 5,000 words right there!).
Source: Crawford, W. (2014). Ethics and Access 1: The Sad Case of Jeffrey
Beall, Cites & insights, 14(4), 1-22.
Credibility of Bealls List: Writes half-truths, errors and downright nonsense
Well start with someone I rarely quote: Stevan Harnad, writing on December
9, 2013 at his GOAL/amsciforum mail list. Harnad is all about green OA, as
hes made clear a few thousand times. After a citation, he begins:
This wacky article is going to be fun to review. I still think Jeff Beall is doing
something useful with his naming and shaming of junk OA journals, but I
now realize that he is driven by some sort of fanciful conspiracy theory! OA
is all an anti-capitalist plot. (Even on a quick skim it is evident that Jeffs
article is rife with half-truths, errors and downright nonsense. Pity. It will
diminish the credibility of his valid exposs, but maybe this is a good thing,
if the judgment and motivation behind Bealls list is as kooky as this article!
But alas it will now also give the genuine predatory junk-journals some
specious arguments for discrediting Jeffs work altogether. Of course it will
also give the publishing lobby some good soundbites, but they use them at
their peril, because of all the other nonsense in which they are nested!)
There were already moves afoot to establish a credible method for
identifying what Harnad calls junkjournals something thats needed,
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since there have indeed been some profiteers who seem to assume that
authors dont actually investigate the journals they submit tobut Id say the
piece has done more than diminish the credibility of Bealls efforts. But thats
me. The item linked to here is the start of a thread of other messages from
various people on the list. The thread involves quite a few people, including
Beall himself, whoin confirming that he wrote the article and stands by it,
since someone suggested it might have been a spoofsays Prof. Harnad
and his lackeys are responding just as my article predicts. Ah, his lackeys!
The set of Harnadians pushing Gold OA is one of those special sets of lackeys
that fall in the same category as unicorns farting rainbows.
Its quite a thread. Unfortunately, its a little difficult to find Harnads promised
actual critique of Bealls rant article, but this post offers some tidbits, at least.
Source: Crawford, W. (2014). Ethics and Access 1: The Sad Case of Jeffrey
Beall, Cites & insights, 14(4), 1-22.
Beall Doubles Down
And then this happened:
The Open-Access Movement is Not Really about Open Access
Thats the title of Jeffrey Bealls contribution to a special OA section of non-refereed
articles in triple C: communication, capitalism & critique (11:2). It may be worth noting
that this journal (which includes both peer-reviewed articles and other stuff, all of it
clearly labeled) is, ahem, a gold OA journal albeit one that (as with most gold OA
journals) does not charge article processing fees.
If that fairly startling title isnt enough, heres the abstract in full:
While the open-access (OA) movement purports to be about making scholarly content
open-access, its true motives are much different. The OA movement is an anti60
corporatist movement that wants to deny the freedom of the press to companies it
disagrees with. The movement is also actively imposing onerous mandates on
researchers, mandates that restrict individual freedom.
To boost the open-access movement, its leaders sacrifice the academic futures of
young scholars and those from developing countries, pressuring them to publish in
lower-quality open-access journals. The open-access movement has fostered the
creation of numerous predatory publishers and standalone journals, increasing the
amount of research misconduct in scholarly publications and the amount of pseudoscience that is published as if it were authentic science.
Say what? First theres the odd suggestion that there is one thing called the OA
movement. Then theres the suggestion that the OA movementnot the NIH and
Congress, not university facultiesis somehow imposing onerous mandates. Since
the article is itself OA, you can download the PDF and read it yourself. Its pretty
astonishing, and I hesitate to quote much of it because I dont want to be confused with
The Onion. Consider this blanket claim about (all?) OA advocates: OA advocates want
to make collective everything and eliminate private business, except for small businesses
owned by the disadvantaged. While Ive called myself an OA independent, by Bealls
lights I am doubtless an advocateand have been involved for 24 years, far longer
than hes been critiquing. My interest in general collectivizing and eliminating large
private businesses is nonexistent, which I strongly suspect is true for most OA advocates.
We are also told, The open-access movement is a negative movement rather than a
positive one. It is more a movement against something than it is a movement for
something. Thats also nonsense: it is a movement for access to scholarly research. We
also hear that the gold open access model actually incentivizes corruption. Oddly
enough, given that Big Deals generally trap libraries into maintaining subscriptions to
journals they would otherwise cancel, Beall claims just the opposite: Publishers always
had to keep their subscribers happy or they would cancel. He takes a swipe at the
Semantic Web (which he says is dying a slow death) for reasons that I cant fathom,
except that it allows him to call OA the Semantic Web of scholarly communications.
Ill quote another bit herebut with the prefatory information, admittedly repetitious,
that a higher percentage of subscription journals charge author- side fees, typically
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called page charges, than the percentage of OA journals that charge article processing
charges.
Thats important, given this: Money, a source of corruption, was absent from the authorpublisher relationship (except in the rare case of reasonable page charges levied on
authors publishing with non profit learned societies) in the traditional publishing model.
Ask scholars about those reasonable page charges and how theyre only levied by
non-profit societies sometime. You may get an earful.
Beall claims that only a few publishers employ the gold OA model ethicallyand that
most of those are cutting corners and lowering standards. Hes gone beyond raising
alarms about predatory publishers to general condemnation of gold OA (published
in a gold OA journal). I confess to not going through the whole nine page article
carefully; I lacked the stamina to deal with it. Rather than doing my own fisking of an
article that appears to deserve paragraph by paragraph refutation, Ill turn to other
commentaries. The issue must have appeared in late November or early December
2013; the reactions mostly appeared in mid-December.
Source: Crawford, W. (2014). Ethics and Access 1: The Sad Case of Jeffrey Beall, Cites &
insights, 14(4), 1-22.
Bealls list was controversial from the start

Bealls list was controversial from the start, not least because it was often not clear on
what basis he had concluded that a publisher was predatory. Moreover, when last year
he finally published the selection criteria he uses to make his decisions he met with
some angry criticism, with researchers questioning both their validity and usefulness.
It also became apparent that Bealls list included publishers who appeared to be entirely
ethical, and to all intents and purposes keen to publish high-quality OA journals. To add
to critics distrust, publishers names would sometimes disappear from Bealls list without
explanation.
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Nevertheless, as it became increasingly evident that researchers were indeed being

targeted by unscrupulous OA publishers, Beall and his list began to attract the attention
of the scholarly press.
Last year, for instance, his activities were featured twice in The Chronicle of Higher
Education (here and here), as well as in The Times Higher, The Scientist, and most
recently in Nature.
Disinformation
This publicity clearly annoyed the publishers on Bealls list, not least those who believe
that they have been unfairly characterised as predatory.
At the same time, however, the publicity has confirmed Bealls claim that there are some
extremely doubtful OA publishers operating. The Nature article, for instance, sparked a
campaign of disinformation against Beall.
The comments alleged that Beall was withholding or removing the names of publishers
from his list when paid to do so.
Did not end there
But the campaign of disinformation did not end there. A few weeks later, messages
began to circulate on the Web alleging that Beall was emailing publishers on his list and
offering to reassess them for a fee. As proof of this claim an email said to have been
written by Beall was attached to the messages. I can consider re-evaluating your
journals for 2013 edition of my list, the email read. It takes a lot my time and resources.
The fee for re-evaluation of your publisher is USD 5000.
Evidently the email was intended to suggest that Beall was trying to extort money from
publishers on his list.
I became aware of this campaign on 17th December, when a number of attempts were
made to post the allegation as a comment on the interview I had conducted last year
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with OMICS Srinubabu Gedela. A copy was also posted under BeallsNature article
(oddly, given that the comment feature had been closed on 4thDecember), as well as
on other blogs, mailing lists, and the sites of OA publishers (here is an example).
Many of these messages were subsequently taken down by site owners. Even so, the
accusation against Beall continues to circulate widely on the web. At the time of writing
this, a search for Jeffery Beall is blackmailing small Open Access publishers produced
nearly 4,000 hits.
Alys preface read, Now a days anyone can open a blog and start doing things like
Jeffrey Beall which is harmful for science and open access journals. Nature should also
be very alert from Jeffrey Beall who is now using Nature's reputation to broadcast his
bribery and unethical business model.
So I suggested to Aly that someone had tried to confuse him by posing as Beall. Aly,
however, continues to insist that the message came from Beall for reasons he
outlines in the Q&A interview below.
Significant challenge
Perhaps we should not end the discussion here. After all, everyone appears to agree
that the prevalence of unscrupulous OA publishers poses a significant challenge to the
OA community, and indeed for scholarly communication at large.
Some deny that the problem is as serious as Beall maintains. Others suggest that the
wholesale categorisation of hundreds of publishers as predatory is not only inherently
unfair, but was always bound to attract retaliation of some sort from those placed on
the list. As former Springer Publisher Jan Velterop put it to me by email, using such a
term as predatory is asking for trouble if malicious intent cant be proven. To question
the journals prestige is one thing, but an almost criminal accusation quite another.
On the other hand, if any honest publisher has been falsely accused of being predatory
they will doubtless feel as victimised as Beall presumably feels.
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All in all, it is hard not to conclude that there are genuine reasons for concern with the
current situation. Obviously, any publisher still on Bealls list who believes that it has
been unfairly branded as predatory will be concerned.
This article initially published on http://poynder.blogspot.ca/2013/01/the-oa-interviewsashry-aly-of-ashdin.html
Walt Crawford on Beall's list

Please note that we are talking articles published in genuine OA-journals. Articles
published as Hybrid OA articles in subscription journals are out of scope here.
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Walts works on Bealls list Ethics and Access 1: The Sad Case of Jeffrey Beall
(http://citesandinsights.info/civ14i4.pdf) and Journals, Journals and Wannabes:
Investigating The List (http://citesandinsights.info/civ14i7.pdf) are really worth reading
if you would like a more detailed look at the list.
This comments initially published on https://blogs.lt.vt.edu/openvt/2015/05/19/aresponse-to-jeffrey-bealls-critique-of-open-access/
Jeffrey Beall
Predatory Blogger
Beall's Predatory Business at the expenses of Publishers: Beall fails to

acknowledge that open peer review
Bealls critiques of open access are not always as factual as they could be, so as an open
access advocate I am concerned when his polemics are presented to an academic
audience that may not know all the facts. So below is my response to selections from
his article: The open-access movement has been around for more than a dozen years
Actually it has been around longer than that- Stevan Harnad made his subversive
proposal in 1994 on a Virginia Tech email list.
The open-access movement is a coalition that aims to bring down the traditional
scholarly publishing industry and replace it with voluntarism and server space
subsidized by academic libraries and other nonprofits. It is concerned more with the
destruction of existing institutions than with the construction of new and better ones.
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This is quite an evidence-free paragraph. Where is the coalition, and where is the goal
stated of bringing down the traditional scholarly publishing industry? Who has said all
we need is voluntarism and server space? No one I know of.
The movement uses argumentum ad populum, stating only the advantages of
providing free access to research and failing to point out the drawbacks (predatory
publishers, fees charged to authors, and low-quality articles).
There is frequent discussion of these problems. Credit Beall for bringing attention to
predatory publishers, but its less of a problem than he makes it out to be (and one
seemingly devoid of data- Beall would strengthen his claims if he could document the
number of authors victimized and/or the amount of money lost). A majority of open
access journals do not charge authors, and those that do usually have waivers. There
are also plenty of high-quality open access journals like PLOS Biology, generally
considered tops in its field. And we know that low-quality articles could never appear
in a subscription journal.
Its hard to argue against freeand free access is the chief selling point of openaccess publishing
Actually open access is not just about free. OA means free as in cost (to the reader)
but also free as in freedom (open licensing). As a librarian, Beall should know the barriers
that copyright presents in the use of scholarship by libraries and researchers. OA
advocates know that scholarly publishing does cost something, and are actively working
on alternatives to the broken subscription model.
In the so-called gold open-access model, authors are charged a fee, called the article
processing charge, upon acceptance of a manuscript.
This is simply wrong. Gold open access describes OA journals that publish peerreviewed articles. A majority of them do not have an article processing charge (APC).
APCs are just one model of providing open access. Its true that predatory publishing is
based on this model as a money-making scam. This is why authors need to know
something about the journals where they submit articles.
Some publishers and journals do not charge fees to researchers and still make their
content freely accessible and free to read. These publishers practice platinum open
access, which is free to the authors and free to the readers.
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Platinum open access must be Bealls invention, because no one else uses this term.
Open access journals (gold open access) includes journals with fees and those without
fees.
A third variety of open-access publishing, often labeled as green open access, is based
in academic libraries
Lots of libraries do have repositories, but its not accurate to say that all (or even most)
archiving is based there. There are plenty of disciplinary repositories, and for-profit ones
like Academia.edu.
the green open-access movement is seeking to convert these repositories into
scholarly publishing operations. The long-term goal of green open access is to
accustom authors to uploading postprints to repositories in the hope that one day
authors will skip scholarly publishers altogether.
Maybe some think this, but I wouldnt call it widespread. Most scholarly publishing in
libraries (that is, journal or monograph publishing) is a separate operation from article
archiving. And no one thinks peer review can be skipped, which seems to be an
implication here.
Despite sometimes onerous mandates, however, many authors are reluctant to submit
their postprints to repositories.
This is unfortunately true, but Beall doesnt mention that many of the onerous
mandates were passed unanimously by the same faculty members who must observe
them, because they became convinced of the benefits of open access to research.
Moreover, the green open-access model mostly eliminates all the value added that
scholarly publishers provide, such as copyediting and long-term digital preservation.
Most OA advocates agree that scholarly publishers provide value- after all, some of
them publish OA journals. But the choice of examples is odd. Im one of many authors
who has had the experience of copy editing actually introducing errors into my carefully
composed article. And in some cases repositories are a better bet for long-term digital
preservation than journals, which can stop publishing without a preservation plan. In
short, the value added that is claimed by many publishers is coming under question,
and rightfully so in my view.
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The low quality of the work often published under the gold and green open-access
models provides startling evidence of the value of high-quality scholarly publishing.
This makes little sense. An archived (green) article can be of the highest quality and
may have been published in one of the prestigious journals Beall venerates. And again,
there are many well regarded open access journals.
When authors become the customers in scholarly communication, those with the least
funds are effectively prevented from participating; there is a bias against the
underfunded.
Subscription journals have never discriminated on the basis of an authors ability to pay
an article-processing charge.
No, they just discriminate against libraries.
Gold open access devalues the role of the consumer in scholarly research Open access
is making readers secondary players in the scholarly communication process.
This is just laughable. Yes, we should feel sorry for all those readers who can freely
access all the peer-reviewed research that their tax dollars likely paid for.
In the next section of his article, Questioning Peer Review and Impact Factors Beall
mostly critiques the doings of predatory publishers, which no one really disputes. But in
criticizing predatory publishers (again unfairly extending his critique to all open access
publishing) he gives subscription publishing a free pass. If you dont think bad
information has appeared in prestigious peer-reviewed subscription journals, try
searching autism and immunization or arsenic life. Bealls reverence for the journal
impact factor isnt supported by any facts (see my post Removing the Journal Impact
Factor from Faculty Evaluation). So predatory publishers using fake journal impact
factors shouldnt be a concern- its a bogus metric to start with. Moreover, Beall fails to
acknowledge that open peer review, in whatever form, would largely solve the problem
of predatory publishing. If a journal claims to do peer review, then lets see it!
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If youre an author from a Western country, the novelty and significance of your
research findings are secondary to your ability to pay an article-processing charge and
get your article in print.
Again- waivers are available and the majority of OA journals dont have fees. Its
interesting that Beall uses words like novelty and significance here, as if unaware of
real problems in peer review caused by these assessments (which are not attributable
to predatory publishing).
Open-access advocates like to invoke the supposed lack of access to research in
underdeveloped countries. But these same advocates fail to mention that numerous
programs exist that provide free access to research, such as Research4Life and the
World Health Organizations Health Internetwork Access to Research Initiative. Open
access actually silences researchers in developing and middle-income countries, who
often cannot afford the author fees required to publish in gold open-access journals.
Once again, OA is not all about fees. Its also odd that so many people from the
developing world are huge open access advocates. Beall fails to mention that the large
publishing companies have a lot of control over which countries get access and which
do not. If they decide that India, for example, can afford to pay, then they dont provide
access. Wider open access would make these programs unnecessary. The main thing
silencing researchers in developing countries is basic access to research, which inhibits
their own research efforts.
the top open-access journals will be the ones that are able to command the highest
article-processing charges from authors. The more prestigious the journal, the more
youll have to pay.
There may be some truth to this, and its a concern I share. However, APCs may be
subject to price competition (an odd omission from someone who is so marketoriented). Beall has identified the biggest problem to my mind, which is journal prestige.
Prestige means that mostly we are paying for lots of articles to be rejected, which are
then published elsewhere. Academia needs to determine whether continuing to do this
is very smart, and whether other sources of research quality or impact might be
available.
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The era of merit in scholarly publishing is ending; the era of money has begun.
Another laugher. Beall must be unaware of his own librarys collections budget, or the
30-40% annual profit made by Elsevier, Wiley, Informa, etc. If he is concerned about
merit (and especially predatory publishing), he ought to be advocating for some form
of open peer review.
Most open-access journals compel authors to sign away intellectual property rights
upon publication, requiring that their content be released under the terms of a very
loose Creative Commons license.
As opposed to subscription journals, most of which which compel authors to transfer
their copyright?
Many open access journals allow authors to retain copyright.
permission. They can create translations and adaptations, and they can reprint your
work wherever they want, including in places that might offend you.
that might happen .001% of the time. And because of the ever-so-slight chance
someone might make money from your work, or it might be posted to a site you dont
agree with, we shouldnt share research? This blog is licensed CC BY, and I dont care if
either of those things happen. Whats not logical is for these largely unfounded fears to
lead us back to paywalls and all-rights-reserved copyright.
communication
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This article initially published on https://blogs.lt.vt.edu/openvt/2015/05/19/a-responseto-jeffrey-bealls-critique-of-open-access/
Predatory Blogger: Jeffrey Beal
Bealls position as tenuous: Imperfect English or a predominantly non-Western

editorial board does not make a journal predatory
Jeffrey Beall, a librarian at the University of Colorado-Denver, who curates a blacklist of
potential, possible, or probable predatory OA publishers and journals. Bealls list has
become a go-to tool and has even been featured in New York Times but it is not the
final word on predatory publishing, partially because Beall himself has a complicated,
and not entirely supportive, attitude toward OA in general.
In 2014, Walt Crawford took Beall to task in an article called Ethics and Access 1: The
Sad Case of Jeffrey Beall. Crawford criticizes Beall for not contextualizing predatory or
low-quality publishing as a phenomenon that predates OA and is not exclusive to OA
journals
He also points out that Beall favors toll-access publishers, specifically Elsevier, praising
its consistent high quality. However, a simple Google search for fake Elsevier journals
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reveals Bealls position as tenuous. Furthermore, Beall conflates OA journals with

author pays journals, and reveals his skepticism, if not hostility, about OA.
Politics aside, Bealls laser-like focus on predatory publishers may prevent him from
having a broader perspective on scholarly communication. Case in point: Beall has
blithely declared the serials crisis to be over, but those of us who manage resources
beg to differ.
Another concerning aspect of Bealls work is his evaluation of OA publishers from less
economically developed countries. Crawford, Karen Coyle, and Jill Emery have all noted
Bealls bias against these publishers. Imperfect English or a predominantly non-Western
editorial board does not make a journal predatory. An interesting example is Hindawi,
an Egyptian publisher once considered predatory that improved its practices and
standards over time. If we accept that there is a continuum from devious and duplicitous
to simply low-quality and amateurish, then it is likely, as Crawford believes, that some
of the publishers on Bealls list are not actually predatory.
Although Bealls contributions are arguably compromised by his attitudes about OA,
the criteria he uses for his list are an excellent starting point for thinking about the
hallmarks of predatory publishers and journals. He encourages thorough analysis,
including scrutiny of editorial boards and business practices. Some of his red flags
provide a lot of bang for your buck in that they are both easy to spot and likely to
indicate a predatory operation. These include editors or editorial board members with
no or fake academic affiliations, lack of clarity about fees, publisher names and journal
titles with geographic terms that have no connection to the publishers physical location
or journals geographic scope, bogus impact factor claims and invented metrics, and
false claims about where the journal is indexed.
Beall also lists common practices indicative of low-quality but not necessarily predatory
journals. He is rightfully wary of journals that solicit manuscripts by spamming
researchers, as established publishers generally do not approach scholars, as well as
publishers or editors with email addresses from Gmail, Yahoo, etc. Also, he wisely warns
researchers away from journals with bizarrely broad or disjointed scopes and journals
that boast extremely rapid publication, which usually suggests no or only cursory peer
review.
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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. The central player in the
whitelisting movement is the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ).
In response to the Bohannon sting, DOAJ removed 114 journals and revamped its
criteria for inclusion. Journals accepted into DOAJ after March 2014 under the stricter
rules are marked with a green tick symbol, and DOAJ has announced that it will require
the remaining 99% of its listed journals to reapply for acceptance.
At the basic level, a journal must be chiefly scholarly; make the content immediately
available (i.e., no embargoes); provide quality control through an editor, editorial board,
and peer review; have a registered International Standard Serial Number (ISSN); and
exercise transparency about APCs. Journals that meet additional requirements, such as
providing external archiving and creating persistent links, are recognized with the DOAJ
Seal. DOAJ receives an assist from the ISSN Centre, which in 2014 added language
reserving the right to deny ISSNs to publishers that provide misleading information.
An organization that whitelists publishers by accepting them as members is the Open
Access Scholarly Publishers Association (OASPA). Members must apply and pledge to
adhere to a code of conduct that disallows any form of predatory be-havior. OASPA
has made errors in vetting applicants, though: it admitted some publishers that it later
had to reject (e.g., Dove Medical Press).
Of course, no blacklist or whitelist can substitute for head-on investigation of a journal.
Open Access Journal Quality Indicators, a rubric by Sarah Beaubien and Max Eckard
featuring both positive and negative journal characteristics, can help researchers
perform such evaluation. Furthermore, any tool or practice that gives researchers more
information is a boon. For example, altmetrics provide a broad picture of an articles
impact (not necessarily correlated to its quality), and open peer reviewi.e., any form
of peer review where the reviewers identity is not hiddenincreases transparency and
allows journals to demonstrate their standards.
This article initially published on
http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2015/03/18/beyond-bealls-list-predatorypublishers/
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Beall not served as an editor in any reputable journal but criticize all journal
at his vicinity
Initially published on
https://jeffreybeallbogus.wordpress.com/2013/11/13/jeffreybeallbogus/commentpage-1/#comment-6
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Beall is absolutely insane

The Open-Access Movement is Not Really about Open Access Thats the title of Jeffrey
Bealls contribution to a special OA section of non-refereed articles in triple C:
communication, capitalism & critique (11:2). It may be worth noting that this journal
(which includes both peer reviewed articles and other stuff, all of it clearly labeled) is,
ahem, a gold OA journal albeit one that (as with most gold OA journals) does not
charge article processing fees. If that fairly startling title isnt enough, heres the abstract
in full: "While the open-access (OA) movement purports to be about making scholarly
content open-access, its true motives are much different. The OA movement is an anticorporatist movement that wants to deny the freedom of the press to companies it
disagrees with.
The movement is also actively imposing onerous mandates on researchers, mandates
that restrict individual freedom. To boost the open-access movement, its leaders
sacrifice the academic futures of young scholars and those from developing countries,
pressuring them to publish in lower quality open-access journals. The open-access
movement has fostered the creation of numerous predatory publishers and standalone
journals, increasing the amount of research misconduct in scholarly publications and
the amount of pseudo-science that is published as if it were authentic science."
Say what? First theres the odd suggestion that there is one thing called the OA
movement. Then theres the suggestion that the OA movementnot the NIH and
Congress, not university facultiesis somehow imposing onerous mandates. Since
the article is itself OA, you can download the PDF and read it yourself. Its pretty
astonishing, and I hesitate to quote much of it because I dont want to be confused with
The Opinion. Consider this blanket claim about (all?) OA advocates: OA advocates
want to make collective everything and eliminate private business, except for small
businesses owned by the disadvantaged. While Ive called myself an OA independent,
by Bealls lights I am doubtless an advocateand have been involved for 24 years, far
longer than hes been critiquing. My interest in general collectivizing and eliminating
large private businesses is nonexistent, which I strongly suspect is true for most OA
advocates. We are also told, The open-access movement is a negative movement
rather than a positive one. It is more a movement against something than it is a
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movement for something. Thats also nonsense: it is a movement for access to scholarly
research. We also hear that the gold open-access model actually incentivizes
corruption. Oddly enough, given that Big Deals generally trap libraries into maintaining
subscriptions to journals they would otherwise cancel, Beall claims just the opposite:
Publishers always had to keep their subscribers happy or they would cancel. He takes
a swipe at the Semantic Web (which he says is dying a slow death) for reasons that I
cant fathom, except that it allows him to call OA the Semantic Web of scholarly
communications.
Ill quote another bit herebut with the prefatory information, admittedly repetitious,
that a higher percentage of subscription journals charge author- side fees, typically
called page charges, than the percentage of OA journals that charge article processing
charges. Thats important, given this: Money, a source of corruption, was absent from
the author-publisher relationship (except in the rare case of reasonable page charges
levied on authors publishing with non-profit learned societies) in the traditional
publishing model. Ask scholars about those reasonable page charges and how theyre
only levied by non-profit societies sometime. You may get an earful. Beall claims that
only a few publishers employ the gold OA model ethicallyand that most of those
are cutting corners and lowering standards. Hes gone beyond raising alarms about
predatory publishers to general condemnation of gold OA (published in a gold OA
journal). I confess to not going through the whole nine page article carefully; I lacked
the stamina to deal with it. Rather than doing my own fisking of an article that appears
to deserve paragraph-by paragraph refutation, Ill turn to other commentaries The issue
must have appeared in late November or early December 2013; the reactions mostly
appeared in mid-December.
This article initially published on Crawford W. (2014). Ethics and Access 1: The Sad Case
of Jeffrey Beall. Cites and Insights, 14:(04), 1-22
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Open access journal publisher MDPI, which drew criticism earlier this year
after publishing a paper that Discover Magazine described as pseudoscience,
has been added to Jeffrey Bealls list of predatory publishers.
Beall is a metadata librarian at the University of Colorado at Denver, but is primarily
known for his blog Scholarly Open Access, where he keeps a running list of more than
250 open access journals he deems questionable or misleading.
Many open access journals rely on article processing charges to cover the costs of
publication and review because the content itself is free and open to the public.
As a result, some dubious publishers are created with the sole intention of making
money off of those fees, taking advantage of academics who have struggled to get
their work published elsewhere.
While most of the publishers listed as potential, possible, or probable predatory on
Bealls List are fringe or more obviously deceptive publications, MDPI is a well-known
entity.
Based in China and Switzerland, it publishes more than 130 peer-reviewed scientific
journals, and advertises that it has ten Nobel Prize laureates on its journals editorial
boards, as well as Peter Suber, a leader in the open access movement and director of
the Harvard Open Access project.
It has released all of its articles under a Creative Commons license since 2008 through
its online open access platform MDPI.com.
Itll be one of the largest publishers on my list, Beall said. A few of its journals have
impact factors. The owner is becoming an increasingly popular and controversial figure
himself and is making many enemies.
Its those enemies that MDPI believes is the reason it is being included on Bealls List,
however.
Shu-Kun Lin, president of MDPI, said the publishers sponsoring of the Scientific Spirit
Prize in China, awarded by an organization called New Threads, has led to an organized
defamation attempt by those who oppose New Threads chair, Shi-min Fang.
Fang is well-known for his attempts at discrediting pseudoscience and academic
fraud in China.
A forum post that Beall uses as his primary ammunition on the blog was posted by one
of those enemies, said MDPIs chief executive officer, Dietrich Rordorf, who added that
he was astonished by the publishers inclusion on the list.
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The owners of the mentioned Chinese Internet forum have reasons to discredit and
publish allegations against MDPI to punish MDPI for its sponsoring of the Scientific
Spirit Prize in China, Rordorf said.
Bealls reasons for including MDPI on his list range from its publishing of controversial
papers a decision the publisher has defended in the interest of the scientific
communication process to accusations that the Nobel laureates serving on its
editorial boards are not even aware they are listed as board members.
Rordorf said that editorial members are only added with their permission and can
contact us to be removed at any time. Some members of the boards do indeed list
their role at MDPI on their official CVs, and at least two members confirmed their
involvement to eCampus News.
Suber said he accepted MDPIs invitation to serve on an editorial board, in part, because
the late Francis Muguet, a french chemist and staunch supporter of open access, was
an associate editor at MDPI Center Basel, a precursor to the publisher in its current form.
I still regard him as the most dedicated activist who has ever worked on the difficult
front of trying to persuade the UN to support OA, Suber said. Im now looking further
into MDPI, and will decide whether to continue on the board based on what I find.
Bealls work is often described as a valuable resource, but his motivations for the blog
have recently come under criticism from open access advocates. In an article
published in the journaltripleC, Beall declared the open access movement as a negative
and socialistic one meant to kill off for-profit publishers.
Beall is still frequently consulted by worried academics that are wary of being scammed,
and being added to his list is a dreaded occurrence among open access publishers.
He and his blog have been featured in The New York Times, Nature, and The Chronicle
of Higher Education. Last year, OMICs, an Indian publisher Beall added to the
list, threatened to sue the librarian for $1 billion.
Further making MDPI a rare inclusion on the list, Beall once published a paper in a MDPI
journal.
Before he became known for his valuable list of predatory publishers, he submitted
an article to the journal Future Internet, which was published after peer-review, Rordorf
said in an email. As in many cases (more than 30% of our articles), Mr. Beall was not
asked to pay publishing fees for his paper.
Rordorf said, until this week, the publisher had never received a complaint from Beall
regarding its editorial process, but Beall said he now regrets publishing with MDPI.
79
I think its fair to classify MDPI as a questionable publisher, and as such, it belongs on
my list, he wrote on his blog. I recommend that all scholars not submit papers to this
publisher. In the long run, publishing a paper with MDPI will turn out to be a bad
personal decision for most authors.
In an eMail to Beall, Shu-Kun Lin described the blog post as crazy, and said he would
be contacting the librarians supervisors at the University of Colorado.
Many of the allegations are totally silly, Rordorf said.
Predatory librarian Beall has no credibility

As a bystander, I found Mr Beall's website a few days
ago and paid close attention to what he wrote about
MDPI. I also checked up some facts on my own, and
posted a few comments. My comments went through
initially. When I checked again today, I noticed that all
my comments are gone. I can only assume that Mr Beall
deleted them.
80
Beall negotiated the ransom with open access publisher to remove from hit
list for 160,000 USD, not by bank account, but in cash in a place in New York
Predatory blogger Beall, collects the money to accounts in Choice Bank in
Belize or to Loyal Bank in St. Vincent
My name is Lu Chen and I work in SCIRP www.scirp.org as Web Designer. Also, I help
SCIRP conferences as Secretariat from time to time. I contact this criminal Jeffrey Beall
and I asked him to remove SCIRP from his black list.
Jeffrey Beal asked my Phone Number and I gave it. Jeffrey Beal call me back and told
me that he could help SCIRP, but SCIRP must also help him.I was astonished when he
told me that he could remove SCIRP from his black list provided that we would give
him 160,000 USD not by bank account, but in cash in a place in New York.
I told him that it is very difficult to travel from China (Headquarters of SCIRP) to New
York to deliver him the money and then he told me to deposit them to some accounts
in Choice Bank in Belize or to Loyal Bank in St. Vincent
This is Jeffrey Beall.
This is the bait, because the Academic Community must believe that Jeffrey Beall is a
reliable person. What a Scam!
81
But he also includes RESPECTABLE and REPUTABLE Publishers, like SCIRP, IARIA, IDOSI,
HINDAWI and then he asks money from them to take them off.
From us (SCIRP) he asked 160,000 and told us to deposit them to some accounts in
Choice Bank in Belize or to Loyal Bank in St. Vincent
He estimates the profit of each publishing House per year and then he creates a tariff
for your Publishing House. From the small Publishing Companies he does not ask
money. They are his bait. So, suppose that he has 500 Publishing Houses in his black
list, he will ask money only from the top 50.
Hindawi paid (in my opinion more than 1,000,000 USD to Jeffrey Beall and now Hindawi
enjoy to be a Beall's-List-free company.
I tell you the truth, and only the truth. Jeffrey Beal is a real ROBBER, with a luxurious life
style and bank accounts in Caribbean Islands.
Contact the American Authorities now and inform them that this Criminal gathers
money to the Choice Bank in Belize or to Loyal Bank in St. Vincent.
Tax Evation and money laundry from criminal activities!!! What else!!!
Lu Chen
The article initially published on http://iaria-highsci.blogspot.ca/2014/01/jeffrey-beallblack-listed-hindawi-and.html
Writing a blog that slanders everyone not considered as scientific research

Does the University of Denver pay you a salary, Mr. Jeffrey Beall, or do you pay the
University to let you bear the title of Assistant Professor?
A title that you really do not deserve, as you have no Ph.D., no actual research work
and do no teaching whatsoever. It is a shame for the University of Denver to have
professors like you, Jeffrey Beall.
Or is running a blog that slanders everyone and everything considered scientific
research?
82
It most certainly is not, Mr. Jeffrey Beall.

Could it be, however, an applied money-making project for you and your university,
Mr. Jeffrey Beall?
(By the way, why should a small publishing house from some place in India, which
cannot attract papers, nor editorial board members, from western universities, be in
your black list Mr. Jeffrey Beall? In this case, you should also black list all non-US and
non-European universities. Of course there exist first-rate universities, like Harvard, MIT,
Berkeley, Cambridge. Should all other universities be in a black list? Is this your logic
Professor Beall? Furthermore, you condemn any new publishing house, as it is natural
for them to not have papers and not be indexed as soon as they launch, but has to deal
with you, who, like a vulture, immediately includes them in your black list for those
reasons.)
I would greatly appreciate your response, Mr. Jeffrey Beal. And I would also appreciate
feedback from anyone who agrees with me. My email is: profnicolabellomo@gmail.com
My aim is to create a network of true scientists and expose Professor, Academic
Teacher and, above all, Researcher Jeffrey Beall (this science jack-of-all-trades, who
doesnt know a first-degree algebraic equation, derivatives, integrals, elementary
Physics and Chemistry laws, etc)
Thank you
Nicola Bellomo
profnicolabellomo@gmail.com
Pseudo-scholar Jeffrey Beall is a thug

Demanded ransom US$ 100,000 to re-analyze open access publisher
My name is Petre Dini and I am the President of IARIA, www.iaria.org
I am also victim of Jeffrey Beall
Actually, this pseudo-scholar Jeffrey Beall is a thug. He uses black lists to create profit.
Also he is involved in tax evation and money laundry.
83
I asked him several times to remove IARIA from his black list and he promised me to
re-analyze the site www.iaria.org
There is not any real reason to have our institute IARIA in his pseudo-list.
The cost to re-analyze the portal of my organization www.iaria.org was 100,000 USD,
Exactly "re-analyze" was the verb that he used in our phone conversation. Why reanalyze? Who is he that analyzes or re-analyzes Academic organizations?
What are his qualifications. I am professor in Electrical Engineering with many
publications (in IARIA and outside IARIA). Who is this pseudo-professor - money hungry
thug?
Anyway, Jeffrey Beall gave us two accounts in Tax Heaven Countries: One account in a
Bank of St. Vincent and another account in Belize.
We do not pay 100,000 USD for IARIA and so IARIA is still now in his list.
I estimate that Hindawi has paid to pseudo-professor Jeffrey Beall something like
1500000 (1 million and half) $
Somebody must report Jeffrey Beall' activities in American Authorities.
Thanks
Petre Dini
Initially published on http://publishopenaccess.blogspot.ca/2012/01/bealls-list-ofpredatory-open-access.html
Open Access Publishing - USD 5000 is enough to remove your publisher's

name from Beall's list
Pressbox (Press Release) - I was surprised when one of our editors told me that the
name of Ashdin Publishing is found in the list of "Beall's List: Potential, possible, or
probable
predatory
scholarly
open-access
publishers"
(http://scholarlyoa.com/publishers/) and I was surprised because of the following
reasons:
84
The author did not just mention the criteria for determining predatory open-access
publishers, but he insisted on mentioning the full names and details of the publishers
as well.
Some of these criteria, for determining predatory open-access publishers, can be
applied on a huge number of publishers (include some of the large and famous ones),
but he did not mention any of them.
Some of the publishers names are removed from this list without saying the reasons for
this removal.
After I received the e-mail below, I am not any more surprised. Now, I am sure that the
author, irrespective the good reasons he may has for preparing this list, wants to
blackmail small publishers to pay him.
I invite all of you to read what people say commenting on his article
(http://www.nature.com/news/predatory-publishers-are-corrupting-open-access1.11385)
Nature is removed and constantly the few negative posts against Beals article.
http://www.nature.com/news/report?article=1.11385&comment=52626
Dr Gillian Dooley (Special Collections Librarian at Flinders University):
fruitfully these issues. His blog has become useless.
Mark Robinson (Acting Editor, Stanford Magazine):
85
business model.
Now, I invite all of you in order to take all precautions and not being misled by this
blackmailer.
Ashry A. Aly
Director
Ashdin Publishing
86
Jeffrey Beall : Potential, probable, predatory blogger
We are not wrong to say that Jeffrey Beall is publishing bluffing on his website. He has written our
company name on his website. We ask him that why you have written our company name on your
website he said if I though I do. We ask him to remove our name instead of that he has written a
note on his website he is just trying to create problems for upcoming journals We had also sent
one of the recent review report on his mail id and ask him that please give your guideline on what
basis you write our companys name but he do not have any genuine reason for the same.
He doesnt want us to start such service or he may be supported by other who do not
want journals club in this service area.
We would like to update you that we are also not bound with this service only. We are
also working to serve academic people for indexing, editing & plagiarism in the
future. Jeffery Beall does not have any documentation for writing any journal name on
his website. He also dont have guideline to remove journal name from his website. We
try a lot, but he just said if I thought fit I will write and last but not list A librarian cannot
judge a journal until he has good documentation for that. Some international people
only emphasis on English language to create the value for themselves, but what we
believe is that peer review process is the only important technical aspects to publish a
technical documents online.
87
Beall's another extortion effort exposed

It was always interesting how people are getting to gather to earn money may be by
using direct method or maybe by using an indirect method like this. We got the
following two mails saying that we will help you for proof reading services. Akim John
also claims, says that I think, I will be able to contact Jeffrey Beall and request the
removal of Journal Clubs & Co. From his list.
Beall's agent email sent to the publisher
88
Beall has no formal training in doing self-guided research.

Bealls has never obtained formal training in doing self-guided research. He is doing his
research as an autodidact. Based on his article in tripleC (Beal 2013) Bivens-Tatum
(2014)proved that Beal is not capable (or willing) of logical conclusions. His criteria to
assess publishers are questionable. Beall does not specify how his criteria are applied
to come to a verdict about a publisher. His own application of his criteria with respect
to publishers is non-existent (or hidden).
His verdict predatory is libel for the vast majority of publishers on his list who are not
guilty of criminal activities. At the same time Beall is mocking also all hard working
authors, reviewers, editors, and staff of all decent publishers on his list.
Publishers have a responsibility to protect the reputation of their authors, reviewers,
editors, and staff. A lawsuit against Beall will be complicated, lengthy, and costly. He will
point to the Freedom of Speech. Although defamation is not covered by Freedom of
Speech, Beall will probably get away with his insertion potential, possible, or probable
before predatory scholarly open-access publishers.
For reasons as given above, SCIRP is asking all academics at universities, in research
labs, in industry, and in scholarly publishing to stick to these rules:
Do not refer to Bealls blacklisting criteria. Instead refer to the whitelisting criteria
established by DOAJ, OASPA, COPE, and WAME
Do not refer to Bealls blacklist of publishers and journals. Be patient and wait for DOAJs
whitelist. In the mean time look at the whitelisting criteria and decide for yourself.
Conclusions from OASPA Membership Committee Investigation into MDPI

It came to our attention last month that the status of MDPI as a genuine open access
publisher has recently been questioned. OASPA takes such concerns very seriously and
adherence
to
the
membership
criteria
(http://oaspa.org/membership/membership-criteria/) is essential for all of our
members and new applicants.
89
The OASPA Membership Committee has carried out a detailed investigation into the
issues that were raised (http://scholarlyoa.com/2014/02/18/chinese-publishner-
mdpi-added-to-list-of-questionable-publishers/).
The review focussed on the following:
Controversy
surrounding
a
paper
published
in
the
journal Life (http://www.mdpi.com/2075-1729/2/1/1)
Controversy
surrounding
a
paper
published
in
the
journal Nutrients (http://www.mdpi.com/2072-6643/3/4/491)
Nobel Prize Winners listed on the website
The role of Editorial Board Members
The role of Dr. Lin within the company
The functions of the different office locations
Investigations have encompassed review of internal correspondence at MDPI, detailed
information on the handling of peer-review, decision making and reviewer reports, plus
external comments, blogs and websites. Based on our findings we feel satisfied that
MDPI continue to meet the OASPA Membership Criteria.
MDPI have been extremely cooperative throughout this process and have shared many
documents and evidence of correspondence with the OASPA Membership
Committee. We are grateful for their openness during this period.
Jeffrey Beall is an impostor and academic criminal - Dr. Clement

I recently forwarded an email to him from this Publisher: xyz
Actually this publisher is spamming me everyday and promise rapid publication of my
papers to its conferences and journals. Also, instead of conference proceedings, they
push all the papers from the conferences to their journals which is unacceptable.
I explained to Jeffrey Beall that according his own criteria, a journal that can publish
everything from every science and every
scientific field, with a publication fee 500 1000 USD must be predatory, because for the same reason, Jeffrey Beall classified as
predatory publishers many other honest and legitimate publishers.
I told to Jeffrey Beall
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"The problem is that they promise automatic publication in their journals, if you attend
their conference. See this SPAM So, I believe that this: XYZ is a predatory publisher
because of their aggressive spam and because of their promises for automatic
publication of whatever to receive to their Journals"
I sent real proofs to Jeffrey Beall
But Jeffrey Beall refused and still refuses to add xyz to his black list.
The reply of Jeffrey Beall was funny and ridiculous.
"I understand. I think this case is borderline. I would like to monitor this publisher some
more before making any decision. Please send me any additional information if possible.
Thank you,
Jeffrey Beall"
Jeffrey Beall obviously received his kickback from the xyz and did not classify them as
Predatory.
What a Shame Jeffrey Beall. To destroy honest and legitimate publishers and to
promote vanity press for revenue in your offshore accounts!
I have all the emails (with headers, IP addresses etc)
Send an email to me: dr.amclement@gmail.com
Appendix I: The Headers of my first email communication with the Impostor Jeffrey Beall
Delivered-To: dr.amclement@gmail.com
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From: "Beall, Jeffrey" <Jeffrey.Beall@ucdenver.edu>
To: A Clement <dr.amclement@gmail.com>
Date: Fri, 17 Jan 2014 19:57:51 -0700
Return-Path: Jeffrey.Beall@ucdenver.edu
--_000_64DB27005E2FD3439E88502D7A5C9121011341A7A4FACORTEZucden_
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I understand. I think this case is borderline. I would like to monitor this=
publisher some more before making any decision. Please send me any additio=
nal information if possible.
92
Thank you,
Jeffrey Beall
From: A Clement [mailto:dr.amclement@gmail.com]
Sent: Wednesday, January 15, 2014 12:12 PM
To: Beall, Jeffrey
Subject: The problem is that they promise automatic publication in their jo=
urnals, if you attend their conference. See this SPAM
Dear Jeff
The problem is that they promise automatic publication in their journals, i=
f you attend their conference.
So, I believe that this: xyz is a predatory publisher
> I don't think this is a predatory publisher. I don't see any major proble=
ms.
> Thanks,
>
> Jeffrey Beall
> From: A Clement [mailto:dr.amclement@gmail.com<mailto:dr.amclement@gmail.=
com>]
> Sent: Friday, January 10, 2014 10:33 AM
> To: Beall, Jeffrey
> Subject: What is your opinion for this predatory publisher
> Dear Jeff
>
> What is your opinion for this predatory publishe
>
93
> Thanks
> A M Clement
Appendix 11- Headers e-mail communication with Jeffrey Beall
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From: "Beall, Jeffrey" <Jeffrey.Beall@ucdenver.edu>

To: A Clement <dr.amclement@gmail.com>
94
Date: Wed, 15 Jan 2014 08:59:56 -0700

Subject: RE: What is your opinion for this predatory publisher
Thread-Topic: What is your opinion for this predatory publisher
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Dr. Clement,
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I just looked at the xyz. I find the sound annoying, but I don't want to add this journal
to my list at this time either. I found some small problems, but not enough to classify it
as predatory.
If you think I am mistaken, please let me know.
Thanks,
Jeffrey Beall
The Wheels Come Off the Beall express Beall's first sentence may qualify as
not even wrong"
The story picks up from there.
The Serials Crisis is Over.
That absurd title heads this May 7, 2013 post by Beall at Scholarly Open Access; just
below it is a silly image of a locked version of the OA open-lock with smart quotes
around it. Huh? "I declare that the serials crisis, the event that gave birth to the openaccess movement, is over. I base my declaration on my observations as an academic
librarian and on the scholarly literature, selections from which I include here:
That first sentence may qualify as not even wrong. Bealls evidence that the serials
crisis gave birth to the open-access movement? I guess because Beall says so. Just to
be clear: If all scholarly journal publishers agreed that, for every academic library in the
world, the total cost for all scholarly journals would be, say, 20% of the library budget
(which would be much lower than what most medium-sized and larger academic
libraries spend now), that would not eliminate the need for OA. Just for starters, it would
not provide any access to me or any other researcher or layman whos not affiliated
with an academic institution.
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In any case, thats not likely to happen, and the serials crisis is only over to the extent
that academic libraries are being slowly bled to death by journal costs rather than being
rapidly bled to death. Price increases are still much higher than inflation; even Harvard
cant afford all the journals theyd like to have. The rest of the post consists of Bealls
evidence for the serials crisis being over. What evidence?
Lets see:
The first is an assertion within a report (not in any sense part of the scholarly
literature) to the International Association of Scientific, Technical and Medical
Publishersa trade group that wants to believe the crisis is over.
The second, which is peer-reviewed, claims that the serials crisis may not be as
acute as some have suggested and that most academics are clearly operating
productively under the existing methods of scholarly communication.
(The article itself is behind a paywallbut in any case the excerpt only argues that the
crisis within academia is less severe than some claim. Its also pretty limited, based on
eight New Zealand universities.)
The third is, astonishingly, excerpted from an interview with Derk Haank, at the
time CEO of Springer and formerly chair of Elsevier Science. Is it any surprise that Haank
says the crisis is over?
The fourth is apparently a peer-reviewed article and the excerpt says ARL
librariesthe ones most able to handle serials price increases get a lot more serials
(not necessarily journals) now than they did in 1989-1990. (Specifically, the asserted
median has gone from 21,187 to 80,292.) How this establishes that the serials crisis is
over for all academic libraries or that open access is less necessary? It doesnt. It says
that the Big Deal increased the number of available journals; it says nothing about
affordability or about access beyond ARL libraries. (Just as a reality check, I looked at
FY2010 figures for Carnegie Classification 15, which appears to encompass what used
to be Research I and II and includes 151 reporting institutions: its not quite the same set
as ARL. The median number of serials is 59,942; 48 of them have 80,292 or more, and
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that 48th institution is precisely 80,292. If youre wondering, the median number of
serials for Carnegie Classification 16, what used to be Doctoral I and II, is 12,739 serials.)
The fifth? Eureka: this one does specifically say that the Big Deals essentially resolved
the serials crisis by 2004. Its behind a paywall. Its a short communication, not a
scholarly article, appearing in Learned Publishing (when I had a full article in that
publication, it was not peer-reviewed). Oh, and its by Jeffrey Beallthe piece appears
to be another attack on gold OA. So his one solid piece of evidence isquoting himself.
Go through that list again. I dont know about you, but it strikes me as remarkably thin.
The first comment, by Steve Hitchcock, is interesting as it accepts the quotes at face
value (which Im not prepared to do for either Haank or Beall): You make two assertions
in your opening sentence: 1 there was a serials crisis, 2 this led to open access.
Your selective quotes do not show either, so it is hard to justify your headline point on
this evidence. What your quotes may show, however, is that the serials crisis was about
journals pricing, and the Big Deal was a response to that. But the Big Deal is not open
access, and the case for open access is not over.
As for the first assertion, in a way its true: there never was a serials crisis, there were
and are many serials (primarily journals) crises affecting different segments of
academia in different ways. The next comment, by Pierre de Villiers, makes another
interesting point (although I partly disagree with the first sentence, which offers too
narrow a case for OA):
The main case for open access is free access to public- funded research. The big deal
does not solve that, and actually worsen the situation by consuming library budgets in
favour of those big deal-publishers, excluding journals from smaller publishers. I also
doubt the statement that the farabove- inflation in serial subscriptions came to an end.
Is this supported by evidence?
Beall responds to the question with a non-answer: Please see quotation number 4,
which shows that libraries pay a lot less per journal title than they did in the past.
Actually, the quotation doesnt say that at all. It says the median ARL library, not in any
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way typical of all academic libraries, gets four times as many serials (most of them,
presumably, not refereed scholarly journals) as it did a decade earlier. It says nothing
about how much that library paid. Across extensive doctoral institutions, a somewhat
larger group of libraries, the median library also spent 51% more on serials in 2010 than
in 2000 after adjusting for inflation, which pretty much answers Villiers question. (For
all academic libraries taken as a group and not adjusting for inflation, 2010 serials
spending was considerably more than twice the level of 2000 spendingand close to
65% higher after inflation. If you want to see a truly gulp-inducing graph, consider ARLs
Expenditure Trends in ARL Libraries, 1986-2011 with its 402% increase in serials
expenditures.)
Dr. Gunn offers a quick snark questioning the assertion that academics are doing just
fineand Andrew Miller basically says thats true, quoting yet another publisher
association reportand admitting that hes an Elsevier publisher, perhaps not a wholly
disinterested party. Mike Taylor takes the light approach:
Jeffrey, was this post a satire? If so, of what? Sorry if I am being dense, I just dont get
it.
To which Beall responds by basically repeating his absurd assertion. Karen Coyle chose
to point to my book The Big Deal and the Damage Done, which came about partly
because of other claims that the Big Deal had solved the serials crisis, and says my
analysis suggests Beall is wrong. His response? I think youve got it backwards. He
should have read the sources I cite first.
To which I felt a need to respond: I had in fact read most of the sources you cite. The
suggestion that quotable sources, mostly publishingrelated, count for more than the
actual facts is an amusing one, but I think Ill go with the real world for now. (Also, as
has been said before, the serials crisis is neither the only nor the primary reason for OA.)
In fairnessand because its a nice touchI should quote Vinz Clorthos response to
my comment:
Jeffreys sources are better. He said so.
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Which is, in essence, what Bealls trainwreck of a post boils down to: Bealls right because
Beall says so. And has mostly Beall and publishing industry assertions to back him up.
Well, and eight New Zealand universities.
The comments for this post served as an interesting set of revelations into Bealls mind
and methods. Joe Kraus points out that unaffiliated scholars and others (and those not
affiliated with the very largest institutions) would not agree that the serials crisis was
over, and cites others who also would not agreeincluding students at his well funded
private university library in south Denver who dont have access to some journals
because even Krauss library cant afford it. Bealls response? Go for the jugular:
So, let me check my understanding, the University of Denver, which charges
outrageously high tuition, especially in its mediocre library school, is worried about
people who dont have access to some scholarly publications? If DU is so worried about
access, then it ought to lower its tuition. Also, DU just completed a 35 million dollar
renovation of its library and you whine about not being able to afford a couple fourthousand dollar journal titles? This doesnt add up.
Whew. Extent to which this is in any way a refutation of what Kraus says: Zero. Extent to
which this is pure ad hominem on an institutional level.well, read it yourself. Kraus
agrees this doesnt add up:
Crawford, W. (2014). Sad case of Jeffrey Beall. Cites and insights, 14 (4).

Jeffrey Beall came to prominence because of Bealls List, which set out to document the
existence of what Beall termed predatory publishers. Without addressing the question
of whether Beall was right 100% of the time, I thought he was doing a good thing. There
are inherent structural problems with Gold Open Access and sooner or later
unscrupulous people were going to exploit them. Beall offered himself as the cop on
the beat and helped to make ours a safer neighborhood. Kudos to him.
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Since I first became aware of Bealls List, however, I have been following some of Bealls
work with growing unease. Here and there some (to me) distasteful political ideology
peeked through (with my pragmatic mindset, any kind of ideology makes me queasy),
but you dont have to agree with somebody all the time to agree with them some of
the time. But now, in a recent screed, he has crossed the line. While I continue to
admire Bealls List, the broader critique (really an assault) of Gold OA and those who
advocate it is too strong for me. Sorry, Jeffrey, but Im not with you on this.
So what is that Beall is expounding? The following comes from the conclusion to his
essay:
The open-access movement isnt really about open access. Instead, it is about
collectivizing production and denying the freedom of the press from those who prefer the
subscription model of scholarly publishing.
Its the English major in me who notes the odd disconnect between the content of these
two sentences and the rhetoric. We are talking about a way of publishing academic
articlesnot the stuff of a revolutionary, or counter-revolutionary, movement; as my kids
would say, Bor-ing! But someone is invoking one of the Big Principles, denying the
freedom of the press. If the word collectivizing went by you, slow down and read
again. Yes, the OA movement is out to deny life, liberty, and the pursuit of
happiness. All this blather about open access is the work of a bunch of commies who
have taken over the university. I am not making this up.
At the heart of Bealls argument is that The OA movement is an anti-corporatist
movement. (Perhaps you are reaching for your dictionary, as I did, and have
concluded that Beall really means anti-corporation.) No doubt there is some truth to
this; you can find strong feelings against corporate America just about everywhere and
maybe with greater frequency in the academy. But not every OA advocate is singing
Jefferson Airplanes We Can Be Together (Tear down the walls *&%$#*&). There
are extremists among those supporting OA, but there are also moderates and even
conservatives who speculate about the social benefit of openly available research
material. They may all be wrong, but the charge of collectivization, especially in a
country that is only beginning to awaken from the nightmare of the Cold War, is a
naked appeal to emotion, and not the best of emotions. Lets dial this back a bit.
Bealls error is a common one, and that is to characterize a group by its most extreme
elements. This is an old and easy rhetorical trick; read the columns of David Brooks in
the Times, for example, or the highly entertaining, but over-the-top essays of Evgeny
101
Morozov. What this does is enforce an excluded middle, an us-against-them frame of

mind.
A good part of my disappointment in Bealls latest is that much of what he says seems
to me to be correct, but simply overstated and stuffed inside a political wrapper. There
are in fact predatory publishers, and Gold OA is more likely to produce them than will
traditional publishing. The traditional form of peer review seems to me to be superior
to the methodology-only policy of PLoS ONE. The economics of Gold OA shuts out
some researchers. The measure of the value of research is its value to other
researchers, not the general public. And citations are the coin of the realm, which are
captured in journal impact factor, not in altmetrics. In opposing Bealls argument, I am
not opposing all of it. But his outrage clouds his judgment and expression and
undermines his best arguments.
Surely there must be a way to talk about scholarly communications without having
MSNBC on one side and Fox News on the other, something more reflective than a
broken dialogue between Stevan Harnadand Jeffrey Beall. I have to pinch myself and
remember: this is scientific publishing we are talking about.
Jeffrey Beall: Predatory Blogger
Another failed attempt to collect ransom: Beall goes beyond ridiculous

Beall is a clown, suitable for only the merry-go-round at the Colorado carnival. A recent
article posted (January 29, 2015) on his blog revealed his real motive behind criticizing
others work. Beall is now, not only criticizing journals, but also conferences and their
locations. If the conference location is in a popular tourist destination, it will be subject
102
to Bealls predatory wrath. According to him, this type of location provides the
opportunity for researchers to obtain a university-paid vacation.
If scholars are willing to participate and the conference is well structured to simulate
conference objectives, we do not see any problem in it. However, Bealls jealousy sitting
behind a computer has him wasting time maliciously engaging in actively discrediting
other individuals.
Regardless of Bealls claims, many conferences continue to be organized in popular
tourist destinations. Since Beall is an exposed scammer, he is no longer welcome at any
international conferences.
Beall targets specific individuals in order to collect his ransom. Once his attempt fails,
Beall continually engages in attacking that individual. His January 9, 2015 post is an ideal
example of this and provides evidence of it.
Canadian Agency slammed: Beall's another Extortion attempt failed

Response to the poorly-written statement by self-proclaimed journal critic of
Denver, Colorado, USA.
This is in response to a recent article published on the http://scholarlyoa.com website.
(released on July 27, 2014 at 6:00 PM EDT)
The scholarlyoa.com website is run by self-proclaimed journal critic and sole editor of
the website Mr. Jeffrey Beall. His blog does not allow anyone arguing against his own
opinion. While The Ontario International Development Agency (Agency) appreciates
Mr. Bealls freedom of expression, denied his allegations regarding the Agency and
OIDA International Journal of Sustainable Development (IJSD).
The Agency attempted on numerous occasions to contact Mr.Beall to obtain
clarification regarding his opinions, but all requests were unanswered.
Background
Ontario International Development Agency (Agency) is a non-profit, non-governmental
organization registered in Ontario, Canada. The Agency has been in operation for over
a decade in Ontario and has successfully delivered over 731 projects across the world
103
as of July 27, 2014. Canadas non-profit sector is a highly regulated industry and Agency
comply with all regulatory requirements and maintain outstanding merit.
Failed Extortion Attempt
The Agency received a poorly-written anonymous letter from Denver, Colorado, USA
dated June 12, 2014. The letter demands one million U.S. dollars. The letter also iterates
that if the Agency failed to pay the one million U.S. dollar sum, the Agency and IJSD
Journal would be blacklisted. The Agency ignored the demand.
On July 10, 2014 OIDA received a telephone call from Denver, Colorado, USA from a
caller demanding one million U.S. dollars along with a threat to blacklist the Agency and
IJSD Journal. The Agency did not discuss details with the caller and disconnected the
call. The Agency confirmed that caller was a Jeffrey Beall.
On July 15, 2014 the article that appeared on the http://scholarlyoa.com website made
numerous allegations against the Agency and IJSD Journal. These allegations were
written by the so-called, self-proclaimed journal critic Mr. Jeffrey Beall. OIDA denied all
allegations. OIDA also strongly believed that there was a strong link between the
extortion attempt and Mr. Bealls poorly-written statement.
Agency Position
The OIDA International Journal of Sustainable Development is a forum presenting highquality research in both social and applied science to a broad audience of communities
working in international development. The articles will appeal to social and applied
scientists (both inside and outside academia) as well as to non-specialists.
The OIDA IJSD Journals editorial board clearly posted on the website and Journal has
no practice, pay more publish more. The Agency has established a partner in
publishing with Social Science Research Network (SSRN). There are over 2000 institutes
partnered with SSRN that even publish their work. IJSD journal has been publishing its
articles on SSRN since 2010. The Agencys objective is to provide rapid, worldwide
distribution of research to authors and their readers and to facilitate communication
among them at the lowest possible cost.
Mr. Bealls Open access Google detective work found that the agency was located in
a residential area. The Agency's operation centre however, is instead located in
104
Sudbury, Ontario, Canada and provides a 3200 square feet facility for its operation. In
order to be cost-effective in the Agencys operation, our staff accommodation and
operation centre were integrated. OIDA operation center is equipped with modern
technology and are capable of handling our overseas operations.
The Agency is more than welcoming and issues an open invitation to Mr. Beall to visit
the headquarters. The Agency hopes that Mr. Beall accepts our invitation. Note: As of
July 27, 2014 Mr. Beall never contact our agency.
The IJSD Journal requests publication rights from authors in order to mitigate legal
issues and comply with Canadian privacy laws and plagiarism claims. But IJSD Journal
does not request exclusive copyright transfer for publications. If any legal issues arise,
OIDA takes responsibility of its publications on IJSD Journal. Therefore IJSD Journal
publishes under Ontario International Development Agency and Authours et al. .
In order to publish online, creative common licenses are not required. This is Mr. Bealls
own opinion but it is unsustainable in Canadian law and international publication
standards.
The Quality of publications depends on quality of research, but not on the authors from
India or elsewhere. Researchers from over 80 countries including Canadian researchers
publish their work on IJSD Journal. (As of February 17, 2015, IJSD journal delivered over
71,000 downloads free of charge. updated on February 17, 2015) Whether or not the
Agency makes a profit has no relation what-so-ever to the quality of publications.
Mr. Bealls major concern is based on profits and this hints at a reasonable connection
to the extortion attempt.
Conclusion
The Agency examined Mr. Jeffrey Bealls poorly-written statement closer. Beall's blog
is ridiculous, baseless, disrespectful, and is ridden with factual unprofessionalism and
arrogance. Mr. Jeffrey Beall criticizes a wide range of journals from social sciences to
medical sciences. This jack of all trades and self-proclaimed journal critic is an openaccess bully and nothing more.
Elisa MacMillan
Communication and Corporate Strategies
Ontario International Development Agency (OIDA).
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Cameo Replies to Beall's List of Howlers

This wacky article is easy to debunk, though I still think Jeff Beall is doing something
useful with his list naming and shaming junk journals. It reveals, however, that Jeff is
driven by some sort of fanciful conspiracy theory! 'OA is all an anti-capitalist plot.' (Even
on a quick skim it is evident that his article is rife with half-truths, errors and downright
nonsense. Pity. It will diminish the credibility of his valid exposs. Maybe this is a good
thing, if the judgment and motivation behind Beall's list is as kooky as this article, but it
will now also give the genuine "predatory" junk-journals some specious arguments for
discrediting Jeff's work altogether. It will also furnish the publishing lobby with some
good sound-bites -- but they use them at their peril, because of all the patent nonsense
in which they are inseparably embedded!)
Now a few deadpan rejoinders to just the most egregious howlers:
"ABSTRACT: While the open-access (OA) movement purports to be about making
scholarly content open-access, its true motives are much different. The OA movement is
an anti-corporatist movement that wants to deny the freedom of the press to companies
it disagrees with. The movement is also actively imposing onerous mandates on
researchers, mandates that restrict individual freedom. To boost the open-access
movement, its leaders sacrifice the academic futures of young scholars and those from
developing countries, pressuring them to publish in lower-quality open-access journals.
The open-access movement has fostered the creation of numerous predatory publishers
and standalone journals, increasing the amount of research misconduct in scholarly
publications and the amount of pseudo-science that is published as if it were authentic
science."
There are two ways to provide OA: Publish your article in an OA journal (Gold OA) - or
Publish in any journal you freely choose, and self-archive your final peer-reviewed draft
in your institution's OA repository (Green OA).
"The open-access movement isn't really about open access. Instead, it is about
collectivizing production and denying the freedom of the press from those who prefer the
subscription model of scholarly publishing. It is an anti-corporatist, oppressive and
negative movement, one that uses young researchers and researchers from developing
countries as pawns to artificially force the make-believe gold and green open-access
106
models to work. The movement relies on unnatural mandates that take free choice away
from individual researchers,mandates set and enforced by an onerous cadre of Sorosfunded European autocrats"
Green OA provides online access to peer-reviewed research for all potential users, not
just those at subscribing institutions.
With Green OA mandated, those who wish to continue paying subscriptions (and can
afford to) are free to keep on paying them for as long as they like.
"The open-access movement is a failed social movement and a false messiah, but its
promoters refuse to admit this. The emergence of numerous predatory publishers a
product of the open-access movement has poisoned scholarly communication,
fostering research misconduct and the publishing of pseudo-science, but OA advocates
refuse to recognize the growing problem. By instituting a policy of exchanging funds
between researchers and publishers, the movement has fostered corruption on a grand
scale. Instead of arguing for openaccess, we must determine and settle on the best model
for the distribution of scholarly research, and it's clear that neither green nor gold openaccess is that model"
There are two ways to provide OA: Publish your article in an OA journal (Gold OA) - or
"Open access advocates think they know better than everyone else and want to impose
their policies on others. Thus, the open access movement has the serious side-effect of
taking away other's freedom from them. We observe this tendency in institutional
mandates. Harnad (2013) goes so far as to propose [an]Orwellian system of mandates
documented [in a] table of mandate strength, with the most restrictive pegged at level
12, with the designation "immediate deposit + performance evaluation (no waiver
option)".
107
"A social movement that needs mandates to work is doomed to fail. A social movement
that uses mandates is abusive and tantamount to academic slavery. Researchers need
more freedom in their decisions not less. How can we expect and demand academic
freedom from our universities when we impose oppressive mandates upon ourselves?"
(Perhaps a publish-or-perish mandate, too, is academic slavery? Or a "show-up-foryour-lectures-or-you're-fired" mandate? Or a mandate to submit CVs digitally instead
of in print? Or not smoke on the premises?)
"[F]rom their high-salaried comfortable positionsOA advocates... demand that forprofit, scholarly journal publishers not be involved in scholarly publishing and devise ways
(such as green open-access) to defeat and eliminate them"
Green OA provides online access to peer-reviewed research for all potential users, not
just those at subscribing institutions.
With Green OA mandated, those who wish to continue paying subscriptions (and can
afford to) are free to keep on paying them for as long as they like.
If and when globally mandated Green OA makes subscriptions unsustainable, journals
will cut out inessential products and services (such as print edition, online edition,
access-provision and archiving) and their costs, and downsize to providing peer review
alone, paid for, per outgoing institutional article, out of the institution's incoming journal
subscription cancellation savings.
"OA advocates use specious arguments to lobby for mandates, focusing only on the
supposed economic benefits of open access and ignoring the value additions provided by
professional publishers. The arguments imply that publishers are not really needed; all
researchers need to do is upload their work, an action that constitutes publishing, and
that this act results in a product that is somehow similar to the products that professional
publishers produce."
Green OA is the peer-reviewed draft. Subscriptions pay for peer review today. If
cancelled, the savings will pay for peer review (and any other publisher product or
service for which there is still a demand left, once Green OA repositories are doing all
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the access-provision and archiving). Peer-reviewed publishing is peer-reviewed

publishing, not public uploading.
-Stevan Harnad
Bachelor of Arts in Spanish: Bealls attempt to monitor peer review process for
science and technology journals is ridiculous and laughable
SPOTLIGHT: Frontiers responds to 'Beall's list' post
Analysis and Opinion
Open-access publisher Frontiers was recently the subject of a post in Bealls
list. Sian Harris asks the companys CEO for her perspective
Jeffrey Beall wrote a post on his Scholarly Open Access blog raising questions
about the Swiss open-access (OA) publisher Frontiers. In Bealls post he
wrote, Frontiers does not meet the criteria for inclusion as a predatory
publisher, but I regularly receive complaints about its spamming and editorial
practices. I realise that there are probably many people that are satisfied with
Frontiers, and that it is likely publishing good science. Still, there is value in
sharing others experiences with this publisher.
To back this up he shared three emails he has received about the publisher. The emails
and some of the comments below the post criticise the volume of emails from
Frontiers inviting people to review articles. They also note that review invitations are
often not relevant to the recipients specialities, which leads some commenters to
speculate on the quality of the review process.
Beall summed up his blog post with: When a scholarly publisher doesnt have to worry
about losing subscriptions, the entire publishing dynamic changes. Theres less
accountability. We hope that Frontiers can take these criticisms into account and make
improvements in its operations.
109
Kamila Markram, CEO and co-founder of Frontiers, told Research Information that she
was disappointed by the post and particularly the concerns raised about the publishers
peer-review process.
She readily admits that the publisher is contacting many researchers. However she says
that this is a normal part of publishing and new journal launches. What we are
experiencing are the growing pains of success, she said. She explained that the recent
significant investment that Frontiers received from Nature Publishing Group has given
the company the opportunity to grow. This, of course, has benefits for the publisher but
has, she said, had unforeseen impacts on the publishing process.
The company has used some of this investment to launch new journals away from the
companys original focus of life sciences. We are expanding at a quick pace so are
contacting thousands of people informing them of new journals, she said. Im a
scientist myself and I hear from publishers every day and not just OA publishers. You
can buy lists of researchers contact details and thats a normal practice for publishers
when they are marketing journals.
Many of the comments and complaints raised in Bealls post and the emails that he
included were about the companys approach to peer review, in particular that
researchers are asked to review papers that are not in their field. However, Markram
denies that the experiences shared in Bealls post show a lack of quality in the peerreview process.
Its complete nonsense to say that we dont have a proper review system in place. Peer
review from our point of view is really at the heart of science. We have put in place a
standardised review template that asks very detailed questions. We also publish the
names of reviewers to make it transparent, she said.
So what about the experiences people have had of being asked to review papers in
subjects that they know little about? These experiences come down to the different
approach that the publisher has taken to organising peer review, according to Markram.
110
When we started Frontiers we did it in the conventional way, with associate editors
assigning reviewers but we found that it was a very lengthy process. It can easily take
two months to invite reviewers because it is an iterative process and then we have to
chase up to get the reports, she said.
She recounted how her husband and Frontiers co-founder Henry Markram, was an
editor on the board of another journal where every time an article was submitted to
that journal all of the board was informed and given the opportunity to review the
paper. The board found this useful as a way to keep track of current research even if
they were not interested in a particular paper, she noted.
Frontiers decided to adapt a similar approach to its review process. Each journal
therefore has a significantly larger than usual board - we really want to ensure that all
the expertise is covered, she said and everybody on the board is what the publisher
calls a review editor. This means that they are all informed of all papers submitted.
Everybody on the board has been invited. They are all signed up and so they should
know about our approach and we are doing a lot of educate about the Frontiers
process, Markram said, adding that this move was initially very popular with authors
because, instead of up to two months to assign a reviewer, this process could be done
within a few minutes.
And this worked fine, she said, when the publisher was small. What has happened over
the past two to three years, according to Markram, is that, as the publisher has grown
so have the number of submissions, and therefore the number of emails to review
editors.
It worked fantastically well for a while and then our journals grew. We became victims
of our own success; the people who complained were those on our most successful
journals, she said. For example, she noted that the journal Frontiers in Human
Neuroscience now receives around a thousand submissions a year, which equates to a
large number of emails.
111
The company therefore developed an algorithm to filter out relevant reviewers. This
sends review invitations to 10 people and then to 10 more if none of the first 10 are
interested. The algorithm is intended to accelerate the process and was built with
authors and publication timing in mind, she said, although she admits that it is not
perfect.
We have put in place a system that matches reviewers with articles. We have a review
system software but the algorithm is only as good as the keywords that people put in,
she explained. When editors and reviewers sign up with us its very important that they
fill in what they are interested in. This is important for when editors assign reviewers
manually to, which they can also do.
However, she added that the publisher takes criticism seriously and is refining the
algorithm regularly in response to feedback. Sometimes we get a bit of negative
feedback. Always the burning feedback is from people who are angry. We are listening
to what people are saying and modifying our algorithms on a weekly basis.
Markram also feels that some of the criticisms in the blog post are about OA more
widely and believes these criticisms are often unfair. There is so much discussion now
about the quality of OA. We recently compared the eight journals of ours that already
have impact factors and they are above average in their fields, she said. With OA there
is a lot of misunderstanding. We need to educate people and do a lot of advocacy
work, she continued. There is a proper process in big OA publishers and we are
members of COASP.
And on the concern raised in the blog post and elsewhere about gold OA being about
publishers making money she noted, subscription publishers are making huge margins.
We [at Frontiers] are for profit and have to run a responsible business and pay our staff
but making money is not our primary goal. I consider that this is human heritage so we
cant do it in a sloppy way. Indeed she noted that Frontiers was founded with the
aspiration that at some stage the process of publishing OA could be made free by
replacing the current system with a freemium business model. 'We are not there yet so
have APCs, she concluded.
112
This article inititally published on

http://www.researchinformation.info/news/news_story.php?news_id=1452
Predatory Blogger: Jeffrey Beall
A Predatory Librarian Jeffrey Beall: The crook, the felon, the criminal of the
Academic Community
I recently made an inquiry to Jeffrey Beall (the Denver, USA librarian who
runs a webpage where he slanders and insults about 500 publishing houses),
whether he, Jeffrey Beall himself, has the ability to solve the simple math
equation 5x+3 = 0.
Jeffrey Beall replied to my first email, that he has never studied even the
simplest form of Math. Meaning that he doesnt know what equation
means (he has never even seen equations like 5x+3 = 0, 3x*x + 7x -4 =0
etc), neither does he know what Derivative or Integral mean.
Jeffrey Beall told me that he has a Bachelor in Spanish and English language.
This of course didnt stop him blacklisting hundreds of houses that publish
Math, Physics, Computer Science, Engineering, Economics, Biology,
Chemistry, Earth Sciences, Space Science etc Journals. That from a man who
isnt even able to solve the simple equation 5x+3 = 0, and who doesnt know
what Derivative or Integral mean.
113
Recently, Jeffrey Beall included in his black list an old, big Academic
Publishing House, with several, historic Journals in Math, Physics, Computer
Science, Engineering, Economics (some of which have been indexed in ISI
and SCOPUS), and that because, according to Jeffrey Beal, they had copied
the Maxwell Equations from a 2007 article.
Obviously, since Jeffrey Beall doesnt know how to solve the equation 5x+3
= 0, and since he doesnt know what Derivative and Integral mean, he has
zero knowledge when it comes to Electricity or Physics and has never seen
the Maxwell Equations (not even in their most basic form).
As expected from somebody who is entirely clueless regarding even
elementary Math and Physics, he considered the Maxwell Equations found
in the Journal to be plagiarized from a 2007 paper.
With a Bachelor in Spanish and English in his CV, Jeffrey Beall passes
judgment even to Medicine, Biology, Chemistry etc Journals and articles,
while he is fully aware that hes never attended a University course on which
nucleotides make up the DNA molecule, hes never heard what enzyme,
catalysis, proteins etc are, and if one asks him what pH is, hell be completely
ignorant.
However, in his bizarre blog, this person has declared himself a critic of
everyone and everything. He blacklists publishing houses (many of which
having journals and conferences indexed in ISI, SCOPUS, Compendex, ACM
etc), he includes stand-alone journals in black lists, slanders Editors-inChief, Authors etc. Of course he does all that selectively, following a certain
logic of his, which will be analyzed below.
114
In a later email that I sent him, I asked him to comment on why he includes
a small publishing house in his black list because they copied Maxwells
Equations from a 2007 paper (poor Jeffrey Beall doesnt know that Maxwells
Equations are taught in Universities first year elementary physics), while at
the same time he excludes IEEE, who have over 85 SCIgen machinegenerated fake conference papers published and indexed.
(See: A 2013 scientometrics paper demonstrated that at least 85 SCIgen
machine-generated papers have been published by IEEE. The Paper has
been
published
in
Springer
Verlag:http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs11192-012-0781-y
Download the full paper from:
http://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/docs/00/71/35/55/PDF/0-FakeDetectionSciPerso.pdf)
He also didnt respond to the question why he didnt include Elsevier in his
black list, who were revealed to have been publishing 6 Medical Journals
between 2000 and 2005 with fake articles and studies, that were funded by
pharmaceutical companies, in order to scientifically prove that their products
were superior to their competitors. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elsevier
or
http://legacy.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2009/05/elsevier-confirms-6-fakejournals-more.html
In a third email I asked him where his moral and academic responsibility
stands, since if due to him including some publishing houses in black lists,
those houses reduce or cease their activity (due to his immoral slandering),
115
hundreds of jobs will be lost and families will end up in the street. Naturally,
despite my repeated emails, Jeffrey Beall never replied.
There are also rumours on the internet that some publishing houses, like
Hindawi and Elsevier, pay Jeffrey Beall on a yearly basis in order not to be
included in his black list. This looks like heavy taxing that the publisher is
asked to pay annually to Jeffrey Beall, and, as well see below, part of this tax
ends up in the Denver University funds.
Actually, Hindawi was in Jeffrey Bealls black list a year ago. Then, after
negotiations, Jeffrey Beall placed them in a watching list (i.e. an under
observation list), and eventually completely removed them.
Just like Jeffrey Beall himself mentioned in his blog, Hindawis people visited
him in Denver and offered him explanations. After that, Jeffrey Beall
gradually removed Hindawi from his black list.
Why, Mr. Jeffrey Beall, did you agree to meet with Hindawis representatives
in your office in Denver, when Hindawi was black listed? What did you talk
about, Mr. Jeffrey Beall? Hindawi, as mentioned on their website, has an
annual turnover of $6 million.
Couldnt they use part of that money to pay off Jeffrey Beall?
Furthermore, in his blog, Jeffrey Beall has posted a photo of Hindawis
headquarters, which he calls House of Spam. So, Mr. Jeffrey Beall, why isnt
Hindawi in your black list, when among your fundamental black listing
reasons, like you mention in your blog, is spam?
116
Having read all that, you can draw your own conclusions on who Jeffrey Beall
is and what his real motives behind his publishing house and scientific
organization black listing blog are. Houses and Organizations that Jeffrey
Beall calls Predatory Publishers.
Maybe its time to talk about Predatory Librarians, Mr. Jeffrey Beall. About
librarians who target Open Access Journals, especially because the open,
online PDF policy deprives librarians (like Jeffrey Beall) from the possibility of
receiving kickbacks from publishing houses.
To those who are not aware, it is known that several publishing houses paidand pay-off librarians (like Jeffrey Beall), in order to get their libraries to
subscribe to those houses.
Meaning that, in order for a certain University, Research Center, Company
to buy some books or subscribe to some journals, it is common knowledge
that librarians receive money under the table from the respective publishing
houses. It is therefore natural and understandable for this kind of librarians
(Jeffrey Beall, for instance) to fight Open Access Journals and Open Access
Publishing Houses, since they
a) lose their kickbacks,
b) lose their power and influence in the library, as well as the University.
Ive saved all my email exchange with Jeffrey Beall, along with their
headers/source code, and I will soon upload them to various websites. I need
everyones help though, by sending me emails (to the email address found
at the bottom) and exchanging information on Jeffrey Bealls scandalous
behavior.
117
And one last question to Jeffrey Beall: How can a librarian WITHOUT a Ph.D.
be an Assistant Professor at the University of Denver, Mr. Jeffrey Beall?
Could it be that Jeffrey Beall bribed older professors, using the abundance
of money that he is said to possess?
Could it be that Jeffrey Beall threatened that if they dont vote for him, hell
include all journals where they have papers published in his black list, and
slander them on the internet?
Or is it that they were so much impressed by his research? Actually, Mr.
Jeffrey Beall, what is your scientific research? Your scientific research as a
real scientist that is, Mr. Jeffrey Beall. What publications do you have,
besides slandering, insulting and discredit hundreds of scientific
organizations and publishing houses? What do you teach at the University
of Denver Mr. Jeffrey Beall?
Is there really any course (real scientific course) that you can teach, Mr. Jeffrey
Beall, besides calling publishing houses and scientific organizations
predatory?
It doesnt look like it, Mr. Jeffrey Beall. No matter how hard we looked, we
didnt find any courses taught by you at the University of Denver.
Neither on your personal webpage, Mr. Jeffrey Beall, nor on your moneymaking blog, nor even on the University of Denver website is there any
mention about courses taught by you.
118
So, since you do absolutely no scientific research, and you dont even teach
pre-graduate or post-graduate students, what is your role at the University
of Denver, Mr. Jeffrey Beall?
Does the University of Denver pay you a salary, Mr. Jeffrey Beall, or do you
pay the University to let you bear the title of Assistant Professor?
A title that you really do not deserve, as you have no Ph.D., no actual
research work and do no teaching whatsoever. It is a shame for the University
of Denver to have professors like you, Jeffrey Beall.
Or is running a blog that slanders everyone and everything considered
scientific research?
It most certainly is not, Mr. Jeffrey Beall.
Could it be, however, an applied money-making project for you and your
university, Mr. Jeffrey Beall?
(By the way, why should a small publishing house from some place in India,
which cannot attract papers, nor editorial board members, from western
universities, be in your black list Mr. Jeffrey Beall? In this case, you should
also black list all non-US and non-European universities. Of course there exist
first-rate universities, like Harvard, MIT, Berkeley, Cambridge. Should all other
universities be in a black list? Is this your logic Professor Beall? Furthermore,
you condemn any new publishing house, as it is natural for them to not have
papers and not be indexed as soon as they launch, but has to deal with you,
who, like a vulture, immediately includes them in your black list for those
reasons.)
119
I would greatly appreciate your response, Mr. Jeffrey Beal. And I would also
appreciate feedback from anyone who agrees with me.
My aim is to create a network of true scientists and expose Professor,
Academic Teacher and, above all, Researcher Jeffrey Beall (this science
jack-of-all-trades, who doesnt know a first-degree algebraic equation,
derivatives, integrals, elementary Physics and Chemistry laws, etc)
Article originally published on http://jeffreybeall.blogspot.ca/2014/01/irecently-made-inquiry-to-jeffrey.html
Bealls attempt at being a Godfather of Open Access is ridiculous
Beall started the Open Access blog mainly to discredit Open Access
Publishers and Journals. Furthermore Beall never attempted contact those
whose work he criticized. Instead of raising his questions and concerns
directly with the journals and publishers involved, he jumped right in to his
criticism of them openly and publicly.
It is obvious that different individuals have different interests among the
issues and some Open Access Journals charge a hefty amount in publication
fees. However most of the researchers do not have the ability to pay high
publication fees. Many simply want to publish their work and share the
knowledge and findings with fellow researchers. In this case, the obvious and
possible solution is to find alternative publishers and Open Access journals.
Some publishers and Journals provide many more incentives for researchers
to publish their work
For example, they provide the financial incentive to publish more at a
reasonable cost. We do not see any issues on this concept especially since
120
both publisher and researcher benefit from this type of program. The
important factor is to maintain quality in publication. Similarly some Open
Access journals fee structure varies based on the length of time taken to
publish the articles. In our view it has reasonable merit. This is because some
publishers may not have enough resources to publish as quickly as some
researchers might need. However, in such a scenario, paying an additional
fee can enhance the process. In most cases reviewers are not paid and
alternately they receive honorarium. Nonetheless, this mechanism may not
be sustainable for the long run if reviewers contribution towards the
publication process is not recognized. It is therefore necessary to find a
suitable mechanism with which to compensate reviewer contributions.
Therefore when looking at the fast-track review process, it is important to
note that it can be mutually arranged which can thus compensate for the
cost involved in the publication process. In spite of that, Beall continually
discredits Journals and publishers based on fast-track fees.
Bealls agenda does not serve the purpose of Open Access. In addition to
this, Beall has never suggested how research papers can be published quickly
without affecting the cost of the publications. He has no alternative
suggestions or solutions to the issue, only empty criticism. Also, he is
continually attempting to discredit journals that require a little higher of a
payment for fast-track publication.
Finally we would like to reiterate that the quality of publication does not
depend on the fee structure, whether it is on fast-track or not. Beall did not
provide any credible answers to these questions and instead continually and
maliciously engaged in the discrediting of Journals and Open Access
Publishers.
121
Friends of Open Access strongly condemn Beall and his agenda against
Open Access Journals. Rather than criticizing the Journals and publishers he
should provide support towards Journals in the aim to enhance Open Access
publications
Bealls analysis is problematic - Nature
A recent article published on Nature identified serious issues in Jeffrey Bealls
characterization of the Open Access Journals. Nature further explained that
Bealls analysis has no merit and is fuelled by external factors, which are not
directly related to, nor do they affect the quality of publication. This only
further established a lack of credibility surrounding his blog.
Currently six billion people in the world do business and communicate via
the internet. There are trillions of financial transactions, publications and
messages passing through every corner of the world every single day. Bealls
attempts to control internet-based publication by Open Access Journals
across the world are childish and immature. Beall has never contacted any
Journals directly yet he attempts to examine the quality of publications based
on websites and e-mails received or forwarded to him by third parties.
This therefore allows Bealls blog no credibility. This self-proclaimed journal
critic is providing a laugh to the rest of the world and has become an
embarrassment for the University of Denvor, USA. University authorities
already warned him that he will later be recognized as the Open Access
Joker. Individuals are reading his blog around the world and are recognizing
his work as administratively stupid.
Beall and his bully brigade are frequently blogging in support of Bealls
agenda. Bealls recent claim against the Open Access publishers were mainly
122
related to the e-mail received from one of the so called researchers.

According to the report, Nature was not able to contact the researcher. If it
is a genuine complaint, the complainant must step forward. Instead he/she
has remained hidden behind Bealls blog and from this anonymous
standpoint has attempted to discredit Open Access publishers. As such these
attempts should be denounced as corrupt.
Even still, regardless of Bealls agenda against the Open Acess Publishers, a
large number of researchers still continue to publish their work in research
Journals published by the Open Access Publishers. This is a clear indication
that Bealls agenda is being rejected by many researchers around the world.
Bealls extortion attempts exposed
Self proclaimed Journal critic Jeffrey Beall failed in his attempts to extort the
Canadian Agency. It was reported that the so called Open Access hero
demanded one million U.S. dollars to remove the Agencys Journal from his
target list. This is not the first time this type of allegation has surfaced. Many
Open Access Journals and Publishers are receiving emails from Bealls bully
brigade demanding large sums of cash to remove journals from his list. Beall
attempted to establish authority for evaluating Open Access journals. To do
this he utilized his association with the University of Denver, Colorado, USA
and his position there as Librarian. Initially Beall will include Journal and
Open Access publishers into his list and he then provides his analysis. His
analysis has no merit, however, but only serves the purpose of extortion
manifested through his tactics
It was reported that Beall and his well-trained extortionists contacted the
Open Access publishers in advance and demanded a lump sum payment.
Furthermore, they threatened that if Open Access journals and Publishers
123
failed to pay extortion money those Journals and publishers would be listed
on his list.
If any journal or publisher did not obey Bealls extortive demands it would
be listed on his so called Bealls list. This common tactic continues and large
numbers of Open Access Journals are being scammed. Many Open Access
Journals and Publishers contacted us and launched their complaints against
Jeffrey Beall. We are hoping to bring this matter forward into public attention
as Bealls malicious attempts must not be tolerated further. We continually
expose the Beall conspiracy against the Open Access journals.
124
Beall's Criteria
Predatory Blogger
Although Open Access is noble and trendy, theres nothing noble about
Bealls low-quality and highly-questionable blog. http://scholarlyoa.com/
Beall maintains a list of criteria with which to discredit Open Access Journals.
Those criteria are not properly evaluated by any governing authority as they
should be if we are to attribute his comments any validity. Its validity is in fact
not tested. There is no proper procedure or method in applying his criteria
and Beall has utilized them arbitrarily. According to many Journals (included
into his hit list) Beall never contacted them. Without obtaining proper
information directly from Journals, Beall categorized them as predatory
based on his assumptions. He applies many bogus reasons to the point of
which some of them are even laughable. Beall completely relies on emails,
(according to him - spam) forwarded to him. Those e-mails are created by
Bealls followers (scammers). His handful of bloggers (scammers) are behind
all of the activities. This con artist has no credibility at all.
Here are some of the highly questionable, bogus criteria Beall used in
determining Open Access Journals are predatory and posted on his
predatory blog.
125
Here are the reasons weve added Jeffrey Beall to the list.
(We frequently update the list so please visit our website often for additional
information).
Top 3 Predatory Beall's criteria
(1) Only Open Access Journals are predatory
Our Analysis
Beall is biased in arguing to protect academic scholarly publication. He
invented bogus criteria to discredit open access journals in the best interest
of larger publishers. Beall continually attacks open access journals and
publishing houses but never criticizes closed access publishers as predatory.
Is there any reason behind it? Beall is a scammer and is currently working for
the best interests of major publishing companies. Friends of Open Access
forecast that Bealls list will grow until all popular open access journals are
included into his blacklist. He utilizes this mechanism to collect ransom. As
such, Beall is a predatory blogger and an academic criminal.
For this reason we added Beall to our list as predatory blogger.
(2) Open access journal's Gold (Author-pays) criteria is predatory
Our Analysis
Why are PLOS, Springer, Elsevier not predatory?
Beall heavily attacks Open Access journals and also maintains a hit list to
collect ransom. Beall, however, never criticized PLOS, Springer, orElsevier
publishers who are charging huge amounts in publication fees for a single
article. This demonstrates Bealls bias towards open access journals as well
as towards certain publishers from India and Africa.
126
Many Open access Journals follow an author-pays model at a substantially

lower cost than the fees that PLOS, Springer, and Elsevier
charge.Nevertheless, Beall neither criticizes nor did he include PLOS,
springer, or Elsevier on his hit list.
Please see the article processing charges for these three major publishers.
PLOS Open Publication Fees
To provide Open Access, PLOS uses a business model to offset expenses
including those of peer review management, journal production and online
hosting and archiving by charging a publication fee to the authors,
institutions or funders for each article published. Publication fees vary by
journal and are payable for articles upon acceptance.
PLOS Biology $2,900 USD
PLOS Medicine $2,900 USD
PLOS Computational Biology $2,250 USD
PLOS Genetics $2,250 USD
PLOS Pathogens $2,250 USD
PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases $2,250 USD
PLOS ONE $1,350 USD
URL: http://www.plos.org/publications/publication-fees/
(Accessed on March 03, 2015)
Springer Open Publication fee

Publishing Open Choice involves an open access publication fee of
US$ 3000/EUR 2200 (excl. VAT). You can choose to pay by credit card or to
receive an invoice.
127
The open access publication fee does not replace any existing journal
policies publication costs to be paid by the author, which are billed separately
(e.g. surcharges for color in print, oversized articles, etc.)
Customers providing payment from the Americas will be charged in US$.
Sales taxes will be charged if applicable. Customers providing payment from
Europe, Africa, and Asia will be charged in EUR. VAT is not included in the
price and will be added, at a standard rate, if applicable.
Final
charge
may
vary
from
over
$5000.00
US.
http://www.springer.com/gp/open-access/springer-open-choice (Accessed
March 03, 2015)
Elsevier open access publication fee

Adjustments in article publishing charges (APCs) reflect a number of factors
including competitive considerations; market conditions; journal impact
factor; article type; journal function; editorial processes; and technical
features. Our APCs are journal specific and range from $500 to $5000 US
Dollars. For specific pricing information, please refer to the individual journal
homepages or alternatively download the 2015 APC price list. Subscription
articles are not included in these calculations.
http://www.elsevier.com/about/policies/pricing-policy#price-setting (Access
on March 03, 2015)
Beall, Can you provide us an explanation?
This provides clear evidence that Bealls list is flawed and has no credibility
whatsoever. Bealls Gold Open Access criteria of the article processing fee are
predatory, and its purpose is only to collect ransom and nothing more.
For this reason we added Beall on to our list as a potential, probable, and
possible predatory blogger.
128
(3) Open Access Publishers from Asia and Africa are predatory
Our Analysis
This is one of the most ridiculous criteria invented by Beall thus far. There is
no way to compare their academic facilities and standards with those of the
western world. Most of the countries in Asia and Africa are still developing
nations and are unable to offer infrastructure for the academic
institutes. However, they are successfully emerging into the global market
thanks to the internet and other communication technology. We should
encourage Asian and African scholars to publish their research and should
provide adequate support for their enhancements. Rather than giving
support for the Asian and African scholars, however, predatory Beall
continually discredits their publications and journal publishers. When
compared to larger Open access publishers these publishers charge authors
very minimal article processing fees. In our view, the support of their
publishing combined with their low fees, will enhance knowledge circulation
and readers from all over the world will also have access to Indian and African
scholar's research work.
In conclusion Beall's predatory criteria are, once again, ridiculous. For this
reason we added Jeffrey Beall on to our list as possible, potential, and
probable predatory blogger.
(31) Beall Criteria
An unscientific epidemiology article was published (According to Beall).
Therefore the Journal is predatory. (Posted on April 23, 2015).
Our analysis
Beall has no Ph.D in any discipline and holds only a Bachelor degree in
129
Spanish. It is laughable how Beall could possibly qualify to review an article

based on epidemiology. This jack of all trades is a Colorado clown and
nothing more.
(30) Beall's Criteria
A subscription costs $160, and there are additional fees once the paper is
accepted. Therefore Journal is predatory. (Posted on April 21, 2015)
Our analysis
Beall cannot interfere in the economic relations of the publishing house. If
Beall or any author does not like to the practices they are free to find another
publisher. It is the same as with any other business in this world. Beall has
been posting this sort of useless nonsense for long time and it must end now.
This is yet another bogus predatory criterion invented by Beall. Beall is insane,
nothing more.
The February, 2015 issue of the journal contains 59 published articles which
translate to $5,900 in revenue for the publisher, Mr. Biswas enough
perhaps to buy a house for Mr. Biswas. Therefore journal is predatory.
(posted on April 16, 2015)
Our analysis
Beall is suffering from some undiagnosed mental disorder. If a publisher
makes a profit from his/her publishing business, it has nothing to do with
predatory criteria. It is the as what any other publishers do. Beall is continually
posting content full of nonsense and, as such, providing jokes for the
academic community.
130
(28) Beall's criteria

If an open access journal removed a review invitation, it is predatory. (Posted
on April 09, 2015)
Our analysis
This is actually a common practice used by even some of the most renowned
journals Expert Opinion on Investigational Drugs (IF 5.432) Journal, for
example, has the same practice. Wileys journal, Advanced Energy
Materials (IF 14.385), which is one of the best journals for materials science,
also has this same practice. Now it is clear that Beall is simply trying to point
fingers on Open Access journals. Beall's opinions are bias and have no
credibility whatsoever.
(27) Beall Criteria
If the publisher changed its name, it is predatory. (Posted on April 07, 2015)
Our analysis
This is another laughable criterion invented by Beall. These bogus criteria
render him a laughing stock for rest of the world. Beall becomes an academic
joker, nothing more.
If a company offers a publication service it is predatory. (Posted on April 02,
2015)
131
Our analysis
This is yet another laughable criterion invented by Beall to discredit Open
Access journals. This clearly indicates the status of Beall's mental health,
nothing more.
If an Open Access journal has a similar title to another journal, it is predatory.
(Posted on March 31, 2015)
Our analysis
We believe additional analysis is not necessary in determining this bogus
criterion also invented by predatory blogger Jeffrey Beall.
The published article is poorly edited therefore it has little value. This is
therefore predatory. (Posted on March 24, 2015).
Our analysis
Beall is insane. He has now started his own made-up rendition of quality
control of the open access journals. It is the most laughable predatory
criterion invented by predatory blogger, Jeffery Beall, yet. The quality of the
publication has no relation whatsoever to Beall's bogus predatory practices.
Beall is a not a qualified authority to evaluate journals and he is a jack of all
trades criticizing open access journals in his vicinity.
132

If an article published is too brief, then the open access journal is predatory
(posted March 03, 2015)
Our Analysis
Predatory blogger Beall invented another criterion. According to Beall if the
review article published is short, that open access journal is predatory. Beall
keeps changing his bribery business model. Publishing an article is a matter
of the decision of an editorial board affiliated with the journal. If the editor
decides the length of a given article is appropriate, they are free to publish
the article. Beall cannot interfere with journal practices. It is none of his
business. This predatory blogger takes every action he can, regardless of its
merit, to discredit open access journals. This bogus criterion has further
clarified to us Bealls motive behind his blog.
For this reason we included Beall on to our list as a potential, possible, and
(22) Beall Criteria
If an Open AAccess journal publishes 500 articles, that journal is predatory.
(posted on March 05, 2015)
Our analysis
Beall goes beyond ridiculous here. Beall is running out of his predatory
criteria by which to tarnish the journals reputation. His main intention is an
attempt to raise questions on the number of publications of Open Access
journals. Other closed access publishers, such as Elsevier and Springer, are
133
publishing more than hundreds of articles in their journals. According to Beall,

though, those journals and publishers are not predatory. However, in
contrast to his whole argument against Open Access, Beall the predatory
blogger, discredits journals that publish more articles. Beall's double
standard policy and predatory business model is exposed once again.
For this reason we included Beall on to our list as a predatory blogger.
(21) Beall criteria
If a publisher starts an open access model of publication, it is predatory.
(Posted on March 10, 2015)
Our analysis
Beall is continually inventing new predatory criteria and he has no idea that
the academic world is laughing at him. None of the criteria invented by Beall
is nor can it be considered predatory. Instead the only thing proven
predatory is Beall himself. Any person in this world has the right to start and
maintain a business. Beal has no right whatsoever to interfere in others
economic relations. Beall is crossing his boundaries and demonstrates to the
rest of the world that he is predatory. Bealls bribery businesses model is no
longer working and so he has taken to continually inventing new criteria to
discredit open access journals.
For this reason we added Jeffrey Beall on to our list as a predatory blogger.
(20) Beall Criteria
If a journal has more authors from another country, that open access journal
is predatory. (Posted on March 17, March 19, 2015)
134
Our analysis
Beall continually discredits open access journals by inventing bogus criteria.
This criterion has no relation whatsoever to the practices of the journals.
Those are only Beall's predatory opinions and nothing more. It seems as
though Beall is running out his predatory criteria with his outlandish and
beyond ridiculous arguments, providing jokes to rest of the academics in the
world. Many Journals have authors from all over the world and Beall's bogus
criteria make no sense. If the journal is popular among researchers in another
country, it is not grounds for considering it as predatory at all.
For this reason we added Jeffrey Beall on to our list as a predatory blogger.
(19)Beall Criteria
Low quality contents are in the open access journal, therefore it is predatory.
Our analysis
Beall is a jack of all trades. Beall criticizes Open Access journals including
those specializing in disciplines from the medial sciences to the social
sciences. This man has no expertise in any single one of those subject areas
and no actual research work has been conducted on his behalf. It is
surprising that Beall has the courage to provide this academic joke to rest of
the world.
For this reason we added Jeffrey Beall on to our list as a potential, possible
and probable predatory blogger.
135
(18) Beall Criteria

If an Open Access journal has a hybrid model fee structure it is predatory.
Our analysis
Beall thinks he is very creative and finds whatever reason he can to discredit
his opponent without any merit. He has no credibility to his blog. It is
providing jokes for the rest of the world. Predatory blogger Jeffery Beall,
needs to grow up.
(17) Beall Criteria
If an Open Access Journal indexed in Pubmed it is predatory. (Posted on
March 06, 2015)
Our analysis
Beall is insane and definitely requires a psychiatric assessment.
We are not going to provide any additional analysis for this one of his
predatory criterions.
We included Jeffery on to our list as a predatory blogger.
(16) Beall's crtiteria
Open Access Journals are making a huge profit from special issues (posted
on Feb 24, 2015) Therefore it is predatory
136
Our Analysis
Beal claims Open Access Journals are making a huge profit from special
issues. This clearly provides us with evidence for the reason behind his
extortion attempts. Beall's associate will contact Open Access publishers and
demand ransom. Additionally, there are hundreds of cases against Beall.
Most cases Beall is failing to collect ransom and inruturn he include journal
into his hit list.
For these reasons highlighted, we added Jeffrey Beall as potential, possible,
(15) Bealls Criteria
Open access journal is shutting down therefore they are predatory. (Posted
on February 26, 2015)
137
Our Analysis
Scholarly publishing is a business same as any other business. The success
of a business depends on various factors. According to Beall, the journal
mainly depends on volunteerism and therefore it is predatory. Beall is clearly
going to continue inventing criteria as much as he can in order to discredit
Open Access Journal. If any business like this one has failed in the past, it
does not mean that all businesses in his field are going fail also. Bealls
intention could not be clearer. Beall wanted to shut down all open access
journals. This is because doing so would provide opportunity for high paying
commercialized closed access journals. The closed access journals would be
able to once again take back their lost revenue by monopolizing journal
publishing. Bealls ideology is vicious and will benefit only his supporters
within the closed access publishing industry. Beall wants to scam millions of
dollars from researchers.
For this reason we added Beall on to our list as a potential, possible, probable
predatory blogger.
Publishing a larger number of papers in the Journal is predatory (Posted on
March 05, 2015)
Our Analysis
Beall goes wild again. Beall has no information about and there is no logical
analysis to how those publishing houses run. Predatory Blogger and Jack
of all trades, Beall, criticizes the quality of work of the journals from Biology
to Chemistry. This is also bogus criteria invented by Beall for purpose of the
discrediting Open Access publishers from Asia.
138
For this reason we added Beall on to our list as a possible, potential, probable
predatory blogger.
Open access journal has a similar title to that of closed access journals.
According to Beall, it is a "copy cat." According to him, open access
journallaunch and publish scholarly journals whose titles closely match those
of established and respected journals, including journals published by
scholarly societies. (Posted on February 19, 2015)
Our Analysis
Beall has invented another bogus criterion. We have looked closely at his
claims and would like to point out that ISSN will not allow similar titles on
articles published. ISSN is the authority determining the titles of the journals.
Take the common names John, Jane and Jeffrey for example; there are many
who posses those names and yet it is not an indication that these people are
similar at all. Nor is it misleading to have the same name for different
individuals.
Bealls comments are ridiculous and for this reason we included Beall as a
potential, possible, probable predatory blogger
Based on conference location, specifically held in popular tourist destinations
(posted January 29, 2015)
139
Our Analysis
Based on Bealls post on January 29, 2015 he has evidently invented another
bogus criterion.
This time, based on the destination of the conference. If the location is a
tourist destination he will include the conference and Journal on his hit list.
Beall has gone beyond ridiculous. He is a clown and only suitable for the
merry-go-round at the Colorado carnival.
For this reason, we have added Beall to our list of predatory Blogger.
(11) Beall's Criteria:
Unable to access the website (posted January 29, 2015)
Our analysis
We found another criterion invented by Beal as posted on his Blog January
29, 2015. According to his statement, the sole reason to discredit a journal
was that he was not able to access the Journal website. This is one of the
most ridiculous and bogus reasons hes invented so far. Soon after Beall had
declared the journals as predatory, however, one of the bloggers posted
access URLs for all the journals. Even so, the journal still remains on his
blacklist.
It is now clearly evident that Bealls blog is a scam. The website may have
been experiencing technical difficulty and may have been undergoing an
updating process. If the website is not able to be accessed at a moment, it
does not merit its inclusion as a predatory journal.
For this reason we included Beall on our list as a predatory Blogger.
140

Bealls Blog gives no office location
Our analysis
On Bealls January 29, 2015 post, he discredits another open access publisher,
quoting that the Journal gives no office location (But the publisher provides
a legitimate address in the USA).
Conversely, Bealls blog gives no office location. It is now highly
questionable as to why Beall is hiding behind his blog. Is he utilizing the
University of Colorado system, is he utilizing the University of Colorados
library to run his scamming activities?
For this reason we included Beall on our list as a predatory blogger.
(9) Bealls Criteria
Peer review is too fast (posted January 29, 2015)
Our Analysis
Beall cannot determine other journals peer review process. There is no way
for Beall to determine whether the peer review process is fast or slow. It
depends on the resources available for publishers. This is yet another bogus
reason Beall gives to discredit Open access Journals.
Therefore we have added Beall on our list as a predatory blogger.
(8) Beall Criteria
Colorado clown, Jeffery Beall invented another new criteria for evaluating
141
Open access Journals. According to him, if open access journals utilized a

manuscript-managing software system, it is predatory. (Posted February 03,
2015)
Our Analysis
Beall has gone beyond ridiculous. Beall is not only criticizing Open access
journals but is also interfering with the economic interest of the Open access
Journal publishers. Whether or not any journal utilized manuscript-managing
system software has nothing to do with the quality of the journal publication.
Beall, on his post, stated that he logged the complaint against the open
access publisher using manuscript managing system software. Beall has no
right whatsoever to interfere with the economic interests and business
transactions of two organizations. In a similar context, for the purpose of
comparison, is Beall going to log a compliant against Internet companies
against Open Access Journals.
For this reason we have added Beall on our list as a predatory blogger.
(7) Bealls Criteria
Open Access Journals charge publication fee or article processing fee in US
dollars.
Our Analysis
Beall includes journals into his hit list based on his ridiculous criteria.
International publishing houses use US dollars as their main currency for their
transactions. Additionally, US dollars are utilized as a universal currency for
global transactions. However, the transactions made in US dollars have no
relation to the quality of Journals.
142
We have, as a result, added Jeffrey Beall to our list as a predatory blogger.

(6) Bealls Criteria
Based on Organizations location.
Our Analysis
The location of organization has no relation what so ever to the quality of
publication. Whether the publishers are from India, Turkey, China, USA, UK,
Ontario or Canada has absolutely no relation what so ever to the quality of
publications. This clearly explains Bealls conspiracy against Open Access
Publishers. Again, the ridiculousness and even comedy in Bealls criteria
should be noted.
We have therefore, added Jeffrey Beall to our list as a predatory blogger.
(5) Bealls Criteria
The journal does not appear to have an established editorial board; none is
listed on the website, nor is any Editor-in-Chief listed.
Our Analysis
We do not agree with Beall because he added to his black list, Journals that
already have an established editorial board and Editor-in-Chief. They are
also listed on the publisher's / organization's website.
Beall utilized these criteria to undermine research activities and discredit
scholars around the world. His behavior is highly questionable and his motive
is now clear. His idea is to ridicule professionals ruthlessly and in an
143
unmerited fashion for the alternate purpose of scamming other of their

hard-earned money.
This is therefore another reason we have added Jeffrey Beall to our list as a
predatory blogger.
(4) Bealls Critera
The journal gives authors the option to pay an extra fee to get a fast track
review on submitted papers. This fee is in addition to the normal article
processing charge. Its not clear who does the review, as there is no editorial
board.
Our Analysis
We closely looked at Bealls claims and could not find any information related
to his specific claim on the Journal website. The Journal website clearly
posted their Editorial Board and Editor-in-Chief. This is one of the clear
examples where Beall is providing false and misleading information on his
blog and slandering the names of otherwise reputable journal publishing
organizations.
We were also able to confirm that Beall demanded one million dollars
ransom from this particular Journal. Once the Journal refused pay ransom,
Beall posted false claims about the Journal and included this Journal into his
blacklist stating that it is predatory.
This is yet again another reason we have added Jeffrey Beall to our list as a
predatory blogger.
(3) Bealls Criteria
The organization does not publish the journal itself; all of its published papers
144
are only available on the SSRN website. Therefore, SSRN is playing the role
of journal publisher. I thought SSRN was only a preprint server and
disciplinary repository; I didnt realize it also functioned as a scholarly
publisher, its role in this case
.
Our Analysis
We already established facts that Beall is a predatory Blogger. If Beall could
not understand or had not realized it functioned as scholarly publisher,
thenhe should have made inquires to the publisher. Unsurprisingly, we
confirmed that Beall never contacted the publisher. Beall is acting out on his
own assumptions. This further proves that Beall is writing nothing but
incredible nonsense on his Blog. According to the publisher and SSRN, they
have established Partnership in a publishing agreement to be utilized on
SSRN platforms. The Journal is publishing on the SSRN platform and taking
full advantage in order to publish research work at the lowest possible cost.
SSRN is not a publisher for the organization.
Organization
is
a
Partner
in
publishing
with
SSRN.
(Screen shot from SSRN website)
SSRN consists of numerous Research Networks. The organization is a partner
in publishing and utilize the SSRN platform to publish Journal articles. Bealls
claims are bogus, ridiculous and misleading.
145
The 264,000+ authors who have contributed their research to SSRN have
trusted their intellectual output. SSRN continues to invest substantial
resources in providing a responsive, reliable, and scalable platform to deliver
services to users. SSRN's objective is to provide worldwide distribution of
research to authors and their readers and to facilitate communication among
them at the lowest possible cost. The vast majority of papers in the SSRN
eLibrary are downloadable at no charge. In addition, SSRN provides free
subscriptions to all of their abstracting e-Journals to users in developing
countries on request.
Therefore, we have added Jeffrey Beall to our list as a predatory blogger.
(2) Bealls Criteria
Beall did not see authors from Country of publisher.
Our Analysis
This is a most ridiculous and immature reason to include Journals to his
blacklist and as such Beall is providing a laugh to academic world. Many
authors from the publishers country contributed to the Journal. This will
further establish Beal as a predatory Blogger and nothing more.
Therefore, we have added Jeffrey Beall to our list as a predatory blogger
(1) Bealls Criteria
The organization prominently refers to itself as a Non Political and Non
Religious Foundation, yet there is no evidence that it is actually a foundation.
It does not claim to be non-profit and may in fact be a for-profit entity. Also,
the name of this organization seems to steal some legitimacy from the
146
agency that was formerly called the Canadian International Development

Agency and from the province itself.
Jeffrey Beall : Predatory psychic

Our Analysis
We contacted the publisher to obtain more information.
The Organization is a non profit, non-governmental organization founded
in 2001 and registered in Ontario, Canada with registration #: 1673435. The
Organization does not state that it is a foundation. The Organization says it
does not represent any political or religious group, and it is clearly posted
on the website. It is highly questionable how Beall determined the
organizations internal functions and activities without affiliating to it and
without contacting them. The agency was founded in 2001 almost 15 years
ago. In 2014, the Canadian International Development Agency transformed
into a newer organization operating under the ministry of foreign affairs,
trade and development Canada. The publisher has been operating since
2001. Bealls claims are bogus and misleading.
We now conclude that Beall is not only a predatory Blogger but also a
predatory psychic, and we have henceforth added Jeffrey Beall to our list.
147
Beall acting as a mouthpiece

We are grateful to you for bringing such a serious and funny matter to our
notice by your blog. While going through the matter deeply, we have
observed that it is a framework created by profit making commercial
organizations belonging to corporate world with intention to discourage
Open Access Journals and Mr. J. Beall, who is acting as a mouthpiece of
group.
Mr. J. Beall is mere a librarian [whose authenticity is fully questionable] having
dubious trustworthiness. He has nothing to do with Research World. There
is heaven and hell difference between a researcher and a librarian. A librarian
has his own limitations and his knowledge regarding research is shallow and
misguiding.
Just before a decade or so, when internet/latest computer technology was
not so much advanced or familiar, we could not even dream or imagine that
there could be concept of Open Access Journal. There was only one option
available to readers/researchers i.e. print version / subscribed journals and
hence there was only one tool available i.e. Impact Factor to rank journal
which was based on citation factor only. This has enabled to convert
Research Journal Publishers to Commercial Capitalists resulting
commercial turnovers in millions of dollars. These Commercial Capitalists
started to utilize librarians by paying huge commissions to boost their
business, earn profits in manifold and to remain worlds champion in
research community. Librarians were also very happy to have multiple source
of illegal income at the cost of readers.
Now Open Access Journals are most popular and preferred by everyone
belonging to research community due to internet and advancement of other
148
computer technology which has acted as stumbling rock on the way of illegal
moneymakers. This has resulted unbearable financial losses to all people
belonging to Commercial Capitalists group including librarians and they
have become rivals of Open Access Journals. They are trying their best to
discourage Open Access Journals and leaving no stone unturned to throw
this advance technology by playing dirty tricks.
Mr. J. Beall is representing old tradition mafia i.e. commercial capitalists and
his blogs and list is fictitious. Such people are purely selfish and moneyminded who are really a threat to Novel Research activity and community.
They can take any nasty steps to earn money.
The list displayed by Mr. J. Beall is totally fabricated and includes the names
of ONLY Open Access Journals and he is declaring almost all Open Access
Journals as fake without having any evidences. So called open access journals
in which only title or abstract is available but one has to buy journal to read
the paper, are not included in his list.
Presently, everyone belonging to genuine research community prefers open
access and discards old tradition which is observed in various research
papers and blogs.
Beall's list seems to be so comical that we even did not bother to reply him.
It is well known and is also written by him that he always takes a Birdseye
view of any journal. He never goes for detailed investigation. Its very easy
to register on WordPress blogging and start blaming on whats happening
on surrounding ecosystem.
Many of the researchers even think that he just dances on the fingers of
Nature/Elsevier/Other big names. He should recall his morale ethics and
149
understand that if a shop is small (not as big as Walmart) then it directly

doesn't mean its fake. It is also important to notice that how just a 'librarian'
(He has nothing to do with actual research) can conduct research journals
investigations without any assistance. He should reveal his background that
who is sponsoring him. It can be easily understood that he is helping those
"Closed Cabin" companies because their commission in Library subscription
is being targeted by open access journals. Thats why 99% percent of existing
Open Access Journals are listed in his so called "funny list" and he is targeting
Open Access Journals only.
Mr. J. Beall is neither a critic nor a sufferer but he is a having intentions to
earn money through malpractice/dirty tricks. The list displayed by him is itself
a fraudulent and baseless.
However, lets unite and as are planning to take suitable stringent legal
actions against Mr. Beall for showing our name in his list of fake journals
mischievously if he does not apologize publicly and withdraw his allegation.
We are really thankful to you for bringing such a serious conspiracy against
us in our knowledge.
150
Overall Analysis
Bealls blog includes this statement under each discussion: All comments
are subject to moderation, including removal. This in itself is certainly
acceptable because some moderation is necessary. Also SCIRP has published
its Blog Policy
August Von Pettenkofen. Mit 26 Netztonatzungen Nach Werken Des
Kunstlers
. SCIRP had heard however, comments politely written and well argued (but
against Bealls position) never made it online. It is hard to prove comments
get deleted by Beall. Comments could just get lost. Probability of
this scenario is low if it happens several times in a row, as it did. Luckily, here
is written evidence. Joel Kinnamann reports: My comments went through
initially. When I checked again today, I noticed that all my comments are
gone. I can only assume that Mr Beall deleted them. This is how it happened:
I posted a comment to ask if Jeff has further evidence to back up the claim
As a response by Mr Beall, this comment was removed along with my
other comments.
Controversy
about
Bealls
List
starts
already
with the
wording predatory open access publisher. As former Springer Publisher
Jan Velterop put it using such a term as predatory is asking for trouble if
malicious intent cant be proven. To question the journals prestige is one
thing, but an almost criminal accusation quite another. (Poynder 2013) Even
151
Beall himself states: In many cases, the predatory publishers are not doing
anything illegal.(Elliot 2012
Wir sind die Wahnsinnigen: Joschka Fischer und seine Frankfurter Gang
) The term predatory open access publisher is used predominantly in the
USA. In Europe e.g. at OASPA or DOAJ use of the term is carefully avoided.
Lars Bjoernshauge from DOAJ derives based on a dictionary definition: A
predatory publisher can then be described as a publisher who intends to
injure or exploit others for personal gain or profit. (Bjoernshauge 2014). The
tem predatory was also challenged on Wikipedia Talk.
Beall was asked could you please clarify the difference between potential,
possible, or probable predatory publishers, for instance a potential or
possible would not have same detrimental effects as if confirmed? In the
answer, Beall did not clarify the difference between potential and
confirmed. Beall continues to remain vague about what is apparently
wrong with publishers on his list. Important for him seems to be to
stigmatizes publishers. In case he may get an innocent publisher on his list,
he can easily back off saying: It was only a possibly predatory publisher.
Bealls list consists only of links to the publishers. Beall claims he has done
the evaluation of publishers in accordance with his criteria, but he does not
give any kind of evaluation from which it would be possible to determine
why a publisher is on his list.
Bealls criteria (2nd edition) are negative criteria. They list the bad things
publishers could possibly do. Criteria fall into 2 major groups Primary Criteria
(predatory criteria) with 4 sub groups and Secondary Criteria which are not
further grouped. The number of criteria are given below in brackets. There
are 25 Primary Criteria and 23 Secondary Criteria. Beall does not specify how
his criteria are applied. We can only assume the toughest measure is applied:
To be found guilty of already one of the Primary Criteria will get a publisher
on Bealls list. To be found guilty of Secondary Criteria has no effect with
respect to getting on the list because Secondary Criteria are introduced with
152
The following practices are considered to be reflective of poor journal

standards and, while they do not equal predatory criteria, potential authors
should give due consideration to these items. In an e-mail Beall was asked
how his criteria are applied. Beall answered the e-mail with respect to other
questions, but did not respond to the question about the application of his
criteria.
Bealls Criteria
1. Primary Criteria (25)
1. Editor and Staff (7)
2. Business Management (5)
3. Integrity (7)
4. Other Criteria (6)
2. Secondary Criteria(23)
They are reflecting ,,poor journal standards , while they do not equal
predatory criteria. potential authors should give due consideration to these
items prior to manuscript submissions.
Some of the criteria are questionable.
Questionable Primary Criteria (predatory criteria)
1.2.3) Depends on author fees as the sole and only means of operation with
no alternative, long-term business plan for sustaining the journal through
augmented income sources. Open questions: Is it necessary to publish the
long-term business plan online? How many years of successful existence of
a publisher will imply the business plan can sustain the journal? Why is it not
allowed if a journal is successful on author fees as the only means?
1.3.3) The journal falsely uses some made up measure (e.g. view factor),
feigning international standing. Debate: It is custom to show number of
views and downloads with online journal articles. If showing these numbers
helps feigning international standing remains highly subjective.
1.4.3) Operate in a Western country chiefly for the purpose of functioning
as a vanity press for scholars in a developing country. Open questions:
153
Corporations work globally. When does a company operate in a Western

country? When is it chiefly for what purpose? How is vanity press defined?
What is the distinction between developing country and Western country
about in the first place? Remark: Criterion seems a little arrogant and written
from a Western perspective.
1.4.5) Publish papers that are obvious pseudo-science. Remark: This
seems to be the criterion Beall chiefly works with when no other criteria are
at hand. It is always possible to label a paper pseudo-science. When is it
obvious? For whom is it obvious? Beall (2013)indicates what this could
mean for him: Some of these ideas include issues relating to sea-level rise,
anthropogenic global warming. These are issues others would call
mainstream science. We can also take Bealls own extensive publications in
the LIBRARY JOURNAL about topics ranging from astronomy, geography,
medicine, meteorology to space science. Maybe everything below that level
of scientific novelty and rigor is defined as pseudo-science.
Questionable Secondary Criteria
2.3) The publisher publishes journals that are excessively
broad. Remark: Beall (2013): Predatory publishers discovered the
megajournal model by copying successes like PLOS ONE. All megajournals
are automatically dubious for Beall.
2.5) The publisher requires transfer of copyright and retains copyright on
journal content. Or the publisher requires the copyright transfer upon
submission of manuscript. Remark: This means that nearly all subscriptionbased journal publishers engage in questionable practices.
2.8) The publisher engages in excessive use of spam email to solicit
manuscripts or editorial board memberships. Open questions: When is it
excessive? When is it spam? E.g. in the USA, Unsolicited Commercial Emails (UCE) are legal as long as they adheres to 3 basic types of compliance
defined in the CAN-SPAM Act.
154
2.9) The publishers officers use email addresses that end in .gmail.com,
yahoo.com some other free email supplier Remark: The connection with
journal quality is unclear.
2.20) The publisher or its journals are not listed in standard periodical
directories or are not widely cataloged in library databases. Remark: not
widely needs to be specified more. It takes some time to get cataloged. This
has to be kept in mind when assessing startup journals
2.22) The publisher uses text on the publishers main page that describes
the open access movement and then foists the publisher as if the publisher
is active in fulfilling the movements values and goals. Remark: Everyone
who is publishing quality OA can be seen as part of the movement. The
criterion is hence unclear. Its evaluation is subjective.
UPDATE 0n 2015-01-06: Bealls criteria (3rd edition) got published on 201501-01 including small changes and additions. With respect to the questionable
criteria from above: 1.2.3 got deleted. 2.5 only applies now when APC have to
be paid. A new questionable criterion (next to last): There is little or no
geographic diversity among the authors of articles in one or more of the
publishers journals Remark: A national journal can well be scientific. Question:
Does this also apply to purely US journals? Remark: In this criterion we see a
general problematic logic used by Beall. His verdict from one journal is
transferred to the publisher and back to all journals of the publisher. Why
punish other journals at the publisher for what happens with one journal?
SCIRP and its journals are set up such that they are not "guilty" of any of
Beall's criteria.
Look through SCIRPs website to check for yourself (as long as the evaluation
is not on this blog).
Publishers can appeal if they think they should not be included on the list.
The email will be forwarded to a four-member advisory board. It is not
transparent who is on the advisory board. The only case reported so far
was Hindawi getting off the list. With this in mind, it does no make much
155
sense to appeal. We learn: Either Beall takes a publisher off the list by himself
or nothing will happen.
Bealls criteria got changed little from the first edition to the second edition.
The criteria were discussed on his blog primarily when they were initially
published as first edition.
Other Peoples Analysis
Many very critical comments can be found under Bealls posts of the
criteria. David Solomon
Frauen laufen anders: Ihr Laufbuch fr mehr Anmut und Kraft, eine schne
Figur, Glck und Genuss
, a professor in the department of medicine at Michigan State University and
a founding member of OASPA concludes his comment with respect to
Bealls criteria: I think you [Beall] have made your point but it is either time
to do something constructive or quit this nonsense. More detailed
comments: Lars Juhl Jensen
Die Persnliche Chronik, in 366 Bdn., 10. Mrz
: Comment; Dirk Pons: Comment.
Beall acting as prosecutor, judge and jury on whos predatory and whos
not Recent posts have made it clear that Bealls own criteria are all that
matter: Hes the one-man authority on predatory but only predatory OA
publishing.
Remarkably,
hundreds
if
not thousands of librarians and others seem to take Bealls word as gospel.
(Crawford 2014a)
Bjoernshauge (2014) about Bealls list:
Maintained by one (1) person, a serials librarian
with remarkable ignorance about just serials
who explicitly dislike OA and
operates as prosecutor, judge and jury
156
My primary conclusion is that Bealls lists constitute a sideshow full of

distorting mirrors, having little or nothing to do with OA as a whole except
to serve as a platform for Beall to take potshots at OA. I believe the lists
should be ignored. (Crawford 2014b)
SCIRPs Initiative
No matter if justified or not, Bealls critique has initiated activities in publishers
pursuit for continous improvements. SCIRP has invited Beall to come to
Wuhan to SCIRPs offices and Principal Place of Business. Maybe a discussion
over coffee or tea will make a difference.
what beall really thinks about open access publishing
Bealls tripleC Article
There is a famous publication where Beall speaks out what he really thinks
about Open Access publishing:
BEAL, Jeffrey, 2013: The Open-Access Movement is Not Really about OpenAccess. tripleC : Communication, Capitalism & Critique, vol. 11, no. 2 (2013),
pp.
589-597
[non
peer-reviewd
comment].
Available
from: http://triplec.at/index.php/tripleC/article/view/525
It is interesting to read in this publication. The best pieces get quoted here:
I am an academic crime fighter.
(Compare with the title of this blog post!)
I am here to set the record straight.
predatory publishers, the focus of my research
The open-access movement is a failed social movement and a false messiah,
but its promoters refuse to admit this.
The open-access movement is a Euro-dominant one, a neo-colonial attempt
to cast scholarly communication policy according to the aspirations of a
cliquish minority of European collectivists.
This kind of [OA] movement, a movement to replace a free market with an
artificial and highly regulated one, rarely succeeds. In fact, the gold openaccess model actually incentivizes corruption, which speed the path to failure.
157
The open-access movement is really about anti-corporatism.

The real goal of the open access movement is to kill off the for-profit publishers
and make scholarly publishing a cooperative and socialistic enterprise.
the open-access movement isnt really about making content open-access; its
really about shutting down journal publishers.
Virtually all the publishers and journals on my lists have devoted no resources
to digital preservation nor do they have a business plan or strategy for it.
Open-access advocates are polemics; they have an us versus them mentality
and see traditional publishers as the bad guys.
They do not respect the freedom of the press when the free press doesnt
adopt their collectivist values.
OA advocates want to make collective everything and eliminate private
business
OA advocates have a large portfolio of mutual funds in their retirement
account.
OA advocates have high-salaried comfortable positions.
Criticism of Bealls tripleC Article
So much about Bealls campaign. If you now wonder: Something is awkward
here, only I do not know exactly what. Read the rebuttal from Bivens-Tatum
(2014). The bottom line from this rebuttal is:
the argument [from Beall] fails because the sweeping generalizations with
no supporting evidence render it unsound.
argument fails because its improperly distributed terms when in syllogistic
Expeditionen ins dunkelste Wien: Meisterwerke der Sozialreportage
form render it invalid.
Beall was also criticized for his views by Esposito (2013) and Eisen (2013).
does beall publish open access in accordance with his own criteria?
We make the test based on the journal tripleC: Communication, Capitalism
& Critique. Beall published in this Open Access journal as detailed above.
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The journal does not charge author fees. Beall supports journals when
publication costs [are] supported by volunteer work and benevolent funders
and adds: but its not sustainable The only truly successful model that I
have seen is the traditional publishing model. (Elliot 2012)
tripleC fails on some of Bealls Primary Criteria (predatory criteria):
Fails on 1.1.1: The publisher is identified as the editor of the one journal
published.
Fails on 1.2.1: Demonstrates a lack of transparency in publishing
operations because it does not declare where the money is coming
from to run the journal.
Fails on 1.2.3: The journal publishes no business plan (see also 1.2.1)
Fails on 1.4.4: Does no copyediting. It asks authors to use the layout
template and to take full responsibility for their own proofreading.
Critical observations in line with Bealls Secondary Criteria:
The journal does not use DOIs.
The journal confuses copyright and reuse rights: Contributors to
tripleC retain rights in their works because we use a (by-nc-nd) Creative
Commons license.
The journal does not specify the CC license correctly in the PDF.
The publisher lacks a published article retraction policy.
If Beall is so critical about Open Access journals, how can it be that he
overlooks so many points from his criteria when selecting a journal
for his own Open Access publication?
any help from oaspa or doaj?
OASPA could be viewed as little more than a cosy club of predominantly
Western-based publishers more focused on maintaining their dominance of
the scholarly publishing industry than embracing the new publishers that are
emerging from the developing world, or of helping them to learn about and
conform to world-class scholarly publishing standards. Certainly, OASPA has
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demonstrated little interest in addressing the problems posed by predatory

publishers. (Poynder 2013)
OASPA was asked to start a discussion with a blog post about blacklisting
versus whitelisting, but could not make up its mind to do so.
new [DOAJ] management will presumably need to remove some of the
journals in its database. This would likely spark further guerrilla warfare, or at
least angry exchanges and bad feeling. Moreover, it would still appear to
leave OA publishers in an undesirable binary world of good and bad. Either
they are in the DOAJ, or they are out of it. And since the DOAJ is a Westernbased initiative, suspicions will surely remain that the process is
discriminatory. (Poynder 2013)
DOAJ is taking a clear position: Our ambition: DOAJ to be the white list! and
make other lists superfluous that is: if a journal is in the DOAJ it complies
with accepted standards(Bjoernshauge 2014)
Didaktik: Elf Einsprche gegen den didaktischen Betrieb
Lets see if there is help from OASPA and DOAJ and an objective and fair
evaluation. Lets hope for it!
conclusions and recommendations
Bealls has never obtained formal training in doing self-guided research. He
is doing his research as an autodidact. Based on his article in tripleC (Beal
2013) Bivens-Tatum (2014)proved that Beal is not capable (or willing) of
logical conclusions. His criteria to assess publishers are questionable. Beall
does not specify how his criteria are applied to come to a verdict about a
publisher. His own application of his criteria with respect to publishers is nonexistent (or hidden). His verdict predatory is libel for the vast majority of
publishers on his list who are not guilty of criminal activities. At the same time
Beall is mocking also all hard working authors, reviewers, editors, and staff
of all decent publishers on his list.
Publishers have a responsibility to protect the reputation of their authors,
reviewers, editors, and staff. A lawsuit against Beall will be complicated,
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lengthy, and costly. He will point to the Freedom of Speech. Although

defamation is not covered by Freedom of Speech, Beall will probably get
away with his insertion potential, possible, or probable before predatory
scholarly open-access publishers.
For reasons as given above, SCIRP is asking all academics at universities, in
research labs, in industry, and in scholarly publishing to stick to these rules:
Replace the term predatory by questionable when referring to
publishers which are not fulfilling your minimum requirements.
Do not refer to Bealls blacklisting criteria
Allgemeines Knstlerlexikon (AKL): Dunlop - Ebers
. Instead refer to the whitelisting criteria
Lavender of the Provence 2016: Kalender 2016 (What a Wonderful World)
established by DOAJ, OASPA, COPE, and WAME.
Do not refer to Bealls blacklist of publishers and journals. Be patient
and wait for DOAJs whitelist. In the mean time look at the whitelisting
criteria and decide for yourself.
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162
Jeffrey Beall : Predatory Blogger
Bealls Litter
By MICHAEL EISEN | Published: DECEMBER 14, 2013
Jeffrey Beall, a librarian at the University of Colorado Denver, has come to
some fame in science publication circles for highlighting the growing number
of predatory open access publishers and curating a list of them. His work
has provided a useful service to people seeking to navigate the sometimes
confusing array of new journals many legitimate, many scammers that
have popped up in the last few years.
Unfortunately, as he has gained some degree of notoriety, it turns out he
isnt just trying to identify bad open access publishers he is actively trying
to discredit open access publishing in general. There were signs of this
before, but any lingering doubt that Beall is a credible contributor to the
discourse on science publishing was erased with an article he published last
week. The piece is so ill-informed and angry that I cant really describe it. So
Im just going to reproduce his article here (it was, ironically, published in an
open access journal with a Creative Commons license allowing me to do so),
along with my comments
The Open-Access Movement is Not Really about Open Access
Jeffrey Beall
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Auraria Library, University of Colorado Denver, Denver, Colorado,

USA,jeffrey.beall@ucdenver.edu, http://scholarlyoa.com
Abstract
While the open-access (OA) movement purports to be about making
scholarly content open-access, its true motives are much different. The OA
movement is an anti-corporatist movement that wants to deny the freedom
of the press to companies it disagrees with.
It is rather amusing to hear open access described as anti-corporatist seeing
as the primary push for open access has come from corporations such as
PLOS and BioMed Central, a for profit company recently purchased by one
of the worlds largest publishing houses.
The movement is also actively imposing onerous mandates on researchers,
mandates that restrict individual freedom. To boost the open-access
movement, its leaders sacrifice the academic futures of young scholars and
those from developing countries, pressuring them to publish in lower-quality
open-access journals. The open-access movement has fostered the creation
of numerous predatory publishers and standalone journals, increasing the
amount of research misconduct in scholarly publications and the amount of
pseudo-science that is published as if it were authentic science.
Introduction
If you ask most open-access (OA) advocates about scholarly publishing, they
will tell you that we are in a crisis situation. Greedy publishers have ruined
scholarly communication, theyll claim, placing work they obtained for free
behind expensive paywalls, locking up research that the world needs to
progress.
Yes. We will say that. Because it is completely, and unambiguously true.
The OA zealots will explain how publishers exploit scholars, profiting from
the research, manuscripts, and peer review that they provide for free to the
publishers, who then turn around and sell this research back to academic
libraries in the form of journal subscriptions.
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Again. Completely true.

They will also tell you that Elsevier, the worst of the worst among publishers,
actually created bogus journals to help promote a large pharmaceutical
companys products. Imagine the horror. Because of this, we can never trust
a subscription publisher again. Ever.
Elsevier did do this. But this has never been part of the argument for open
access.
Moreover, the advent of the Internet means that we really dont need
publishers anymore anyway. We can self-publish our work or do it
cooperatively. Libraries can be the new publishers. All we have to do is
upload our research to the Internet and our research will be published, and
the big publishers will wither up and die freeing up academic library budgets
and creating a just and perfect system of scholarly publishing.
Yup. Thats pretty much it. Of course its not that simple. Nobody thinks this
new system will just happen organically. I and many others have proposed
systems to fund publishing and manage peer review without subscriptionbased journals.
The story those promoting OA tell is simple and convincing. Unfortunately,
the story is incomplete, negligent, and full of bunk. Im an academic crime
fighter (Bohannon 2013b). I am here to set the record straight.
Phew. Im glad someones on the case.
The logic behind the open-access movement is so obvious, simple, and
convincing that no one could disagree with it, except that OA advocates
dont tell the whole story. Open access will grant free access to research to
everyone, including research-starved people in the Global South who have
never read a scholarly article before. How could anyone oppose that? It will
also allow everyone who has ever had the frustration of hitting a paywall
when seeking a research article to access virtually everything for free, or so
they claim.
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What the Open-Access Movement is Really About

The open-access movement is really about anti-corporatism. OA advocates
want to make collective everything and eliminate private business, except for
small businesses owned by the disadvantaged.
I dont even know what to say about this. Forget about the self-delusion that
leads Beall to think he can intuit what my and other OA advocates intentions
have been. Its just a factually ludicrous statement. The OA movement was
born, and continues to be driven, by corporations most of them for profit
corporations who are seeking to build businesses that better serve their
customers. Does Beall think Google is anti-corporatist and anti-profit because
they are trying to drive small newspapers out of business?
They dont like the idea of profit, even though many have a large portfolio
of mutual funds in their retirement accounts that invest in for-profit
companies.
So not only are we anti-corporatist, were bad investors too?
Salaries of academics in the United States have increased dramatically in the
past two decades, especially among top professors and university
administrators. OA advocates dont have a problem with this, and from their
high-salaried comfortable positions they demand that for-profit, scholarly
journal publishers not be involved in scholarly publishing and devise ways
(such as green open-access) to defeat and eliminate them.
No. I and other open access proponents see a publishing system that is
expensive, slow and ineffective and that needlessly denies access to countless
people in the US and elsewhere who would benefit directly and indirectly from
access to the scholarly literature. Yes, we oppose publishers who employ the
outdated subscription model. But not because they are corporations. Its
because what they are doing is bad for science and bad for the public.
Disagree with that assessment if you will, but please spare me the anticorporatist garbage.
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The open-access movement is a negative movement rather than a positive

one. It is more a movement against something than it is a movement for
something. Some will respond that the movement is not against anything; it
is just for open access. But a close analysis of the discourse of the OA
advocates reveals that the real goal of the open access movement is to kill
off the for-profit publishers and make scholarly publishing a cooperative and
socialistic enterprise. Its a negative movement.
From day 1, open access has been about a very specific alternative to the
existing subscription model. Yes, by definition every effort to replace one
business model with another will always have a negative aspect to it. But to
deny that there is a positive aspect to OA is silly. What is PLOS? What is BMC?
This kind of movement, a movement to replace a free market with an artificial
and highly regulated one, rarely succeeds.
The current publishing system a free market? How can Beall, a librarian for 23
years, say this with a straight face? There is no free market. Today scientists
are all buy compelled by both real and imagined expectations of hiring,
funding and promotion committees to publish their work in a small number
of elite journals. These journals then effectively have a monopoly on proving
access to content which scientists need to do their work. And they use their
monopoly power to sell back this content to universities and other research
institutions and massively inflated prices. There is little choice on the part of
researchers to not participate in the system. And little choice on the part of
institutions to opt out of subscriptions. This is not a free market that anyone
who actually understands or cares about free markets would recognize.
In fact, the gold open-access model actually incentivizes corruption, which
speed the path to failure. The traditional publishing model, where publishers
lived or died on subscriptions, encouraged quality and innovation. Publishers
always had to keep their subscribers happy or they would cancel.
Really? Quality and innovation? Twenty years since the birth of the modern
internet scholarly journals basically publish electronic versions of their old print
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journals that are nearly identical in format, layout and content to their preinternet editions. And this stasis actually represents progress compared to
what has happened with article submission. It used to be easy to submit a
paper to a journal. You printed it out and put it in the mail. Now it takes hours
to go through web portals that are more complicated and less efficient
than healtcare.gov.
Indeed, scholarly publishing is one of the least innovative industries on the
planet. And why? Precisely because they have absolutely no incentive to
innovate because there is not a free market in subscriptions. Indeed, the
structure of the industry actively discourages innovation because the people
who make the important decisions about where to publish their articles
researchers are not the people who pay the bills for journals. I have watched
over a decade of efforts on the part of the University of California libraries to
cut costs by canceling subscriptions, and not once has published innovation
every come up in discussions. Why? Because authors dont give a hoot about
innovation they care about getting their work in the most high-profile
journal, and thats it.
Similarly, a movement that tries to force out an existing technology and
replace it with a purportedly better one also never succeeds. Take the
Semantic Web for example. It has many zealous advocates, and they have
been promoting it for many years. Some refer to the Semantic Web as Web
3.0. However, despite intense promotion, it has never taken off. In fact, it is
moribund. The advocates who promoted it spent a lot of time and blog
space cheerleading for it, and they spent a lot of time trashing technologies
and standards it was supposed to replace. In fact, that was what they did the
most, badmouthing existing technologies and those who supported and
used them. One example was a library standard called the MARC format.
This standard was ridiculed so much its a wonder it still even exists, yet is still
being used successfully by libraries worldwide, and the semantic web is
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dying a slow death. Open access publishing is the Semantic Web of

scholarly communication.
What a load of nonsense. Yes. The semantic web failed. But if movements to
replace existing technology with better ones never succeeded I would be
chiseling this blog post out on cave walls.
The open access movement and scholarly open-access publishing itself are
about increasing managerialism (Grayson 2013). Wherever there is
managerialism, there is an increased use of onerous management tactics,
including mandatory record keeping, rationing of resources, difficult
approval processes for things that ought to be freely allowed, and endless
committee meetings, practices that generally lead to cronyism.
Had to look managerialism up, and I still dont understand what hes talking
about. It seems like, again, Beall is operating under the patently false notion
that scholarly research and scholarly publishing are some kind of idea free
market. In reality we already operate under very strict controls tied to our
funding (he should see the paperwork tied to NIH grants), strict rationing of
resources and difficult approval processes for things that out to be freely
allowed (e.g. reading papers) as well as endless committee meetings. But I fail
to see what this has to do with publishing. And does Beall really think the
current journal system is free of cronyism??? Wake up man. Scholarly journals
are amongst the clubbiest institutions on the planet.
The traditional publishing model had the advantage of there being no
monetary transactions between scholarly authors and their publishers.
Money, a source of corruption, was absent from the author-publisher
relationship (except in the rare case of reasonable page charges levied on
authors publishing with non-profit learned societies) in the traditional
publishing model.
If you think that systems in which one group of people make the key decisions
about what to buy and another group pays the bills are the perfect way to
structure an economic system, I suggest you study military purchasing
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systems where generals decide what they want to buy and Congress just
writes a check. That works out really well. Or maybe I should let my kids decide
what kind of things we should by at the grocery or toy stores without a budget.
THIS is what the economics of scholarly publishing are like today. The system
is utterly and completely corrupt in that authors make a transaction with a
journal in which they get something valuable a citation knowing that
someone else if going to pay the bills. What on Earth do you call a system in
which a small group of people receive something of great value that they
make taxpayers pay for besides corrupt?
And, the rare case of reasonable page charges levied on authors publishing
with non-profit learned societies is just ignorant. Page charges for publishing
in subscription based journals are neither rare nor reasonable. Indeed the
page charges levied by many journals especially top tier and society journals
exceed the costs of publishing in open access journals.
Managerialism is the friend of those who want to restrict freedom and
advancement. It is a tool for creating malevolent bureaucracies and
academic cronyism. Managerialism is the logical and malevolent extension
of office politics, and it will hurt scholarly communication. Many universities
subsidize or pay completely for their faculty members article processing
charges when they submit to gold (author pays) open-access journals. The
management of the funds used to pay these charges will further corrupt
higher education. The powerful will have first priority for the money; the weak
may remain unfunded. Popular ideas will receive funding; new and
unpopular ideas, regardless of their merit, will remain unfunded. By adding
a financial component to the front end of the scholarly publishing process,
the open-access movement will ultimately corrupt scholarly publishing and
hurt the communication and sharing of novel knowledge.
Again, what world is Beall living in where unpopular ideas are littered with
funding and have journals lining up to publish them? The system we have
today in which journals compete based on their impact factor all but ensures
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that unpopular ideas are relegated to the most obscure corners of the
publishing world. One of the long-term advantages of reforming scholarly
publishing is that it will by removing the monopolistic control publishers
have today make publishing less expensive and accessible. Do we need to
be careful that we dont create a new system where only the powerful can
publish their work? Yes. But to argue that the current system isnt already
plagued by this problem is ludicrous.
The open-access movement was born of political correctness, the dogma
that unites and drives higher education.
I have been called many things in my life. But politically correct is not one of
them.
The open-access advocates have cleverly used and exploited political
correctness in the academy to work towards achieving their goals and
towards manipulating their colleagues into becoming open-access
advocates. One of the ways theyve achieved this is through the enactment
of open-access mandates. The strategy involves making very simple
arguments to faculty senates at various universities in favour of open- access
and then asking the faculties to establish the mandates. These mandates
usually require that faculty use either the gold or green models of openaccess publishing. OA advocates use specious arguments to lobby for
mandates, focusing only on the supposed economic benefits of open access
and ignoring the value additions provided by professional publishers. The
arguments imply that publishers are not really needed; all researchers need
to do is upload their work, an action that constitutes publishing, and that this
act results in a product that is somehow similar to the products that
professional publishers produce.
This is just a complete mischaracterization of open access mandates and the
discussions around them. Indeed virtually all open access mandates enacted
to date have been explicitly structured much to my chagrin so as not to
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threaten subscription based publishers. Virtually all of them contain embargo

periods, typically of a year, before works are made freely available. Most
contain opt out provisions for scholars who want to publish in journals that
are incompatible with the policy. And none contain any kind of enforcement
mechanism or penalties.
Nothing could be further from the truth, and the existence of the predatory
publishers, the focus of my research, is evidence of this. Its likely that
hundreds or even thousands of honest researchers have fallen prey to the
predatory publishers, those open-access publishers that exploit the gold
open-access model just for their own profit, pretending to be legitimate
publishing operations but actually accepting any and all submissions just for
the money. Institutional mandates feed into and help sustain predatory
publishers.
These journals are terrible and need to be eliminated. And Bealls efforts to
catalog them are an important part of this. But, while there are many such
journals, they constitute a small fraction of published papers. And by focusing
exclusively on scammy OA publishers, Beall ignores the far bigger problem of
the many subscription journals (usually run by big for-profit publishers) that
also publish more or less anything submitted to them in the name of driving
up their volumes and justifying increased subscription fees. If you are going to
blame unscrupulous OA publishers on institutional mandates, then you have
to also blame the broader publish or perish culture for bottom-feeding
subscription journals.
Thus there are conscientious scholars, trying to follow the freedom-denying
mandates imposed on them by their faculty representatives, who get tricked
into submitting their good work to bogus journals.
OR, you have conscientious scholars who believe that publishing in open
access journals is the right thing and have been tricked into submitting to
bogus journals.
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Again, I think these journals suck. I agree with Beall that we need to expose
and eliminate them. But this can very easily be done without discarding open
access publishing.
There are numerous open-access advocates who promote scholarly openaccess publishing without warning of the numerous scam publishers that
operate all around the world. I find this promotion negligent. Anyone touting
the benefits of open-access and encouraging its adoption ought also to warn
of the numerous and increasing scams that exist in the scholarly publishing
industry.
I agree with this. This is why PLOS and many other legitimate OA publishers
formed the Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association to establish a code
of conduct for OA publishers, and to create effective procedures to certify that
publishers adhere to these standards.
I believe many OA advocates ignore the known problems with scholarly
open-access publishing because they dont want to frighten people away
from it. This is the moral equivalent of selling someone a used car with the
knowledge the engine block is cracked, without informing the buyer.
Thats a ridiculous metaphor. Its not like selling a used car with a hidden
defect. Its more like encouraging people to invest their money without
warning them about Nigerian banking scams. But I agree that we should all
make people aware that there are problematic publishers and how people can
recognize them.
Most descriptions and explanations of open-access publishing are idealistic
and unrealistic. They tout the benefits but ignore the weaknesses. Many
honest scholars have been seriously victimized by predatory publishers, and
as a community we must help others, especially emerging researchers, avoid
becoming victims. Pushing open access without warning of the possible
scams is not helpful. In fact, it can be downright damaging to a scholars
career. For example, once a researcher unwittingly submits a paper to a
predatory publisher, it is usually quickly published. Sometimes this fast
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publishing is the researchers first clue that something is amiss. But by then
its too late, as once a paper is published in a predatory journal, no legitimate
journal will be interested in publishing it. When this happens to early career
researchers, it can have long-term negative effects on their careers.
Again, this is throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Yes, this is a problem,
but its a small, and easily fixable one. Saying we should discard OA publishing
because of these bad actors is like saying we should abandon Obamacare
because some insurers have tried to exploit it in dishonest ways.
I have observed that the advocates promoting open access do not want to
hear any criticisms of the movement of the open-access publishing models,
and they quickly attack anyone who questions the open-access or highlights
its weaknesses. Open-access advocates are polemics; they have an us
versus them mentality and see traditional publishers as the bad guys.
I have always answered questions about PLOS and OA publishing honestly,
and have spoken out repeatedly about what I see are its weaknesses and
where it has not achieved its potential. However, I am also quick to point out
the far greater weaknesses in the current system, and the often erroneous
statements made against OA publishing.
In April 2008 [sic it was 2013], an article about predatory publishers
appeared in the New York Times (Kolata 2013). The article described
predatory publishers and predatory conferences. Immediately upon
publication of the article, OA advocates sprang into action, questioning the
article and its reporting. Numerous blog posts appeared, many attempting
to cast doubt on the article. One perhaps slightly paranoid blog post was
entitled Did Commercial Journals Use the NYT to Smear Open Access?
(Bollier 2013). The fact is the predatory publishers do cast a negative light on
all of scholarly open-access publishing.
I do not agree with this at all. These publishers cast a negative light on those
publishers. Most researchers know who the legitimate OA publishers are, and
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I have seen no evidence that the existence of these scam publishers has hurt
PLOSs reputation at all. In fact, it seems like it has had the opposite effect,
with researchers gaining an appreciation for the degree of rigor PLOS puts
into its review system.
I notice that Beall isnt arguing that the existence of scam conferences casts a
negative light on all scholarly conferences. Why is this? They use the same
business model. Its sometimes hard to tell which ones are good and which
are bad? Is it perhaps because the logical connection hes trying to draw
between bad OA journals and all OA journals is bad.
The gold open-access model in particular is flawed; there are only a few
publishers that employ the model ethically, and many of these are cutting
corners and lowering their standards because they dont have to fear losing
subscribers.
It would be helpful if he were specific about who he thinks is being unethical
and who is cutting corners.
On October 4, 2013, Science magazine published an article by John
Bohannon (2013b) that related what the author learned from a sting
operation he conducted on open-access publishers. The sting operation,
which used my list of predatory publishers and the Directory of Open Access
Journals as sources of journals, found that many journals accepted papers
without even doing a peer review, and many did a peer review and accepted
the unscientific article Bohannon baited them with anyway.
Here again, the open-access advocates came out swinging, breaking into
their us versus them stance, and attacking Bohannon, sometimes
personally, for not including subscription journals in his study. Subscription
journals were not part of his research question, however, but that didnt stop
the many strident critics of Bohannons work, who acted almost instinctively
according to their Manichaean view of traditional and open-access
publishing. He didnt need to gather data about traditional publishers; that
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wasnt what he was studying. If you are counting cars, you dont need to
count airplanes as a control. Also, OA advocates often brag about the
continually-increasing number of open-access outlets, predicting that
traditional publishers will soon be eclipsed. So if the traditional publishers are
nearly extinct, why bother to study them?
The attack on Bohannon was carried out with a near religious fervour. OA
advocates will do anything to protect the image of open-access. They dont
care that the number of predatory publishers is growing at a nearrelativistic speed; all they care about is that public perception of scholarly
open access be kept positive. Bohannon was interviewed by The Scholarly
Kitchen contributor Phil Davis on November 12, 2013. Summarizing the
reaction of the open-access advocate community to his sting, Bohannon said,
I learned that I have been too naive and idealistic about scientists. I assumed that the results [of my study] would speak for themselves. There
would be disagree- ments about how best to interpret them, and what to
do about them, but it would be a civil discussion and then a concerted,
rational, community effort to address the problems that the results reveal.
But that is far from what happened. Instead, it was 100% political and many
scientists that I respected turned out to be the most cynical political
operators of all (Bohannon 2013a).
Interpreting the reaction to Bohannons sting article publisher Kent Anderson,
the president of the Society for Scholarly Publishing and former chief editor
of the blog The Scholarly Kitchen commented, dont expect rational, calm,
reasoned assessments from the likes of Eisen, Solomon, or others [open
access advocates]. Theyve demonstrated they are ideologues that are quite
willing to attack anyone who they view as falling outside their particular view
of OA orthodoxy. How they are able to continue to deny what is actually
happening is beyond me (Anderson 2013).
I wont speak for others, but since Beall calls me out by name, I would like to
point out that on my blog and in a forum sponsored by Science, I accepted
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the results of Bohannons story and said repeatedly that these journals are a
problem. However, Beall and Bohannons efforts to paint his article as an
innocent exploration of a problem in publishing are absurd. I wont rehash the
whole debate here. But go back and look at the press release and the things
Bohannon and others wrote after the article appeared they were clearly
spinning the article in order to get in wider attention. And, of course, OA
advocates responded in kind.
When he served as the chief editor of The Scholarly Kitchen blog, Anderson
was a frequent target of criticism from open-access zealots. I think this
analysis from him sums up the attitude and actions of open access advocates
quite well: The attacks weve received when weve talked about OA have
been surprisingly vitriolic and immature, even when weve said some things
that were intended to point out issues the OA community might want to
think about, in a helpful way. Some people really have a hair-trigger about
anything short of complete OA cheerleading (Anderson 2012).
Anyone who follows Anderson and The Scholarly Kitchen know that he is on
a years-long crusade to discredit open access publishing. I dont know anyone
who takes him seriously anymore. Yes, his posts inspire heated responses.
Thats because he is a classic internet troll whose posts with a selective use
of facts that would make Fox News proud, and consistent questioning of the
wisdom and intentions of open access proponents are crafted to piss people
off. And like more trolls, he succeeds in eliciting the kind of antagonistic
comments on which he seems to get off. Its too bad, because amidst the anti
open-access rhetoric, Anderson can be coherent, sometimes makes good
points, and has an interesting perspective on publishing.
One of the arguments that OA advocates use is that a lot of research is
publically funded; therefore, the public deserves access to the research for
free. This argument is true more in Europe more so than in the United States
because collectivism is more institutionalized there. However, there are a lot
of things that are publically funded that are not free, both in Europe and
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North America. Public transportation is one example. If OA advocates stuck

to their principles, they would also be demanding that all publically owned
buses and trains are free to all users. Their argument also completely ignores
all the ways that publishers add value to information. This is done by
selecting the best research for publication, managing the peer review
process, managing ethics, maintaining servers, digital preservation, and the
like. There are plenty of government-funded things that are not free,
especially things to which the private sector adds value.
Beall is being willfully disingenuous here. His main critique about open access
publishing is that the direct exchange of money between scientists and
publishers corrupts the process. But then he accuses open access advocates
of wanting publishing to be free. What does he think that OA publishing fees
are for?
From the very beginning I and most other OA advocates have explicitly
pointed out that publishing has costs, and that those costs need to be covered
by the research community. The goal of OA publishing is not to deny the costs,
but rather to pay for them in a different way. Science funders can pay a fee
for access (as is currently done) , they can pay a fee to publish (as PLOS and
other OA publishers do), or they could just subsidize the whole thing with no
transaction cost (as eLife does this the model I ultimately favor).
For what its worth, I do think buses and trains should be free for all users. This
would clearly accomplish an important public good reducing the use of cars
whose economic and non-economic benefits would far far outweigh the
costs (see [1][2][3][4]).
It is particularly ironic that Beall a Librarian rails so much against
government subsidies, since his entire profession is based on the idea that
governments should completely subsidize the costs of access to information.
Does he think you should pay a fee every time you check out a book? Or ask
a librarian a question? Maybe he does but its awfully convenient that he
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ignores this example, since Beall would almost certainly be out of a job if the
state of Colorado applied his logic to their library system.
Building on this idea, I do find that the open-access movement is a Eurodominant one, a neo-colonial attempt to cast scholarly communication
policy according to the aspirations of a cliquish minority of European
collectivists. Early funding for the open-access movement, specifically the
Budapest Open Access Initiative, came from George Soros, known for his
extreme left-wing views and the financing of their enactment as laws
(Poynder 2002).
Is there some corollary of Godwins Law in which anyone with a progressive
agenda is labeled a Communist in order to discredit them?
It may be convenient for Beall to discredit the OA movement by labeling its
advocates as European pinkos. But its an ahistorical argument. While pushes
for OA came from Europe, in the sciences at least the roots are clearly in the
US starting with arXiv, then eBiomed, PubMed Central, PLOS, the NIH
mandate, etc. I in no way want to diminish the important contributions to
OA from the rest of the world, but to label this a European movement is
ridiculous. And, having been present at the beginning, I can assure you that
collectivist arguments were never the basis for the push for OA it was always
first and foremost about making research work better.
And while George Soros did provide some early funding for BOAI. The biggest
financial boost to OA in its early years came from the Gordon and Betty Moore
Foundation. You will all know Gordon Moore as the noted socialist and anticorporatist who founded Intel.
Another inconsistency in the open-access movement is that the zealots have
been attacking scholarly journal publishers but generally ignoring scholarly
monograph publishers, even though they operate using basically the same
model, selling proprietary content to libraries. This is evidence that the openaccess movement isnt really about making content open- access; its really
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about shutting down journal publishers. Were it a truly principled movement,

it would apply its principals consistently.
The reason that journals have been the main target of OA, is that OA has
until very recently been almost entirely about the sciences, and there is
essentially no history of publishing monographs in the sciences. And, once
again, if Beall who lives off the teat of public subsidy applied his principles
consistently, he would resign his position and set up an entirely fee-for-service
library.
Some tenured open-access advocates are pressuring young scholars away
from submitting their work to traditional journals, sacrificing them to the
open-access movement. They are pressured to publish in OA journals
despite their being able to publish in more esteemed traditional journals,
which would better support their tenure cases. This pressuring helps the OA
movement because it gets an increased amount of good research published
in open- access journals, but it hurts the individuals because it weakens their
tenure dossiers. In the open-access movement, the needs of the many
outweigh the needs of the few.
OA advocates are also pressuring scientists in developing countries to
publish in OA journals, and this could hurt their careers. According to
Contreras (2012, 60), scientists in the developing world wish to publish in
prestigious venues, with the greatest likely readership. Artificially forcing
them to publish in oa journals of lesser impact could be resented and resisted,
as it would be in the industrialized world. So, OA advocates also want to
sacrifice the careers of developing-world scholars so that they can achieve
their collectivist goals.
Beall seems to assume that scholars are incapable of making their own
decisions. There is a huge difference between trying to convince people to do
something and pressuring them to do so. Only someone completely
disconnected from the academic community would think that OA advocates
are some kind of dominant power able to force people to do our bidding. In
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fact it is exactly the opposite. The dominant pressure in the system is for people
to publish in the highest impact usually subscription journals they can.
There is almost no effective pressure pushing people to OA journals.
The gold OA model is merely shifting profits from one set of publishers to
another, shifting the source of money from library subscriptions to those
funding article processing charges, such as the provosts office, a
researchers grant itself, or even the library. That is to say, the open-access
movement is dealing with the serials crisis by lowering or eliminating the
subscription charges that libraries have to pay. But the money to support
scholarly publishing has to come from somewhere. For those researchers
lucky enough to have grants, they can pay the article processing charges out
of grant money, but this means less money that they can spend on actual
research. New funding sources are needed for university researchers who
dont have grants. Thus, universities will have to initiate new funds to pay for
the article processing charges their faculty incur when they publish in gold
open-access journals. The proper distribution of these funds will require new
committees and more university bureaucracy. Of course, journals charging
APCs will charge more depending on the journals status. That is to say,
journals with higher impact factors will impose higher prices. The act of
instituting financial transactions between scholarly authors and scholarly
publishers is corrupting scholarly communication. This was one of the great
benefits of the traditional scholarly publishing system it had no monetary
component in the relationship between publishers and their authors. Adding
the monetary component has created the problem of predatory publishers
and the problem of financing author fees.
I actually mostly agree with Beall here. The APC model has serious problems
for researchers without grant funding or from poor institutions, and its
unreasonable to, in the long run, subsidize the publishing costs for these
authors by essentially taxing the fees paid by other authors. It would indeed
be a nightmare to have committees set up to decide who will get institutional
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fees, if thats the model we ultimately use. I also think the APC model keeps
prices artificially high (although far lower than the per article costs paid
today).
There is, of course, tons of money available to support publishing, as the
research community spends $10b dollars per year on publishing. If we could
magically redirect these costs to support OA publishing wed be set. But we
cant. There has to be a mechanism by which research funders (most granting
agencies and universities) pay into the system in rough proportion to their
usage of it. APCs accomplish this, but I think direct subsidy of publishers by
funding agencies makes more sense (although this too has its problems).
But lets remember that the current system has massive incentive problems
as well there is no incentive for the people who actually make the important
decisions authors deciding where to sent their papers to factor in the
economic value provided by the publisher, since the costs are born by libraries
who are usually completely disconnected from the publishing decision. And
because of this publishers have driven up their costs to the maximum level
they can squeeze out of institutions, who are often in the untenable decision
of having to choose between paying escalating costs and providing needed
access to the literature to their researchers.
Financing article processing charges will be most problematic in middleincome countries. Most non-predatory OA publishers grant fee waivers to
scholars from lower-income countries (as long as they dont submit too
many articles), but these waivers are generally not applied to many middleincome countries. Researchers in these countries are caught in a dilemma
they arent eligible for publisher-granted APC waivers, but their funding
agencies lack the funds to subsidize the publication of their works, so they
are left to fend for themselves when it comes to paying article processing
charges.
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This is also true. But again, remember that these countries are also horribly
screwed by the current system as they neither qualify for free access to
journals, nor can they afford to subscribe to them.
In the end, the best way to address this is to lower the costs of publishing as
much as possible. It is remarkable how little technology has driven down the
costs of scholarly publishing most of which involve tasks that could easily be
handled with good software (formatting manuscripts, organizing peer review,
etc) but which are now done manually. You are already seeing journals
whose costs are much, much lower (e.g. PeerJ) and I think you will see more
of a trend in this direction as publishers actually start to respond to price
pressure something that has been completely absent from the subscription
publishing world.
And now we are seeing the emergence of mega gold-open-access
publishers. Ive documented that Hindawis profit margin is higher than
Elseviers and achieves this by lowering standards (Beall 2013a). Hindawi has
eliminated the position of editor-in-chief from most of the firms over 550
journals. The company exploits Egypts high unemployment rate by paying
minimal salaries, employing college-educated staff desperate for jobs. Its an
example of the scholarly publishing industry moving offshore. Moreover,
because the journals lack editors, they have become desultory collections of
loosely-related articles on a broad topic. The editorless journals lack
coherence and vitality and function more like sterile repositories than
scholarly publications. Open-access is killing the community function of
scholarly journals, in which they served as fora for the exchange of both
formal and informal communication among colleagues in a particular field
or sub-field. Open access journals lack soul and are disconnected.
This is bunk. There are maybe a handful of subscription journals that have
any kind of real identity. They are mostly a collection of papers who have
found an appropriate level in the jockeying for impact. The society journals
that Beall speaks of so nostalgically are under threat but their enemy is not
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open access, its the impact factor. They have also been undermined by the
transformation of many societies from actual collections of peers into
organizations that are primarily journal publishers.
I also find it curious that Beall is so concerned about the plight of researchers
in the developing world in some areas, but seems to want to deny them the
right to start their own publishers. Hindawi is still trying to find its feet as a
publishers, but I have come across several extremely good articles in Hindawi
journals and I think, rather than denying them the right to exist, we should
work to encourage their development into a respected members of the
publishing community.
Open access advocates think they know better than everyone else and want
to impose their policies on others. Thus, the open access movement has the
serious side-effect of taking away others freedom from them. We observe
this tendency in institutional mandates. Harnad (2013) goes so far as to
propose a table of mandate strength, with the most restrictive pegged at
level 12, with the designation immediate deposit + performance evaluation
(no waiver option).
A social movement that needs mandates to work is doomed to fail. A social
movement that uses mandates is abusive and tantamount to academic
slavery. Researchers need more freedom in their decisions not less. How can
we expect and demand academic freedom from our universities when we
impose oppressive mandates upon ourselves?
Once again, Beall manifests a poor understanding of how academia works.
The current system is completely oppressive. While there is the illusion of
choice, in reality researchers are under intense pressure to publish in a very
narrow number of journals that effectively represent the choice between Coke
and Pepsi. Also, researchers at major universities who receive funding from
governments or foundations already operate under all sorts of mandates
most notably the requirement that they publish their work in the first place.
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Why is it okay to demand that people publish, but not okay to demand that
people have access to the published work?
Gold Open Access is Failing
In 2006, James S. E. Opolot, Ph.D., a professor at Texas Southern University
in Houston, published an article entitled The Challenges of Environmental
Crimes and Terrorism in Africa: Evidence from Eastern, Southern, and West
African Countries (Opolot 2006). The article was published in The
International Journal of African Studies, one of the journals in the portfolio
of the open-access (and predatory) publisher called Euro-Journals. One
might assume that Euro-Journals would be based in Europe, but predatory
publishers often disguise their true locations and use the names of Western
countries to make themselves appear legitimate. Euro-Journals is based in
Mauritius.
The open-access version of Professor Opolots paper has disappeared from
the Internet. Plagued by takedown requests due the high incidence of
plagiarism among its articles, Euro- Journals decided to switch the
distribution model for some of its journals to the subscription model, and it
removed all of their content from the open Internet. The publisher simply
stopped publishing the balance of its journals, and it removed all of their
content from the Internet as well. A blog post I wrote in March 2013 (Beall
2013b) showed that the publisher had 29 journals in its portfolio. Among
these, 10 became toll-access journals, and nineteen disappeared from the
Internet. Dr. Opolots paper was published in one of the journals whose
content was removed, apparently permanently, from the Internet. I expect
this process to repeat itself many times over in the coming years with other
open-access publishers.
This is the worst form of cherry-picking. Open access publishing is failing
because one open access publisher that published an insignificant number of
papers went out of business? There are huge numbers of papers being
published in open access journals (PLOS, BMC, and many others) that take
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archiving seriously. Indeed legitimate open access journals have the

advantage of having all of their contents permanently archived by the
National Library of Medicine far more stable than any journal publisher.
The open-access movement has been a blessing to anyone who has
unscientific ideas and wants to get these ideas into print. Because the
predatory publishers care very little about peer review and see it merely as
a charade that must be performed, they dont really care when pseudoscience gets published in their journals, as long as they get paid for it. In my
blog, Ive given examples of pseudo-science being published as if it were
true science. Here are three examples:
The Theory of Metarelativity: Beyond Albert Einsteins Relativity
(Jaoude 2013)
Prevalence of Autism is Positively Associated with the Incidence
of Type 1 Diabetes, but Negatively Associated with the Incidence
of Type 2 Diabetes, Implication for the Etiology of the Autism
Epidemic (Classen 2013)
Combating Climate Change with Neutrinos (Wet 2013).
Beall missed perhaps the most egregious example of drivel being published in
open access journals:
The Open-Access Movement is Not Really about Open Access (Beall 2013)
But seriously. Yes, there is crap published in open access journals. But like
Bohannon before him, Beall has no perspective. There is a long history of bunk
science being published in subscription based journals including the highly
prestigious ones. There are, and always have been, journals at the margins of
respectability that will publish anything. To blame this on open access by
picking a few examples is ridiculous.
The last of these, Combating Climate Change with Neutrinos, was
summarily retracted (without any notice) by the publisher after I drew
attention to it in a blog post (Beall 2013c). I saved a copy of the articles PDF
and have made that document available on the blog post. There are many
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unscientific ideas that people can get published in scholarly journals thanks
to predatory open-access publishing. Authors of these works find that their
ideas fail peer review in legitimate journals, so they seek out predatory
publishers that are more than happy to accommodate their publishing needs.
Some of these ideas include issues relating to sea-level rise (or the lack of it),
Sasquatch, anthropogenic global warming (or the lack of it), the aetiology of
autism, and the nature of dark matter and dark energy.
Often promoted as one of the benefits of open-access is the fact that
everyone, even the lay public, will have access to all the scientific literature.
But in the context of pseudo-science being published bearing the imprimatur
of science, this becomes a serious problem. People who are not experts in a
given field generally lack both the ability to understand the most complex
research in the field and the ability to distinguish between authentic and
bogus research in the discipline. As more bogus research continues to be
published open-access, it will be accessed more by the public, and many will
accept it as valid research. This bogus research will poison discourse in many
scientific fields and will create a public that is misinformed on many scientific
issues.
The public accepting peer reviewed research as fact without skepticism is
indeed a problem. But lets ask ourselves what was the most egregious
example of this in the last decade? Has to be Andrew Wakefields papers on
the link between vaccines and autism. Where were they published? The Lancet,
Gastroenteroloy and the American Journal of Gastroenterology. All
subscription journals. Is this bad? Yes. Is this a problem with open access? Of
course not.
Megajournals are becoming like digital repositories. These journals, many of
them now editorless, are losing the cohesion, soul, and community-binding
roles that scholarly journals once had. My website has its main list of
publishers, but in early 2012 I was compelled to create a second list, a list of
what I refer to as predatory standalone journals. These are predatory journals
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that cover the entire breadth of human knowledge, much broader than just
science. Predatory publishers discovered the megajournal model by copying
successes like PLOS ONE. As of late November 2013, I have 285
megajournals in my standalone journal list. They have titles like Journal of
International Academic Research for Multidisciplinary [sic], International
Journal of Sciences, and Current Discovery. The broad titles reflect the
marketing strategy of accepting as many papers as possible, in order to
maximize income. How many megajournals does the world need? Most of
these journals exist only for the authors, those who need academic credit.
Many of their articles will never be read, and many are plagiarized from
earlier articles. The articles then become the source of future plagiarism.
Collectively, they lower the quality of science and science communication.
They clutter Google and Bing search results with academic rubbish.
We dont need 285 megajournals. I agree. But we also dont need 10,000
subscription journals. Id argue we dont need journals at all. But Bealls math
is misleading. There may be 285 megajournals (Ill take him at his word), but
the vast majority of papers published in these journals are in a very small
number (with PLOS ONE at the front). Saying that megajournals are bad
because there are a lot of (largely failed) efforts to copy the success of one is
like saying that search engines are bad because there are hundreds of useless
and poorly used ones trying to copy the success of Google.
The future of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY) may be in
doubt. Numerous companies are emerging that aggregate content from CC
BY-licensed works, publish them in new formats, and sell them at a profit.
Frequently, when scholars find out that their work has been published for
profit without their knowledge, their first reaction is often anger, even though
they freely assigned the free license to their work. They feel betrayed. The
CC- BY license has been promoted by European open-access advocates; the
North Americans view of open-access is more restrictive. Many here prefer
to promote the CC BY NC (noncommercial) license. For many in North
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America, the concept of open-access itself means ocular open-access

that is, OA means that you can access content but cant do much else with
it, other than read it. The Europeans are more collectivist and appropriative;
for them scholarly publishing is another opportunity for taking. They do not
respect the freedom of the press when the free press doesnt adopt their
collectivist values.
This is a complete red herring. Ive heard people raise this as a potential
problem, but very very few complaints about it actually happening. And even
when I have, its always been possible to explain why PLOS and other OA
publishers prefer the CC-BY license. In contrast, I hear all the time from
publishers that they want to use CC-BY-NC, not to protect against misuse,
but to protect their revenues. Thus it is absurd to attribute any reluctance to
use CC-BY to authors.
We mustnt forget the strengths of the traditional or subscription model of
scholarly journal publishing. When space was an issue, journals could only
publish the very best of the articles they received, and any lapse in quality
over time led to subscription cancellations. The result was that the traditional
journals presented the cream of the crop of current research. With openaccess journals, the opposite is often true.
Indeed, when many libraries began to engage in journal cancellations in
response to higher subscription prices (subscription prices increased mainly
due to a great increase in the amount of scholarship being published), the
subscription publishers came up with a solution that has greatly benefitted
libraries: bundling and differential pricing. This innovation has greatly
benefitted scholars by making a great amount of research affordable to
academic libraries. On top of this, many publishers grant additional discounts
to library consortia licensing journal subscriptions in bulk. According to
Odlyzko (2013, 3) the median of the number of serials received by ARL
[Association of Research Libraries] members almost quadrupled during the
period under investigation, going from 21,187 in the 1989-1990 academic
189
year to 80,292 in the 2009-2010 one. Practically the entire increase took place
during the last half a dozen years, without any big changes in funding
patterns, and appears to be due primarily to Big Deals. This finding shows
the power of the market; when subscribers cut subscriptions, publishers take
beneficial action for consumers.
Beall has to be the only person on the planet outside of the Elsevier board
room who thinks Big Deals are a good idea. Virtually everyone I know in
the library world including many who are not fans of open access think
that Big Deals are a very bad idea, and university systems across the world
have been abandoning them.
OA journals dont have any space restrictions. They can publish as many
articles per issue as they want, so the incentive for them is to publish more.
We hear less about acceptance rates than we did in the past because of this.
Why does Beall think subscription journals have any limit on the amount of
articles they can publish? Since almost nobody accesses these journal in print
(aside from Science, Nature, Cell and a few others), they dont. The only reason
they limit what they publish is to create an artificial scarcity. And precisely
because of the Big Deals Beall seems to love, subscription publishers have
exactly the same incentive. Big Deals have created an economy in which
subscription publishers are directly rewarded with higher subscription
revenues when they publish more papers.
There is one, and only one, reason for the massive increase in the number of
subscription journals over the past few decades. Its not because the
community has been clamoring. Its because publishers know that the easiest
way for them to increase their revenues is to launch new titles and publish as
many papers in them as possible. That is why Big Deal publishers like Elsevier
specialize in launching new journals that provide no knew value to the
community (most overlap existing journals in scope and selectivity), but
provide huge benefit to Elsevier.
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Traditional journals didnt have the built-in conflict of interest that gold openaccess journals have. For gold OA, the more papers a journal accepts, the
more money it makes.
As I pointed out above, there is a direct correlation between the number of
articles subscription based publishers accept and their revenues. Thus
subscription based publishers have as much of a conflict of interest as OA
publishers its just hidden from view because the money is laundered
through libraries.
Money is corrupting scholarly publishing. Scholars never should have
allowed a system that requires monetary transactions between authors and
publishers. Libraries took responsibility for this financial role in the past, and
they performed it well. Now the realm of scholarly communication is being
removed from libraries, and a crisis has settled in. Money flows from authors
to publishers rather than from libraries to publishers. Weve disintermediated
libraries and now find that scholarly system isnt working very well.
Most libraries have done great work providing scholars with access to the
literature they need to perform their jobs. But its a bit ridiculous to say that
the system has thrived on their watch. For decades the cost of scholarly
publishing has increased at a rate that far exceeds the rate of inflation, and it
has done so precisely because scholars have not been involved in the financial
transaction. A system in which scholars decide where to publish but have zero
incentive to make choices based on cost leads to out of control spending
increases. Of course libraries arent responsible for this they have been left
in charge of paying the bills without any effective way to keep costs down.
Indeed, librarians were the first to begin writing about this problem as long
ago as the 1980s warning that increases in costs were unsustainable. But if
were actually going to tackle the ever escalating costs of publishing it will be
by giving authors an incentive to make publishing choices based on cost
something that open access does, but subscription based publishing does not.
Conclusion
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The open-access movement isnt really about open access. Instead, it is

about collectivizing production and denying the freedom of the press from
those who prefer the subscription model of scholarly publishing. It is an anticorporatist, oppressive and negative movement, one that uses young
researchers and researchers from developing countries as pawns to
artificially force the make-believe gold and green open-access models to
work. The movement relies on unnatural mandates that take free choice
away from individual researchers, mandates set and enforced by an onerous
cadre of Soros-funded European autocrats.
Ooh. Thats scary. Soros-funded Europan autocrats.
The open-access movement is a failed social movement and a false messiah,
but its promoters refuse to admit this. The emergence of numerous
predatory publishers a product of the open-access movement has
poisoned scholarly communication, fostering research misconduct and the
publishing of pseudo-science, but OA advocates refuse to recognize the
growing problem. By instituting a policy of exchanging funds between
researchers and publishers, the movement has fostered corruption on a
grand scale. Instead of arguing for open-access, we must determine and
settle on the best model for the distribution of scholarly research, and its
clear that neither green nor gold open-access is that model.
Open access IS a social movement. Not only will I not deny that. I am proud
of it. Its a social movement based on the principle that scholarly research is a
social good and those of us lucky enough to be involved in it should do
everything we can to make sure that we do not let our vanity and narrow selfinterest prevent us from making sure that our fields operate in the most
efficient way, and that we give back to society in every way possible.
But open access is also a business model. And its a very successful one that
is growing in popularity. Predatory open access publishers are a problem
but theyre a minor one that can easily be dealt with by establishing and
enforcing standards for good journal practices.
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Its too bad Beall turns out to be so stridently anti open-access. He deserves
credit for almost single-handedly raising awareness about predatory
publishers trying to take advantage of the rise of open access a problem
nobody else was noticing let alone trying to do something about. He could
have been a constructive force in helping to develop ways to counter this
trend as it is well have to work it out on our own.
Jeffrey Beall
Potential, possible, probable
predatory blogger
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Cites & Insights

Crawford at Large
Libraries Policy Technology Media

Volume 14, Number 4: April 2014
ISSN 1534-0937
Intersections
Ethics and Access 1:

The Sad Case of
Jeffrey Beall
Open access (OA) is all about ethics, economics and

equity, and the three interact in various ways. OA is
inherently at the intersection of libraries, media,
policy and technologybut thats a different issue.
This is the first of a trio of essays: two related to
fairly specific situations, one covering a range of
ethical discussions. Depending on how you define
ethics, I could also include sections on Elsevier
and OA, embargoes, fallacious and misleading antiOA arguments and the whole area of peer review. Or
maybe not. In any case, we lead off with the sad case
of Jeffrey Beall.
Since Bealls chief claim to fame is his evergrowing list of supposedly predatory OA journals,
and since Im showing the case for treating Beall as a
questionable source, I have to say this: In case
youre thinking Walts claiming there are no scam
OA journals, Im notand toward the end of this
essay, Ill quote some useful ways to avoid scam
journals regardless of their business model.
ways a little different, however. He first encountered

OA when reviewing a publisher, Bentham Open, for
The Charleston Advisor. Its a very negative review for
what seem to be good reasons, and at the time Beall
seemed to be at least potentially positive about OA
itself, based on the first sentence of this extract:
The Open Access model is a good one, for it makes
research freely available to everyone. However, Bentham Open is exploiting the good will of those who
established the Open Access model by twisting it
and exploiting it for profit. Just because a journal is
Open Access doesnt make it legitimate or high
quality.
I cant imagine there are many knowledgeable folks

who would argue with that last sentence, which
would be equally correct if you substituted subscription-based or very expensive or published
by one of the big journal publishers for Open Access. It should boil down to this: Just because a
journal exists or has a given business model or is
from a given publisher doesnt automatically make it
legitimate or high quality.
Inside This Issue
The Middle: Forecasts and Futurism ............................. 14
But theres an oddity in the review, which is presumably of one OA publisher. Beall finds it necessary
to quote an Elsevier executive and praise Elsevier:
Before the Storm

By his own admission, Jeffrey Beall came late to the
OA party. His interest began in 200922 years after
the first known U.S. gold OA scholarly journal appeared (New Horizons in Adult Education), 19 years
after the first U.S. gold OA scholarly journal in the
library field that I know of appeared, a journal I was
involved in for most of its life (The Public-Access
Computer Systems Review), eight years after I started
writing about the field and seven years after the
meetings and proclamations that gave it its name.
Coming late is fine. OA needs to have more people involved all the time. Bealls involvement was alCites & Insights
Walt Crawford
April 2014
Speaking against the author pays model, Crispin

Davis, the CEO of Reed Elsevier said, if you are receiving potential payment for every article submitted, there is an inherent conflict of interest that
could threaten the quality of the peer review system. Indeed, McCabe and Snyder state, Good articles provide a reader benefit; bad articles do not.
Readers cannot tell the quality of articles prior to
reading them, and reading an article requires an effort cost. Here again, these statements bring to
mind the role of the collection development librarian in making resource selection decisions that benefit library users. In addition, they offer a new
perspective on the high subscription costs of journals published by companies like Reed Elsevier.
Perhaps the consistent high quality their journals
1
bring justifies the high subscription prices after all.

Given the increasing number of Open Access STM
journals, scholars need a reliable means of finding
only the research worth reading. [Emphasis added.]
Apparently Beall would disagree with my It should

boil down abovehes asserting that all Elsevier
journals are high quality (or at least thats how I read
consistent). Setting that aside, its my impression
that a fair number of Elsevier journals charge page
charges and other forms of author pays, and theres
no question that Elsevier and other big publishers use
increasing numbers of published articles as one basis
for ever-rising prices. Thus, the Crispin Davis quote
applies equally well to many subscription journals.
I havent followed all of Bealls work (you can
find quite a bit of it from the Research tab of his
blog Scholarly Open Access), but its pretty clear that
hes made a specialty of identifying gold OA journals
and publishers as being predatory and unworthy
and, in the process, started taking more and more
swipes at OA itself. There was apparently an earlier
Posterous blog that has disappeared along with
Posterous itself; the current incarnation began in
January 2012.
Just looking at the January 2012 archive begins
to suggest real issues in what might otherwise be an
admirable pursuit. Consider, for example, Scholarly Open-Access Publishing and the Imprimatur of
Science, posted January 25, 2012. He discusses a
chapter of The AIDS conspiracy: Science fights back
and says it indirectly relates to scholarly openaccess publishing. How?
The author tells the story of an Elsevier journal
called Medical hypotheses that some AIDS denialists used to legitimize their arguments that HIV
doesnt cause AIDS. Summarizing, Nattrass wrote,
The episode highlights the importance of peer review as a core scientific value (p. 135).
She defines and discusses boundary work, which is
work by scientists that essentially draws a line between what counts as science and what doesnt.
Many questionable open-access publishers are making a mockery of peer review. Unfortunately, its
hard for us to observe and validate their peerreview practices, for they are not transparent.
Its like seeing JP Morgan Chase pay a multibilliondollar fine for questionable business practices and
concluding that credit unions must be sketchy!
In the same month, and Id guess many times
since, Beall explicitly equated gold OA with author-pays model, either ignorant of or deliberately
ignoring the fact that most gold OA journals dont
have article-processing charges and that a higher
percentage of subscription-based journals than gold
OA journals do have author-side charges (or page
and other charges).
Beall started with a list of a few predatory
publishers. The list grew by leaps and bounds,
sometimes including long-established publishing
houses with the misfortune of being headquartered
in India (specifically, Hindawi), with Beall acting as
prosecutor, judge and jury on whos predatory and
whos not. Hes still doing itin just one year, his
list nearly doubled in size. Recent posts have made
it clear that Bealls own criteria are all that matter:
Hes the one-man authority on predatorybut only
predatory OApublishing. Remarkably, hundreds if
not thousands of librarians and others seem to take
Bealls word as gospel.
I looked at Bealls list of questionable practices.
Its an interesting list, including this item:
The publisher requires transfer of copyright and retains copyright on journal content.
Medical hypotheses allowed denialists work to be

published without peer review, while still conveying
scientific status. Defending peer review, Nattrass
states that For all its faults, peer review remains an
essential mechanism for the allocation of trust in
the results of others (p. 139).
Wow! Thats pretty shocking! Medical hypotheses

must be some predatory gold OA journal fromwait,
Elsevier? That publisher with consistent high quality? Well, at least it must be a gold OAhmm. Nope.
As with many Elsevier journals these days, the jourCites & Insights
nal (which still exists) offers a pricey OA option, but

its a subscription journal. It was an Elsevier journal
without traditional peer review (unlike nearly all
gold OA journals), but it was nonetheless an Elsevier
subscription-based journal.
But when Beall looks at apparent failure in peer
review by a subscription-based journal published
by the worlds largest STM journal publisher, he
sees this:
Which means nearly all subscription-based journal

publishers engage in questionable practices.
I didnt read all of Bealls blog posts. I honestly
dont know whether the misleading items noted
above are typical or special cases. As with most library folk, I was appalled when a publisher attempted to sue Beall for libelbut being sued for
unfortunate reasons doesnt automatically make the
defendant a saint. As with a number of other people
whove been involved with and writing about OA
for years, I was growing increasingly nervous about
April 2014
Bealls growing stridency about predatory OA publishersand amazement that there never seem to be
sketchy or predatory subscription publishers, even
among those charging high page charges and other
article fees.
The Wheels Come Off

Then came May 7, 2013, when the wheels really
came off the Beall Express. The story picks up from
there.
The Serials Crisis is Over.

That absurd title heads this May 7, 2013 post by
Beall at Scholarly Open Access; just below it is a silly
image of a locked version of the OA open-lock with
smart quotes around it.
Huh?
I declare that the serials crisis, the event that gave
birth to the open-access movement, is over. I base
my declaration on my observations as an academic
librarian and on the scholarly literature, selections
from which I include here:
That first sentence may qualify as not even wrong.

Bealls evidence that the serials crisis gave birth to the
open-access movement? I guess because Beall says so.
Just to be clear: If all scholarly journal publishers
agreed that, for every academic library in the world,
the total cost for all scholarly journals would be, say,
20% of the library budget (which would be much lower than what most medium-sized and larger academic
libraries spend now), that would not eliminate the need
for OA. Just for starters, it would not provide any access to me or any other researcher or layman whos not
affiliated with an academic institution.
In any case, thats not likely to happen, and the
serials crisis is only over to the extent that academic libraries are being slowly bled to death by
journal costs rather than being rapidly bled to death.
Price increases are still much higher than inflation;
even Harvard cant afford all the journals theyd like
to have.
The rest of the post consists of Bealls evidence for the serials crisis being over. What evidence? Lets see:
The first is an assertion within a report (not
in any sense part of the scholarly literature)
to the International Association of Scientific,
Technical and Medical Publishersa trade
group that wants to believe the crisis is over.
The second, which is peer-reviewed, claims
that the serials crisis may not be as acute as
some have suggested and that most acaCites & Insights
demics are clearly operating productively under the existing methods of scholarly communication. (The article itself is behind a
paywallbut in any case the excerpt only argues that the crisis within academia is less severe than some claim. Its also pretty limited,
based on eight New Zealand universities.)
The third is, astonishingly, excerpted from an
interview with Derk Haank, at the time CEO
of Springer and formerly chair of Elsevier Science. Is it any surprise that Haank says the
crisis is over?
The fourth is apparently a peer-reviewed article and the excerpt says ARL librariesthe
ones most able to handle serials price increasesget a lot more serials (not necessarily
journals) now than they did in 1989-1990.
(Specifically, the asserted median has gone
from 21,187 to 80,292.) How this establishes
that the serials crisis is over for all academic
libraries or that open access is less necessary?
It doesnt. It says that the Big Deal increased
the number of available journals; it says nothing about affordability or about access beyond
ARL libraries. (Just as a reality check, I looked
at FY2010 figures for Carnegie Classification
15, which appears to encompass what used to
be Research I and II and includes 151 reporting institutions: its not quite the same set as
ARL. The median number of serials is 59,942;
48 of them have 80,292 or more, and that 48th
institution is precisely 80,292. If youre wondering, the median number of serials for Carnegie Classification 16, what used to be
Doctoral I and II, is 12,739 serials.)
The fifth? Eureka: this one does specifically
say that the Big Deals essentially resolved
the serials crisis by 2004. Its behind a paywall. Its a short communication, not a scholarly article, appearing in Learned Publishing
(when I had a full article in that publication,
it was not peer-reviewed). Oh, and its by Jeffrey Beallthe piece appears to be another attack on gold OA. So his one solid piece of
evidence isquoting himself.
Go through that list again. I dont know about you,
but it strikes me as remarkably thin.
The first comment, by Steve Hitchcock, is interestingas it accepts the quotes at face value (which
Im not prepared to do for either Haank or Beall):
April 2014
You make two assertions in your opening sentence: 1

there was a serials crisis, 2 this led to open access.
3
Your selective quotes do not show either, so it is hard

to justify your headline point on this evidence. What
your quotes may show, however, is that the serials
crisis was about journals pricing, and the Big Deal
was a response to that. But the Big Deal is not open
access, and the case for open access is not over.
As for the first assertion, in a way its true: there

never was a serials crisis, there wereand are
many serials (primarily journals) crises affecting
different segments of academia in different ways.
The next comment, by Pierre de Villiers, makes
another interesting point (although I partly disagree
with the first sentence, which offers too narrow a
case for OA):
The main case for open access is free access to public-funded research. The big deal does not solve
that, and actually worsen the situation by consuming library budgets in favour of those big dealpublishers, excluding journals from smaller publishers. I also doubt the statement that the farabove-inflation in serial subscriptions came to an
end. Is this supported by evidence?
To which Beall responds by basically repeating his

absurd assertion.
Karen Coyle chose to point to my book The Big
Deal and the Damage Done, which came about partly
because of other claims that the Big Deal had solved
the serials crisis, and says my analysis suggests Beall
is wrong. His response?
I think youve got it backwards. He should have
read the sources I cite first.
To which I felt a need to respond:

I had in fact read most of the sources you cite. The
suggestion that quotable sources, mostly publishingrelated, count for more than the actual facts is an
amusing one, but I think Ill go with the real world for
now. (Also, as has been said before, the serials crisis is
neither the only nor the primary reason for OA.)
In fairnessand because its a nice touchI should

quote Vinz Clorthos response to my comment:
Jeffreys sources are better. He said so.
Beall responds to the question with a non-answer:

Please see quotation number 4, which shows that
libraries pay a lot less per journal title than they did
in the past. Actually, the quotation doesnt say that
at all. It says the median ARL library, not in any way
typical of all academic libraries, gets four times as
many serials (most of them, presumably, not refereed scholarly journals) as it did a decade earlier. It
says nothing about how much that library paid.
Across extensive doctoral institutions, a somewhat
larger group of libraries, the median library also
spent 51% more on serials in 2010 than in 2000 after adjusting for inflation, which pretty much answers Villiers question. (For all academic libraries
taken as a group and not adjusting for inflation,
2010 serials spending was considerably more than
twice the level of 2000 spendingand close to 65%
higher after inflation. If you want to see a truly
gulp-inducing graph, consider ARLs Expenditure
Trends in ARL Libraries, 1986-2011 with its 402%
increase in serials expenditures.)
Dr. Gunn offers a quick snark questioning the
assertion that academics are doing just fineand
Andrew Miller basically says thats true, quoting yet
another publisher-association reportand admitting that hes an Elsevier publisher, perhaps not a
wholly disinterested party.
Mike Taylor takes the light approach:
Which is, in essence, what Bealls trainwreck of a

post boils down to: Bealls right because Beall says
so. And has mostly Beall and publishing industry
assertions to back him up. Well, and eight New Zealand universities.
The comments for this post served as an interesting set of revelations into Bealls mind and methods.
Joe Kraus points out that unaffiliated scholars and
others (and those not affiliated with the very largest
institutions) would not agree that the serials crisis
was over, and cites others who also would not
agreeincluding students at his well funded private
university library in south Denver who dont have
access to some journals because even Krauss library
cant afford it. Bealls response? Go for the jugular:
So, let me check my understanding, the University
of Denver, which charges outrageously high tuition,
especially in its mediocre library school, is worried
about people who dont have access to some scholarly publications? If DU is so worried about access, then it ought to lower its tuition. Also, DU
just completed a 35 million dollar renovation of its
library and you whine about not being able to afford a couple four-thousand dollar journal titles?
This doesnt add up.
Whew. Extent to which this is in any way a refutation of what Kraus says: Zero. Extent to which this
is pure ad hominem on an institutional level.well,
read it yourself. Kraus agrees this doesnt add up:
Jeffrey, was this post a satire? If so, of what? Sorry if

I am being dense, I just dont get it.
Cites & Insights
April 2014
I agree that this doesnt add up. The Univ. could

spend like Harvard and still not get all of the content
that our students and faculty need or want. You did a
good job of ignoring my first point concerning the
4
independent researchers; the big deal doesnt help

them get info at all. Open Access helps all people get
better access to more information, research, and
knowledge and for less cost in the long run.
the serials crisis, something barely offset by publishers throwing in thousands of free journals to their
Big Deal packages, journals that the library doesnt
necessarily want, but cannot easily opt out of.
Harvard has explicitly said it cant afford all the serials it would like to have, which should suggest a bit
of weakness in the serials crisis is over and the
absurd extension that OA isnt needed. (The extension makes no sense in any case.)
Skipping over a couple of other comments
one a bit snarky for my taste, one with which I agree
but will leave out for the sake of brevity, we get this
from Matt Thomas, who makes an excellent point
for all but the most comprehensive universities with
the biggest budgets:
There are a few more commentsand I suggest

reading them and the full postbut lets move on to
another response and later events in this sad story.
It seems like the quotes and your argument is based

on the average price per journal title but that
doesnt take into consideration that most of these titles are products that we probably would never
have wanted in the first place. In order to get the
ejournals we want, we are still having to pay increases in excess of inflation. Adding mediocre content to quality content doesnt make the crisis go
away. If one person paid for the Mona Lisa for
$100M and then sold it along with one painting
their child made in grade 3 for $105M, that doesnt
mean that the Mona Lisa has dropped in price by
almost half. But Im probably missing something.
Of course the serials crisis is not over, what the

heck are you talking about?
So says Mike Taylor in this May 8, 2013 post at Sauropod Vertebra Picture of the Week (henceforth
SVPOW). I admire his charitable first impulse:
I admit my first reaction was that it was some kind of
parody or satire, but Bealls subsequent comments
seem to rule out that charitable interpretation.
Taylor apparently had trouble with Bealls moderation and chose to write this post instead (although
he did have one comment show up on the post, as
noted above).
Bealls response to Joe Krauss comment was simply
an attack on the university that he works for an
attack that Joe took rather graciously. But what
about all the other people that he mentions? Its
hard to avoid the conclusion that the lines are as
follows: those who say that the serial crisis is over
are the hugely profitable incumbents; those who
say it is not are scholars, librarians, editors, doctors,
students, and in fact every single group that doesnt
stand to gain financially from the continuation of
the status quo. Doesnt that look just a tiny bit suspicious? (I asked Beall this: that was one of the
comments that was censored.)
Bealls already on record as saying that Elsevier

journals offer consistently high quality, which
may be his answer to arguments like this. Mel DeSart offers another (related) insight into the ongoing
set of serials crises. Excerpting:
[W]hen the price increases on those _bundles_, which
in some cases is the only way to acquire the content
you really WANT, still exceed the CPI, rate of inflation, and the average materials budget increases that
libraries across the country are receiving, why would
anyone think the serials crisis was over???
DeSarts working with the factual world; consult The

Big Deal and the Damage Done if thats in doubt.
Steve Lawson offers a comment thats better
read directlyand took the time to read more of the
fourth source:
Then Taylor quotes all of the abstract for the Odlyzko paper from which Beall extracted his crucial
Fourth Quote (you know, the one about having ever
so many more serials these days). Since Steve Lawson did get a comment accepted that included part
of that abstract, I wont quote the whole thing here,
but cant resist the urge to quote some of it:
Perhaps you didnt finish reading the entire abstract,

the last sentence of which reads, More importantly,
these Big Deals appear to point the way to the future
of the whole economy, where progress is characterized by declining privacy, increasing price discrimination, increasing opaqueness in pricing, increasing
reliance on low-paid or upaid work of others for
profits, and business models that depend on customer inertia. Those characteristics are the hallmarks of
Cites & Insights
April 2014
Publishers, through the oft-reviled Big Deal packages, are providing much greater and more egalitarian access to the journal literature, an approximation
to true Open Access. In the process they are also
marginalizing libraries, and obtaining a greater
share of the resources going into scholarly communication. This is enabling a continuation of publisher profits as well as of what for decades has
been called unsustainable journal price escalation. It is also inhibiting the spread of Open Access,
and potentially leading to an oligopoly of publishers
controlling distribution through large-scale licensing.
[Emphasis added.]
5
In other words, Odlyzko is, in fact, saying that the

serials crisis continues and is in some ways even
worse. Ill quote Taylors final two paragraphs:
This is a classic example of quote mining.
Im afraid that at this point in the development of
his site, Beall is looking less and less like someone
offering a helpful service to researchers looking for
open-access venues; and more and more like a troll.
Among the comments, one points to an earlier Beall

post (conflating OA and author misconduct) as
more evidence that hes become a troll, and a longer
comment from Karen Coyle calls Beall the library
worlds Rush Limbaugh and says he has negated
any of the value of his analysis of open access scams
by his overt prejudices. Another says I dont want
to believe that Beall has a hidden agenda against
Open Access modelbut, as well see a bit later,
that agenda is no longer hidden.
It Didnt Work for Phil Ochs, It Doesnt Work for

Jeffrey Beall
I also commented, on May 8, 2013 at Walt at Random, in a post that dealt with several other things as
well. (The reference is to Phil Ochs song I Declare
the War is Overwhich did very little to end the
Vietnam War.) Since Ive covered much of this already, Ill just quote one key segmentattempting
to respond to Bealls claims with facts:
From May to December

Beall continued identifying so-called predatory
(now expanded to predatory and questionable)
publishers and journals(almost) all of them gold
OA, of course. Some of us had written him off, but
others still paid attention. He also took the time to
slam article-level metrics as ill-conceived and meretricious and accuse OA of promulgating pseudoscience (since, you know, important subscriptionbased publishers would never have, say, journals
devoted to a science whose entire basis has to do
with water having memory).
and Beall Doubles Down

And then this happened:
The Open-Access Movement is Not Really about

Open Access
Thats the title of Jeffrey Bealls contribution to a
special OA section of non-refereed articles in triple
C: communication, capitalism & critique (11:2). It
may be worth noting that this journal (which includes both peer-reviewed articles and other stuff,
all of it clearly labeled) is, ahem, a gold OA journalalbeit one that (as with most gold OA journals)
does not charge article processing fees.
If that fairly startling title isnt enough, heres
the abstract in full:
While the open-access (OA) movement purports to
be about making scholarly content open-access, its
true motives are much different. The OA movement
is an anti-corporatist movement that wants to deny
the freedom of the press to companies it disagrees
with. The movement is also actively imposing onerous mandates on researchers, mandates that restrict individual freedom. To boost the open-access
movement, its leaders sacrifice the academic futures
of young scholars and those from developing countries, pressuring them to publish in lower-quality
open-access journals. The open-access movement
has fostered the creation of numerous predatory
publishers and standalone journals, increasing the
amount of research misconduct in scholarly publications and the amount of pseudo-science that is
published as if it were authentic science.
Fact: The serials crisis did not give birth to the OA

movement, or at least it certainly wasnt the only
causative factor. There are several important reasons to support OA, only one of which is the serials
crisis. (Solving the affordability crises for academic
librariesif that had happened, which it clearly has
notdoes NOTHING to provide access to all of us
unaffiliated types: independent scholars, patients,
everybody else, just to name one issue.)
Fact: The serials crisis is not over in any real-world
sense. Even Harvard cant afford the serials it
wantsand other academic libraries cant afford to
keep being libraries and keep up with serials prices.
Of course, my book isnt part of the scholarly literature. Its entirely fact-based, the facts are entirely
reproducible, I was entirely transparent about my
methodology, and I believe its in the best traditions
of scholarship (except that theres no literature review and I didnt actually begin with a hypothesis)but Im not a scholar and didnt submit it to a
refereed journal.
(Most of the rest of the post is about my book, The

Big Deal and the Damage Done.)
Cites & Insights
Say what?
First theres the odd suggestion that there is one
thing called the OA movement. Then theres the
suggestion that the OA movementnot the NIH
and Congress, not university facultiesis somehow
imposing onerous mandates.
Since the article is itself OA, you can download
the PDF and read it yourself. Its pretty astonishing,
April 2014
and I hesitate to quote much of it because I dont

want to be confused with The Onion. Consider this
blanket claim about (all?) OA advocates: OA advocates want to make collective everything and eliminate private business, except for small businesses
owned by the disadvantaged. While Ive called myself an OA independent, by Bealls lights I am doubtless an advocateand have been involved for 24
years, far longer than hes been critiquing. My interest in general collectivizing and eliminating large
private businesses is nonexistent, which I strongly
suspect is true for most OA advocates.
We are also told, The open-access movement is
a negative movement rather than a positive one. It is
more a movement against something than it is a
movement for something. Thats also nonsense: it is
a movement for access to scholarly research. We also
hear that the gold open-access model actually incentivizes corruption. Oddly enough, given that Big
Deals generally trap libraries into maintaining subscriptions to journals they would otherwise cancel,
Beall claims just the opposite: Publishers always had
to keep their subscribers happy or they would cancel. He takes a swipe at the Semantic Web (which he
says is dying a slow death) for reasons that I cant
fathom, except that it allows him to call OA the
Semantic Web of scholarly communications.
Ill quote another bit herebut with the prefatory information, admittedly repetitious, that a
higher percentage of subscription journals charge author-side fees, typically called page charges, than the
percentage of OA journals that charge article processing charges. Thats important, given this:
Money, a source of corruption, was absent from the
author-publisher relationship (except in the rare
case of reasonable page charges levied on authors
publishing with non-profit learned societies) in the
traditional publishing model.
Ask scholars about those reasonable page charges

and how theyre only levied by non-profit societies
sometime. You may get an earful.
Beall claims that only a few publishers employ the gold OA model ethicallyand that most of
those are cutting corners and lowering standards.
Hes gone beyond raising alarms about predatory
publishers to general condemnation of gold OA
(published in a gold OA journal).
I confess to not going through the whole ninepage article carefully; I lacked the stamina to deal
with it. Rather than doing my own fisking of an article that appears to deserve paragraph-byparagraph refutation, Ill turn to other commenCites & Insights
taries. The issue must have appeared in late November or early December 2013; the reactions mostly
appeared in mid-December.
Jeffrey Beall Needlessly Compromises Credibility

of Bealls List
Well start with someone I rarely quote: Stevan Harnad, writing on December 9, 2013 at his
GOAL/amsciforum mail list. Harnad is all about
green OA, as hes made clear a few thousand times.
After a citation, he begins:
This wacky article is going to be fun to review. I still
think Jeff Beall is doing something useful with his
naming and shaming of junk OA journals, but I now
realize that he is driven by some sort of fanciful conspiracy theory! OA is all an anti-capitalist plot.
(Even on a quick skim it is evident that Jeffs article
is rife with half-truths, errors and downright nonsense. Pity. It will diminish the credibility of his valid
exposs, but maybe this is a good thing, if the judgment and motivation behind Bealls list is as kooky as
this article! But alas it will now also give the genuine
predatory junk-journals some specious arguments
for discrediting Jeffs work altogether. Of course it
will also give the publishing lobby some good soundbites, but they use them at their peril, because of all
the other nonsense in which they are nested!)
There were already moves afoot to establish a credible method for identifying what Harnad calls junkjournalssomething thats needed, since there
have indeed been some profiteers who seem to assume that authors dont actually investigate the
journals they submit tobut Id say the piece has
done more than diminish the credibility of Bealls
efforts. But thats me.
The item linked to here is the start of a thread of
other messages from various people on the list. The
thread involves quite a few people, including Beall
himself, whoin confirming that he wrote the article
and stands by it, since someone suggested it might
have been a spoofsays Prof. Harnad and his lackeys are responding just as my article predicts. Ah,
his lackeys! The set of Harnadians pushing Gold OA
is one of those special sets of lackeys that fall in the
same category as unicorns farting rainbows.
Its quite a thread. Unfortunately, its a little difficult to find Harnads promised actual critique of
Bealls rant article, but this post offers some tidbits,
at least.
The spectre of corporatism in academic libraries,

or, Beall has Gone Bananas.
This one is from Anton Angelo posted on or before
December 10, 2013 at mumbles. (The post doesnt
April 2014
include a date, but I tagged it on December 10 and

the first comment appears on that date.) He leads
with this:
context of Bealls article. If you dont read any other

response to Beall, you should read this one.
Jeffrey Beall has essentially discredited himself. The

time has come to take his important work in identifying predatory publishers from him, and run another list, one that can be trusted.
I rarely cite the scholarly kitchen just as I rarely cite

Jeffrey Bealls blog or Stevan Harnads lists: in general, I find extremists less useful to consider. But
this post by Joseph Esposito on December 16, 2013
is an exception, if only because Esposito not only
finds the Beall article over the top but was (like
some of us but not, unfortunately, like Bealls devoted followers) getting uneasy about Beall in general.
It is Esposito and Skitch, so we get this: There
are inherent structural problems with Gold Open
Access and sooner or later unscrupulous people
were going to exploit them. Hell, there are inherent
structural problems with Big Deal subscription publishingserious oneswhereas platinum OA
(which is to say most actual Gold OA, not including
all the phantom journals) does not invite unscrupulous people. The unstated equation (that all Gold
OA includes article processing charges) continues to
be false and to undermine the credibility of anybody
saying it. But lets proceed:
Angelo appreciated Bealls list and forgave him a

certain amount of self-aggrandizementuntil the
triple C article appeared.
His argument boils down to the following: the OA
movement is really a monolithic stalking horse behind which there is a cabal wanting to establish
centralised control of academic publishing. Which
is, of course, nonsense.
Its a pity, because the moderates that support OA
will see him as a bit of a loony, and will no longer
trust his good work on predatory publishing. Those
on the libertarian right will think hes entertainingly
provocative, and those on the infantile left (to borrow from Lenin) will see him as a traitor.
Theres more, but that may say enough. There are

two commentsone from Joe Esposito, no friend of
OA himself (or at least hes never appeared to be)
expressing his disappointment in the articleand
one from Jeffrey Beall indulging in a personal attack
on Esposito.
Since I first became aware of Bealls List, however, I

have been following some of Bealls work with
growing unease. Here and there some (to me) distasteful political ideology peeked through (with my
pragmatic mindset, any kind of ideology makes me
queasy), but you dont have to agree with somebody
all the time to agree with them some of the time.
But now, in a recent screed, he has crossed the line.
While I continue to admire Bealls List, the broader
critique (really an assault) of Gold OA and those
who advocate it is too strong for me. Sorry, Jeffrey,
but Im not with you on this.
Bealls Litter
Michael Eisen responds to Beall in this December
14, 2013 post at it is NOT junk, and its fair to say
that hes not entirely convinced by Beall:
The piece is so ill-informed and angry that I cant
really describe it. So Im just going to reproduce his
article here (it was, ironically, published in an open
access journal with a Creative Commons license allowing me to do so), along with my comments.
There follows a complete reprint of the article

with inserted red-text paragraphs where Eisen feels
the need to offer a response. For example, heres the
first commentary, immediately following the first
paragraph of the abstract:
It is rather amusing to hear open access described
as anti-corporatist seeing as the primary push for
open access has come from corporations such as
PLOS and BioMed Central, a for profit company recently purchased by one of the worlds largest publishing houses.
The recent screed is, of course, the triple C article.

Esposito quotes two sentences from Bealls conclusionThe open-access movement isnt really about
open access. Instead, it is about collectivizing production and denying the freedom of the press from
those who prefer the subscription model of scholarly publishing.and comments:
Theres a lot morethis is a very long post, not quite a

fisking but close to it. I wont attempt to include all of
Eisens comments (some of which I might take issue
with). Indeed, as I skim through them, I wont include
any more: You should read them in the original, in the
Cites & Insights
April 2014
Its the English major in me who notes the odd disconnect between the content of these two sentences
and the rhetoric. We are talking about a way of
publishing academic articlesnot the stuff of a
revolutionary, or counter-revolutionary, movement;
as my kids would say, Bor-ing! But someone is invoking one of the Big Principles, denying the freedom of the press. If the word collectivizing went
by you, slow down and read again. Yes, the OA
movement is out to deny life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. All this blather about open access
8
is the work of a bunch of commies who have taken

over the university. I am not making this up.
Esposito nails one major issue with Bealls article:

characterize[ing] a group by its most extreme elements. Not unusual and, as he says, an easy rhetorical trick, but not really helpful. Ah, but then
Esposito shows his true colors:
A good part of my disappointment in Bealls latest is
that much of what he says seems to me to be correct,
but simply overstated and stuffed inside a political
wrapper. There are in fact predatory publishers, and
Gold OA is more likely to produce them than will
traditional publishing. The traditional form of peer
review seems to me to be superior to the methodology-only policy of PLoS ONE. The economics of
Gold OA shuts out some researchers. The measure
of the value of research is its value to other researchers, not the general public. And citations are
the coin of the realm, which are captured in journal
impact factor, not in altmetrics. In opposing Bealls
argument, I am not opposing all of it. But his outrage
clouds his judgment and expression and undermines
his best arguments. [Emphasis added.]
Look at the heart of that paragraph, bolded for your

convenience. The first is an opinion that cant be
falsified as an opinion (if someone says say it seems
to me the Moon is made of green cheese, you cant
prove that it doesnt seem so to them) but is otherwise arguable. The second one is simply false for
most Gold OA journals: Free is free. The third is a
nice way of pooh-poohing arguments for OA based
on the need for anybody but other researchers to gain
access to research articles. The fourth is difficult
because journal impact factors say nothing about
article quality, only about journals.
The post is followed by 57 comments covering
a wild range. If you appreciate which of the commenters are Skitcheners, there are interesting discussions going on. In the interests of focus and
keeping this essay from being way too long, I wont
attempt to comment on the comments (that might
be another 5,000 words right there!).
Anti-OA and the Rhetoric of Reaction
calm. Jeffrey Beall has managed to publish an antiopen access article in an open access journal thats so
poorly argued that I wonder if hell later use the publication as an example of how bad OA publishing
can be. The Beall Hoax.
All but one of those links are to items already discussed here; the Roy Tennant post deals largely with
a Beall piece attacking OCLC, and by policy I dont
comment on OCLC, so I didnt include Tennants
piece here. (Which does not mean I disagree with
what Tennants saying.)
I was going to write a detailed response pointing out,
among other things, that Beall makes a number of
outrageous claims about OA advocates without referring to or citing any of them. Theres absolutely no evidence presented that any OA advocates hold any of
the anti-corporatist (sic) views that Beall attributes
to them, which leaves the article as an eight-page rant
against a straw man. Beall claims that a close analysis
of the discourse of the OA advocates reveals that the
real goal of the open access movement is to kill off the
for-profit publishers and make scholarly publishing a
cooperative and socialistic enterprise. Needless to say,
the close analysis never comes. If it had come, this article would be a serious contribution to the OA discussion instead of an uninformative rant, especially if
it had analyzed representative passages from numerous OA advocates instead of cherry-picking juicy but
unrepresentative quotes from a handful of alleged
zealots. It wouldnt have proved anything against OA
itself, but it might have made for a good read. [Emphasis added.]
Consider that final sentence. I can certainly find a

few OA advocates who are anti-copyright, but that
doesnt even begin to suggest that OA is anticopyright. Even if Beall had some support for his
claims about some advocates, it wouldnt prove a
thing about OA.
BT didnt do a detailed critique of the arguments because Michael Eisen did that. Instead, he
looks at the rhetoric. BT quotes a paragraph from
Albert O. Hirschmans book The Rhetoric of Reaction:
Perversity, Futility, Jeopardy:
Wayne Bivens-Tatum chimed in on December 17,

2013 at Academic Librarianand as usual his perspective is different, interesting and thought out. The lede:
You know when someone at Scholarly Kitchen
thinks your anti-open access rant is excessive youve
crossed some sort of threshold. You also know that
when a biologist and a co-founder of the Public Library of Science bothers to give your article a thorough fisking, you have peoples attention. Even Roy
Tennant seems a little riled, and hes usually pretty
Cites & Insights
April 2014
I have come up with another triad: that is, with three

principal reactive-reactionary theses, which I call the
perversity thesis or thesis of the perverse effect, the
futility thesis, and the jeopardy thesis. According to
the perversity thesis, any purposive action to improve some feature of the political, social, or economic order only serves to exacerbate the condition
one wishes to remedy. The futility thesis holds that
attempts at social transformation will be unavailing,
that they will simply fail to make a dent. Finally,
the jeopardy thesis argues that the code of the pro9
Sounds about rightnot, to be sure, as a valid syllogism.
posed chafe or reform is too high as it endangers

some previous, precious accomplishment.
BT finds all three in Bealls article, and explains that;

his discussion is worth reading directly. Ill quote
two paragraphs that seem very much on the money,
discussing three of the more outrageous sentences
in Bealls piece (Randian refers to Ayn Rand, who
BT calls a Manichaen apocalyptic novelist often
taken for a political philosopher by teenage boys):
This makes some sense if you share a Randian
worldview. In this comforting worldview, the world
is a simple place to understand. Its filled not with
flawed human beings acting upon a variety of motivations trying to make their way through a complex
world. No, the world is made of heroes and villains.
The heroes are the people who think as I do and are
always right. The villains are any people who disagree with any part of my ideology. They do so not
because the world is complicated and disagreement
natural, but because they are evil and possibly stupid, and no matter what noble motives they might
claim to have, theyre lying and trying to destroy
some beloved institution. Also, theres the faith that
commercial enterprise is always good and free markets (if they ever really exist) always lead to the best
outcome. Challenging this faith in any way leads to
an extreme reaction. Its a world of extremes. Criticizing any area in which private enterprise and free
markets maybe dont give us the outcomes we want
is equated with being a collectivist who wants to
bring the capitalist system down. That explains why
in the article, criticism of Elsevier or of commercial
science publishing means that one wants to destroy
all corporations. It doesnt make a lot of sense until
you look at it through the Randian lens.
In this world, people dont support open access because they think the creation and dissemination of
new knowledge is a public good. They do it because
they want to destroy all corporations and deny freedom to people. This must be their motive because
they disagree with Beall about open access scholarship, and he thinks these things are bad, so they
must be motivated by these evil ideas. Q.E.D. Since
there have to be heroes and villains, Beall must be
the hero and everyone who disagrees with him in the
slightest a villain who is acting from evil motives to
destroy everything he holds dear. Once you share
this worldview, evidence doesnt matter anymore.
Characters
This post, by the Library Loon on December 19,
2013 at Gavia Libraria, may be the most important
post in this whole section, because what the Loons
saying is true. Its so important, and so well stated,
that Im going to quote the whole post (Gavia Libraria operates on a CC BY licenseI have to credit
the pseudonymous Loon as the original author,
which I of course gladly do):
The open-access movement has always had its
characters. Zealots. Kooks. Scary people. People who
just Arent Our Sort, Dearie. Any old loon can start a
weblog, after all; at least one Loon has done so. For all
the differences the Loon has with some of OAs other
characters, she stops short of wishing them gone. It
takes a certain amount of kookiness to provide energy
sufficient to get anything done sometimes.
Moreover, engaging publicly with kookery is often a
fools game, at best analogous to teaching pigs Mozart arias, at worst lending kooks credibility they do
not deserve and should not be permitted to have.
So OA tolerates its kooks, usually with kindness,
sometimes with a politely blind eye or deaf ear
and that is largely as it should be.
Why did OA let Beall get away with his act so long?
no one has yet asked, probably because the answer
the Loon has just given is so patently obvious to
those in the movement as not to need saying. (If
the Loon had to characterize the attitude of those in
the OA movement who noted Bealls deep-seated
antipathy toward OA months or even years previouslyevidence was available for the persistent
and perceptiveshe would say it was oh, him,
hell blow himself up someday. As, in fact, he has.)
Nonetheless, there is a lesson in this that the
movement could do with taking to heart: do not let
your enemy control a visible, high-mindshare product
or service in your space.
Theres a lot more hereits not a brief post. Go read

it. I like BTs syllogistic version of part of Bealls
reasoning:
Some OA publishing is predatory publishing.
All predatory publishing is bad.
Therefore, all OA publishing is bad.
Cites & Insights
April 2014
If not for Bealls list, Beall would never have been

anything but another easily-ignorable kook. If a
suitable group of individuals, or an organization,
had taken on the job of publicly calling out bad
practice, Beall would have sunk back into easilyignorable kookdom. Instead, we have this, whatever this is; embarrassing evitable mess is the
Loons first instinctive characterization.
The Loon will mercilessly mock and possibly savage any commenter waltzing in here with oh, well,
nobody actually believed Beall; he had no real influence. That is arrant nonsense, and the greatest
pity is that it is arrant nonsense spouted by those
10
piece itself: If academe had found him out, he would

have quickly been laughed to scorn (as has now happened). Unfortunately, as such examples as a January 2014 link from ALA Direct to the latest Bealls List
demonstrates, the scorn hasnt happened effectively.
The first link is to Distraction Watch, a community archive of strange emails from probably-sketchy
publishers. Its no substitute for stronger action from
OASPA and others, but its an interesting piece of
the puzzle.
most deeply steeped in the OA movement and most

desirous of its success.
If the above paragraph describes you, the Loon
loves you dearlyyou know she does!but must
remind you that people like you are so few as to be
fringe still. It often does not feel so on Twitter, true,
but academic Twitter itself is a rounding error compared to all of academe. You cannot measure what
academe understands by what you understand, nor
how academe gets its news by how you do. (You
use a feedreader? You digitally-brainwashed solutionist kook, you.)
Coping with Sketchy Journals

and Publishers
In the Loons prior professional world, Bealls list

was an enormously valuable convenience, and because of that, Beall himself enjoyed considerable
credibility, such that his least pronouncement was
freely email-forwarded everywhere. Every now and
then this was plainly passive aggression against the
Loon herself (she has mentioned how deeply her
prior workplace loathed her and all her works, correct?), but by and large, it was ignorance crossed
with homophily among librarians to whom OA and
its advocates felt like a threat. The Loons workplace was no sort of outlierwell, except insofar as
many, many academic libraries still boast insufficient knowledge of or interest in OA to bother forwarding communiqus about it.
Those OA advocates who wonder why libraries are
not more active in the OA movement need wonder
no more. The Loon boggles particularly at one currently-circulating notion that academic libraries
will just take over scholarly publishing wholesale.
Not in an environment where Bealls frothings circulate as freely as water churned up by migrating
flocks of waterfowl!
Fortunately, the Loon cant think of any other major
OA showpiece services run by OAs enemies. (OA
and hybrid journals at toll-access publishers are insufficiently influential to count at this juncture.) We
can at least hope that an analogous situation will not
arise again. If it does, though, let us please intervene
earlier. Keep what is valuable about such services by
all means, but let us not allow their proprietors to
fuel further apathy and anti-OA agitation.
I quoted that in its entirety because I suspect most

readers dont click through on most linksand because its relatively short. I wish I could say yes,
but but I cant: Theres simply too much evidence, even now, that Bealls held in high regard and
OA is viewed suspiciouslynot only among academics but among too many librarians and even
library journalists.
I will disagree with something the Loon says
although in a response to a comment, not in the
Cites & Insights
In case it isnt abundantly clear: Saying that Beall is

a sad case and that his work cant be trusted at this
point is not saying there arent sketchy journals and
publishers. Of course there areand the discussion
of sketchy cases works a lot better if you omit a certain two-letter abbreviation before journals and
publishers.
Sketchy publishers produce phony journals to
please certain companies, consisting entirely of duplicated articles (from other journals) that support
the aims of those companies but with journal names
seeming to imply more. Sketchy publishers produce
journals publishing research in fields that have no
plausible scientific basis for existing. Sketchy publishers publish whole sets of articles in more than
one journal without saying so. Sketchy publishers
introduce new journals like crazy because they
know that the journals will yield revenue, even
those that never have any significant number of legitimate articles. Heres one thing about this list: the
examples Im thinking of involve respectable subscription publishers, not OA publishers.
I have never seen serious refutation of the maxim that peer review does not determine whether a
paper will be published, only where it will be publishedand that maxims a lot older than OA.
Think there isnt a fifth-tier traditional journal that
will publish an article that PLOS One reviewers reject out of hand? Think again.
Should we condemn all traditional publishing
because there are sketchy examples? No? Well,
then, should we assault traditional publishers because they seem to be based in a certain country?
Probably not. Nor should we do so for OA journals
and publishers.
I strongly suspect that PLOS One published
more articles in 2013 than all of the truly sketchy
APC-charging Gold OA publishers combined
April 2014
11
because those publishers tend to have large numbers of journals (which is to say, ISSNs, titles and
maybe web pages) but very few actual articles. Relatively few anti-OA folks are prone to attack PLOS
One as publishing bad science (although a few proOA folks, including myself, think PLOS Ones article
processing charges should be a whole lot lower).
How do you (as a librarian, a reader, a potential
author) spot sketchy journals and publishers? Heres
one set of suggestions from a highly reputable if
pseudonymous source:
Assessing the scamminess of a purported openaccess publisher

This April 11, 2012 post by Library Loon at Gavia
Libraria uses OA in the titlebut I think the Loons
suggestions apply equally well to subscriptionaccess publishers and journals. What the Loon is
saying is important and well-stated, so Im quoting
the whole thing except the introductory paragraphs.
These are the heuristics [the Loon] uses to assesspublishers:
Hindawithe legits tend to start disciplinarily

small and expand (if they expand) outward.
(The likes of PLoS ONE are an exception, of
course, but the Loon has yet to see a scammy
publisher try a PLoS ONE clone.)
Anything set your alarm bells ringing? The Loon

has seen comically misspelled journal titles once
or twice, as well as ludicrous journal mission
statements. (Hey, Scientific & Academic Publishing? Its Geographic Information Systems,
just so you know.)
Check journal-launch dates. Did the publisher

launch a flock of journals at once? This is logistically near-impossible to do well (or indeed at
all), no matter what the underlying business
model; assume a scammer.
Likewise, are many of the journals empty shells,

with no or very few published articles? Classic
scammy sign; the publisher is throwing spaghetti
at the wall to see what sticks.
How many of the journals publish regularly?

The lower the number (that is, the more irregular the journal schedules), the likelier this publisher is to be a scammer.
A particularly dangerous warning sign: the publisher issues a lot of edited volumes rather
than actual journals. This is really only a somewhat more advanced case of rot than the irregularly-published journal. The scammer has given
up on collecting enough victims to publish
something that looks even vaguely like a journal.
Communications practices
Is their website competently designed and functional? If not, assume a scammer. (Caveat: Many
Open Journal Systems sites are remarkably ugly,
but still belong to reputable efforts.)
Are they sending out mass emails asking for editors and submissions? Often a sign of a scammer
(though, it must be said, a couple of legitimate
OA publishers have done this; they shouldnt,
and Hindawi at least has ceased the practice). Is
the subject matter of the journal(s) advertised in
the email appropriate to the recipient? If not, assume a scammer.
Are they sending out mass emails asking for

links to their journal website? Scammer, just like
any other linkbaiter.
Are they in the Directory of Open Access Journals? Nota bene, if they are, it doesnt automatically mean theyre legitimate; the DOAJ doesnt
check closely. But if theyre not, its worrisome.
Does the publisher offer usage statistics or any

other sort of metric, alternative or otherwise?
(Dont bother checking for impact factor; they
wont have one. Not having one isnt a sign of
anything but newness, anyway; it doesnt tell you
anything useful.)
The publishers stable
Is the journal stable in a coherent discipline or

set of disciplines? If notif the stable ranges all
over the map, and this is a young/unknown publisherassume a scammer. PLoS, BMC,
Cites & Insights
April 2014
Often, the above criteria combine into a fairly

strong hunch about the publishers scamminess.
Those still unsure about a particular publisher may
wish to proceed to:
Production values
Download a journal article or two. Assess the

writing quality. Assess the copyediting. Assess
the typesetting quality. If any of these is markedly lacking, spot-check a few more articles, varying the journals you look at. This isnt an
infallible sign, because goodness knows plenty of
publishers on all sides of the business-model
question let howling typographic and content
horrors pass (the Loon is looking at you, Haworth), and a few scammers are smart enough to
have fixed their typography and layout (the
Loon is looking at you, InTech), but a pronounced lack is still indicative.
If you have the disciplinary background, skim

some tables of contents to check articles for currency, interest, worth. The Loon confesses that
this is quite often beyond her; she typically asks
a liaison-librarian colleague with appropriate ex12
pertise for his or her opinion. When she looks at

scammy journals within her expertise domains,
though, she typically sees work thats years behind the state of the art, even considering the
slow pace of normal scholarly publishing.
Does this publisher have anything on its site

about its digital-preservation practices? Are they
a LOCKSS, CLOCKSS, or Portico member? Do
they participate in the DOAJs OA-journal
preservation program? Are they partnering with
a library for preservation? This is a basic scholarly responsibility; a publisher that hasnt considered it is either a scammer or a bunch of
irresponsible heads-in-the-sand ostriches.
The Loon asked what criteria she may have missed.

The first comment stresses the editorial boardand
specifically, if theres a question, contacting somebody
on the editorial board to make sure that theyre actually on the board and aware of the journal. Another,
from Molly Keener, adds four more criteria:
look for a copyright date on the website: if its

out of date (and its not early Jan.), be wary
look at the web address: if it seems odd (e.g.,

http://www.ijhssnet.com why the net?), be
wary
look at the frequency of publication (flip of the

Loons): if it publishes regularly, but with bloated issues, be wary; and related, if there has
been at least one special issue in the first six
months of publication, be wary
if there is an announcement that the article

processing fee has risen significantly (e.g., from
$20 to $200) within the first year of publication, be wary
People
Are editorial boards listed? If not, assume a

scammer. If so, have you heard of any of these
people? Again, the Loon often has to defer to
others disciplinary knowledge here.
This is a tricky and often misleading one, but: do
editorial and author slates consist mostly or entirely of scholars from developing nations? Richard
Poynder explains astutely why this is a scamminess
indicator: the developing educational/research infrastructure in these countries often privileges the
appearance of scholarly publishing over the actual
quality thereof, leaving a huge market for scammy
pay-to-play publishing outfits. Do not use this criterion by itself! Not a few developing nations are
building wholly legitimate open-access journal stables, in part because developed-world scholarly
publishers often cant be arsed to publish
knowledge local to developing nations or work
with non-native speakers of English on their
proseand more shame to them for it.
Business model
Has the publisher ever had any financial support

at all other than author fees? Grants (including
grants that have run their course; several reputable OA publishers have gotten their seed money
via startup grants), an existing reputable publisher applying capital, a membership program,
an institutional or library or grant-funder backstop? If not, thats a worrisome sign.
If theres advertising, is it reputable, relevant to

the journals, not immediately skeevy?
Does the publisher run conferences? Are they exclusively in exotic junkety locations? Are the conference fees exorbitant, compared to other
conferences in the field? Do they publish proceedings, and if they do, are those proceedings any
good? Just as there are scammy journals, there are
scammy conferences that are pure excuses for expensive vacations and profitmongering.
Cites & Insights
The Loon noes that some reputable new journals do

choose to start off with a bang via a themed issue,
so the third bullets a little tricky. The first, second
and fourth all seem useful. (Kenner clarifies the
point: I should have clarified that an issue that is
named a special issue but seemingly has no difference in theme, length, scope, etc. than standard issues is suspect.)
Not unique to OA, probably not the majority of OA

Sketchy journals arent unique to open access; there
are and have been sketchy journals that are subscription access. Sketchy journals may represent a
small fraction of actual OA publishingthat is,
there may be a lot of journals that never publish
any significant number of papers, at least if scholars
take the time to do some due diligence as suggested
by the Loon and others.
Would it be nice if there were an authoritative
and reliable list of Publishers and Journals To Be
Avoided? Yesand such a list would inherently be
suspect if it only included gold OA journals with
article processing charges. Is it plausible for one librarian who clearly regards OA as unnecessary and
OA advocates as bad people to maintain such a list?
I think the answer is obvious.
I believe well see the Directory of Open Access
Journals start to delist suspicious journalsbut
maybe not, as thats not clearly DOAJs job. I hope
well start to see some serious work from the Open
Access Scholarly Publishers Association (OASPA) in
this area, and maybe were seeing some useful work,
April 2014
13
but OASPA is quite clear about not maintaining lists

of sketchy journals or publishers.
Can you identify the Bad Guys by conducting
stings? Thats another essay for another time.
the same as saying that how you experience the future, 5, 15 or 50 years hence, will to a large degree,
depend upon what age you are, where you live and
what you spend your time doing. There is also the
point made about prophesy by the philosopher Karl
Popper many years ago, which is that the future is
dependent upon the growth of knowledge, which is
itself unknowable or, at the very least, unpredictable.
The Middle
Forecasts and Futurism
To conclude, the only thing that we really know about

the future is that it will be different. Nothing is inevitable and equally nothing will happen in isolation.
Having apparently skipped these two topics last year,

Ill do a combined seta few short-term predictions
(forecasts) and longer-term predictions (futurism)
that I found interesting, leaving out most libraryrelated items and including some items about futurism and predictions.
Thinking about Predictions

Why trends bend
Richard Watson posted this on May 16, 2012 at
Whats Next: Top Trends. Its not a forecast or a set of
forecasts; its a thoughtful discussion of why the future isnt all that predictable, and was originally
written as the conclusion to Watsons latest futurist
book. Excerpts:
Ideas can be tricky in the sense that they often
combine in novel and unexpected ways. Thus, the
future rarely ends up as a logical extension of our
current thinking. Some ideas will move much faster, or much slower, than we expect, either because
we will underestimate the speed of technological
change or because we will forget about the impact
of human psychology and the inertia of history.
This latter point is hugely important. Futurists, especially techno-optimists, often focus on technology at the expense of other important factors,
especially the psychology of their fellow human beings, many of whom can be emotional, subjective,
irrational, forgetful and stark raving mad
We might also find that many of our new ideas, especially major scientific and technological breakthroughs that would benefit mankind, are
constrained, modified or rejected by large numbers of
people in favour of illogical beliefs and superstitions.
Rather than a new enlightenment, we may enter a new
dark age where it is illogical beliefs, rather than facts,
that flourish. Again, you might believe that this future
is implausible, but its already happening in some regions where the teaching of evolution is being rejected
, either in favour of the balanced teaching of various
viewpoints, or because religion considers such ideas
to be dangerous and subversive
It would also be a mistake to assume that the future
will be a singular experience. Some people will experience the future sooner than others, which is much
Cites & Insights
Overall, the future offers us many wonderful possibilities, but it remains up to us whether the opportunities are embraced, squandered or ignored. The
future is already here, but its unclear what well decide to do with it.
What I dont see in this essay but occasionally see in

some of Watsons other writing: Recognition that the
future is generally the wrong term when it comes to
any specific area, including, say, media: its a set of
futures. So, for example, I dont believe the question
ever was When will ebooks replace print books?
any more than it should be When will streaming
replace purchased music? because both questions
presume a single future thats unlikely. The question
What percentage of books will be ebooks in 20XX?
is more interesting and more meaningful. (Will the
market for purchased music in physical form become
so small as to be untenable?which could otherwise be When will CDs and vinyl finally die?is a
workable question, but not the one that gets asked.
The fundamental weakness of most deathwatches is
that they assume that a shrinking market share automatically means total disappearance. Know what
happens if a field shrinks by 5% a year? After 20
years, its not only not gone entirely, theres still more
than a third of it left.)
Big Things AheadBut Keep Your Shirt On

This piece, by Matt Novak on May 25, 2012 at
Smithsonian.com, is about futures pastspecifically,
an article in the October 1944 Science and Mechanics
by John Silence with the same title as this blog post.
What makes this article so fascinating is that it
looks at the advances of the future with optimism,
but tempers that rosey outlook with realistic predictions. There were a number of stories in the early
1940s offering American readers a vision of the future after the war, but this is one of the few that
asks people to keep their expectations in check.
The article opens with the common assumptions of
the day about the futuristic post-war world Americans would be living in
April 2014
14
Im not going to quote much of this (quoting the

earlier article) because its a good read and you can
read it yourself. But you can guess the overall tone:
naturally, futurists were saying that, shortly after
WWII, people would be living in smart homes with
all sorts of technological marvelsbut, this writer
says, you shouldnt get your hopes up too much.
From the 1944 article:
For many reasons, we arent going to turn things upside down as soon as the last shot is fired in this conflict. The people who risk their money to provide the
things you buy are going to hold back to find out if
youll take it before they plunge too deep. And all
their research may be overruled on appeal.
The excerpts from the earlier article, including Silences cautionary notes, are quite interesting
including his prediction that advances in medicine
would draw less attention but might be especially
influential (remember: penicillin was just beginning
to become available in 1944).
I wasnt aware that 1944 pundits were projecting a postwar future with personal helicopters as
flying cars, but Silence does a good job of pointing
out why that probably wasnt going to happen.
All in all, a good read and a bracing reality
check.
Three Years of Loonacy

I have a cluster of items by the Library Loon at Gavia Libraria, recounting the success of her 2012
forecasts, offering 2013 forecasts, recounting the
success of those and offering 2014 forecasts. Since I
quoted most of the 2012 predictions verbatim in the
June 2012 Cites & Insights, it only seems reasonable
to follow up with this sequence.
Recapitulating 2012
This item, by the Library Loon on November 27,
2012 at Gavia Libraria, could go in a Library Futurism piece, but its not entirely about library-specific
issuesand its short-term forecasts, not futurism.
Here the Loon is doing the honorable practice few
other forecasters follow: Seeing how theyve done at
the end of the year.
I didnt take issue with most of the Loons 2012
predictions, which is really unusual for a disagreeable cuss like me. (I added glosses on several predictions, but never flatly disagreed.)
She grouped predictions into likely flashpoints,
grinding slow but exceeding fine, perhapses and
anything could happen and probably will.
So howd she do?
Cites & Insights
Likely flashpoints: She was predicting, or hoping that a really Big Deal would explodeand I
honestly missed the one that did, beyond the SUNY
Potsdam ACS deal. To wit, the Canadian Research
Knowledge Network announced that it would shut
down its national Big Deal with ACS and explained
its reasoning clearly (see the link). Thats 75 institutions. She also anticipated a demand for transparency about job placement rates at library schools, and
that hasnt been strong so far. Finally, she expected
the worst from Maria Pallante (Copyright Registrar)and so far that hadnt happened.
The second categoryslow but finewas all
hits, and all to the good. In perhapses, the Loon
anticipated one OA megajournal folding, which didnt
happen, and thought the silent war between MLSes
and underemployed postdocs for library positions
might come to a headwhich also hasnt happened.
Finally, there are the things the Loon wasnt
willing to call one way or the otherand here full
credit may not mean much. Shes surely right about
the final shape of Google Books still being impossible to determine. A good recall piece, worth noting.
And it leads naturally into:
Anticipating 2013
The Loon again, this time on December 1, 2012 at
Gavia Libraria. Last time around, I quoted almost
the entire piece; this time, Ill point you to the original and just give the actual predictions (sometimes
in my own briefer wording) and, if relevant, [my
take in square brackets], omitting some that seem
beyond C&I scope.
Near-certainties: Pro-toll access arguments
will be nibbled to death by Loons carve-outs.
{You must read the original to make sense of
this.] Single-discipline toll-access publishers
will find their bundled subscription deals under increasing siege. [E.g., even more ACS Big
Deal breakdowns and similar cases.] (She
thinks it will be longer before the Big Pigs see
Big Deal breakdowns.) The NIH will see a
brief flare-up of agitation over the Public Access Policy. [But, she says, the objectors will
be ignorant and obnoxious enough not to
pose a serious threat to the policy.]
Perhapses: Real legislative progress on copyright reform. [The Loon defines real progress
at getting a broad reform bill into committee,
not actually approved or even debated on the
floor.] Another big U.S. government OA policy. NSF gets stricter about data-sharing re-
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15
quirements. An OA megajournal from 2011

folds (she thinks SAGE Open is likeliestbut
that this could happen as late as 2015.)
Who knows? Wiley v. Kirtsaeng (the suit relating to first-sale rights on imported books).
[Fortunately, first sale won.] Big Deal etextbook situations in higher ed. Google
Books legal mess. Public library ebook lending. [The Loon expected lots of posturing
and zero progress.]
using, of all things, DMCA as its weapon of

choice.]
Perhapses
In the waning days of 2013

The Loons recapitulation of how she did, on December 12, 2013and it wasnt as strong a year as 2012.
Near-certainties: The access carveouts didnt
amount to much. Big Deal problems had
more to do with SAGE than with singlediscipline publishers. The NIH flareup didnt
happen: a case where the Loons only too
happy to be wrong.
Perhapses: Wrong on three, right on more
government agencies announcing OA policies.
Who knows? Since she didnt call these one
way or the other, she just comments on resultsto wit, Wiley V. Kirtsaeng could not
have been improved upon, e-textbook Big
Deals arent doing well, Google Books made the
Authors Guild look stupid (but AG soldiers on
in its hapless quest)and she didnt see much
progress on public library ebook lending.
The Loon had a down year compared to 2012but
thats partly because she had a stellar year in 2012
and partly because some things turned out more
positively than shed expected.
Finally, this December 21, 2013 post gives the Loons
predictions for 2014. And here, because these are
reasonably fresh predictionssome of them fairly
strongIm going to quote them at greater length,
with [my comments if any in square brackets,] but
Im leaving out a couple having to do with library
schools (not a C&I battle), one Canadian one where I
lack any knowledge, and oneabout kyriarchy
where it strikes me I cant possibly comment and
dont understand the topic very well. Sorry about
that; you can, of course, go to the original.
No-brainers
Continued clashes between toll-access publishers and
faculty-as-authors. This is an irresistible-forcemeets-immovable-object problem [Seems likely,
esp. as Elsevier tries to stomp on existing practice
Cites & Insights
A Research I university in the US or Canada will cancel a really big Big Deal quite possibly in full glare
of public view. The Loon has two likely candidates
in mind, but these things typically come out of left
field, so she isnt wedded to those two [One can
only hopeif not this year, then next?]
One of the larger parasitic open-access-journal

faux-publishers, finally feeling the heat, will fold.
More than one would be nice. [Would anyone
notice? Some of these publishers dont seem to
actually publish much of anything]
AHA and OAH will backpedal all the way back to

start. The Loon isnt entirely confident about
this, but she was pleasantly surprised to see AHA
backpedaling at all, so shell take a flyer.
Who knows? Not this Loon
Anticipating 2014
Federal agencies will announce their OSTP Memo

responses, sparking an immense wave of confusion,
backlash, and flailing. Responses will be neither
uniform nor simple to follow; researchers who
receive support from more than one agency will
be particularly upset by this [Im a little more
optimistic, but thats probably nave.]
The Georgia State appeal. Worrisome noises are

coming from that courtroom...
The Trade Pacific Partnership. The copyright lobby has decided that international treaties are its
best bet. That may well be correct. [The use of
treaties to accomplish what Congress wouldnt
otherwise do isnt new, but seems worse than
usual this time.]
Digital privacy. The Loon hopes the engineers

can stay ahead of the shills and spooks. She
hopes they want to.
The Loon closes with May 2014s surprises be kind

ones. Ill second that.
2013 Predictions and Results

Coupled when thats easy, not when its hard. No
special order.
2013: Hello. Goodbye.

This December 19, 2012 post by Richard Watson at
Whats Next: Future Trends begins with a quick visual
summary of things Watson and his colleague Ross
Dawson saw as appearing and disappearing in our
lives in 2013. Its followed by the list in text form.
Note that these were near-term predictions
appearing presumably means some significant
adoption, and disappearing should, I would as-
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sume, mean substantial abandonment. (I suppose

that a field declining by, say, 5% could be considered
disappearing, but thats really stretching the
point.) Its the kind of list I just love to make fun of,
and given that Watson has previously issued longterm futurist forecasts that, for example, had libraries extinct by 2019 (a prediction he later publicly
repented), landline telephones extinct by 2011 and
newspaper delivery extinct by 2012, hes in that odd
position of going overboard even as he sometimes
criticizes going overboard.
Consider a few of them (where I have either an
opinion or some knowledge). My comments in
[square brackets]:
Appearing: Augmented reality glasses [yes, in
limited quantities]; thought control [wha?];
personal DNA testing [yesbut the medical as
opposed to genealogical variety came to a rapid halt]; digital butlers [huh?]; voice control
TV [yes, although reports on performance
vary]; pay by fingerprint [apparently]; electric
sports cars [wasnt the Tesla sports car already
out in 2012?]; robot sex [wha?]; empathic robots {not that Ive heard]; gesture interfaces
[most certainly out in 2012 or beforeunless
he means something way beyond the iPad and
Android tablets]; flexible, foldable mobile
phones [foldable mobile phones have been
around for a decade or so; flexiblewell, are
they?]; infinite color at home [I have no idea
what that could even mean, but yes, theres
nothing that prevents you from having any
color in the home]; personalized billboards [if
he means those awful LED things that change
messages depending on what FM station the
nearest cars receivinga crude form of personalization and already out in 2012]; pollution absorbing clothes [really?]; memory
implants [not that Ive heard of, or maybe Ive
just forgotten]; video wallpaper [no]; retail delivery boxes [mostly attempted and failed].
Disappearing: Intimacy [oh give me a break];
computer mouse [not really]; spelling [fortunately, not entirely]; landline telephones [diminishing, yes; disappearing, no]; coins
[really? where?]; privacy [dystopian but partly
right]; video rental stores [that ones basically
right]; vacuuming [in what world?]; retirement [bull]; weekday newspapers [Id pretty
much guarantee there werent even 10% fewer
weekday papers in January 2014 than in January 2013]; CDs/DVDs [maybe fewer, but this is
Cites & Insights
wildly overstated]; space tourism [how on

earth could this disappear?]; 8 hours sleep
[fortunately, not true]; switching off [if anything, its a growing trend]; biodiversity [what
a terribly dystopian prediction!]; non-internet
businesses [bye-bye, restaurants, car dealers,
supermarkets, airlines, plumbersbut not absurd predictions]; welfare state [really? disappearing? where?]; watches for under 25s
[while this may have seemed plausible, its not
what Im seeing]; maps; shame.
Unless Watsons just being deliberately provocative
or redefining disappearing in a very odd way, this
is a pathetic listincluding a few I didnt bother to
include. Of course, it lacks the expansions that
youd probably have to buy his book for, but its a
prime example of why I make fun of futurists. It
would work very well in Wired, especially the disappearing list, since I really do believe that Wired
equates a 5% drop in sales with total extinction. Especially if something isnt digital.
I dont see any end-of-year post either claiming
success or admitting failure on these, but that
doesnt surprise me: Watson usually seems better at
throwing out assured projections than on owning
up to his own track record.
Just to reiterate a few of the most extreme cases
of what Richard Watson expected to be substantially
disappearing in 2013:
Vacuuming. This one doesnt even make any
sense to me, to be honest. What? You just let the
carpets get dirtier and dirtier until you call in a
company to steam-clean them?
Non-internet businesses. Even if Watson actually means businesses that lack web pages, hes
wrong: Many local tradesmen and neighborhood restaurants get by just fine without web pagesand, of
course, having a web page doesnt make you an internet business. I dont see restaurants, car dealers,
railroads, airlines, supermarkets, plumbers, electricians, appliance storesoh, the list goes
ondisappearing in my lifetime, much less in 2013.
If they did, Im not sure the nation could ever recover
from the resulting depression and mass joblessness,
food riots, etc., etc.
Weekday newspapers. A few disappeared. Most
did not. While total weekday U.S. newspapers have
dropped in the U.S. from around 1,600 in 1990 to
around 1,350 now, thats a slow declineand until
recently, it was a case of evening newspapers shutting
down and (fewer) morning newspapers emerging.
Fact is, the number of newspapers shutting down
April 2014
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weekday editions is so small compared to the overall

number that I couldnt even find a direct source. The
best sources I did find say that around 14 to 21 daily
newspapers seem to shut down in a given year; so
lets call it probably 1% to 1.5%. An odd form of
disappearance, thatit allows for another 60 to 100
years before theyre actually gone, assuming an absurd straight-line projection of 14 to 21.
Computer mouse. Sure, thats disappeared, just
as nobody uses desktop computers any more. Oh,
wait And, of course, this is why neither Logitech
nor Microsoft still produces high-quality mice
Oh, wait again What you can say: the computer
mouse is declining in terms of percentage of computing devices for which it is the pointing device. Thats
true. Thats not disappearance.
Those are examples of why this kind of list is
mostly dystopian nonsense, but I guess it keeps futurists employed.
What well see in 2013 in digital media

Posted December 11, 2012 at GigaOm, with the author listed as paidContent. Its part of a whole set
of short-term forecasts. Some of the forecasts (without their discussion and with my [bracketed comments as appropriate]):
Remaining book publishers will settle with
the DOJ in the ebook pricing lawsuit. [This
happened, didnt it?]
A well-known figure will turn down a sevenfigure deal to self-publish. [I dont remember
anything quite that dramatic.]
Barnes & Noble will drastically cut back its
Nook product line. [There are four Nooks at
this point, which seems like a fairly broad selection, but drastically is one of those
words]
Innovative ads take off as brands move dollars from cable to online. [If innovative
means annoying changing ads in the sidebar
at GigaOm, maybe so, but I sure havent
seen much clever or creative.]
BuzzFeed will earn a Pulitzer prize. [Riigghht!. No nominations, no prizes.]
Branded content will re-fuel media. [Im including this for the sheer wonderment of that
sentence. Im not quite sure what it means in
English, but I think its about how terrific it
will be when all media are all advertorials
when Fast Company is the model for editorial
integrity. Pfeh.]
Online video will eat TV. [Not really.]
Cites & Insights
Xmas will be exciting. [No comment.]

More newspaper chains will file for bankruptcy because of legacy costs. [I think I
found one that wasnt already preparing a
packaged bankruptcy in 2012. I suppose one
is more than zero.]
There were a few others. I guess the lack of anything
particularly startling or major is a good sign, although the BuzzFeed prediction is, well, pushing
improbability pretty hard.
Predictions for 2013

After taking a year off, Ed Felten and the Freedom to
Tinker gang were back with this January 7, 2013 post.
And as usual, there are quite a few short-term predictions here: 21 in all, too many to list. Also as usual,
the first and most assured one: DRM technology will
still fail to prevent widespread infringement. In a related development, pigs will still fail to fly.
Feltens group tends toward negative predictions as well as positive onesso, for example, the
second one: The FAA wont reverse the ban on using
electronic devices during takeoff and landing. A few
others, in abbreviated/rephrased form and generally
without commentary:
A self-driving vehicle will be involved in a
fatal accident (causing a huge backlash).
[Fortunately, didnt happen.]
An unexpected solar event will take out one
or more GPS satellites or other important
space infrastructure [I dont believe this
happened.]
No real solution for smartphone patent wars.
An online-only show will get support for an
Emmy nomination, but is ruled ineligible.
{What did happen: Netflix-only shows, which
news reports tended to call online-only, were
nominated, not ruled ineligibleand won.]
More growth in MOOCs, some consolidation,
growth of nonprofit platforms.
A fair number of these are detailed and out of scope
for C&I. This group usually does a how we did
post roughly a year later; so far, I havent seen one
for 2013or a new set of predictions for 2014.
Looking Back
What 1967 Thought 2001 Would Look Like
As a little break in current futurism, this Mental
Floss piece by Chris Higgins appeared on February
4, 2013.
Its mostly based on The 21st Century, a Walter
Cronkite special aired on CBS on March 12, 1967.
April 2014
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This piece is actually fairly short, linking to a Smithsonian writeup thatwell, the link doesnt work
when I try it. Too bad; it might be fun to explore.
Heres Higgins lead paragraph:
Walter Cronkite, 1967, sitting in the living room of
the Home of the 21st Century: "We could watch a
football game, or a movie, shown in full color on
our big 3D color screen. The sound would come
from these globe-like speakers." His vision is reasonably correct, though the football game I watched
yesterday wasn't in 3D, nor do my speakers look
like globes. But conceptually it's spot-on -- right
down to the ability for me to select what program I
want to watch from a console. Granted, the console
is an assemblage of remote controls and apps rather
than a bunch of unlabeled dials, but still.
There are globe speakers on the market, includeing

fairly expensive ones with good reputations, such as
Cabasses $150,000 system, but the huge console to
control a TV was not, fortunately, how things turned
out. And, of course, while many of us own big 3D
color screens, most of us dont much give a damn
about the 3D aspect.
Of the few other items Higgins quoted from the
longer discussion, one stands out: we might find
ourselves in a glass enclosure where the lint and dirt
weve accumulated during our trip is removed electrostatically. Or not.
As to the shape of entertainment centers and
the likewell, the 1967 show was based on corporate home of the future concepts, and those corporations were actively working to make those ideas
come to fruition. As at least one commenter pointed
out, theres one critical thing that almost nobody
foresaw before it happened: the miniaturization that
came about thanks to integrated circuits and what it
would mean.
2014 Predictions
We begin with a disappointment, one where I
thought I had both 2013 and 2014-and-beyond projectionsthat, thanks to an odd linking system,
turned into one set of projections so full of caveats
that Im not giving the details.
The Future Is Not a Destination

Thats Slates title for this October 2, 2013 piece by
Patrick Tuckerbut its really a Futurist top 10 for
2014 and beyond piece with added paragraphs
about why the forecasts are in the top 10 and some
additional comments as to why they might or might
not happen. A little confusion on my partbecause
as I was writing this piece, I included a Futurist list
Cites & Insights
in my 2013 predictions, and these seemed awfully

familiar. Turns out the Futurist link was not only
undated, it went directly to the current set of predictions, whatever those might be. Scratch one section
of the 2013 discussion!
So instead of two lists that I thought would be
fun to compare, we have oneand and beyond is
just one of the caveats that makes this really not a
set of short-term forecasts.
Looking through the list again, it includes so
many detailed sets of reasons why these odd forecasts might be entirely offbase that Im not going to
summarize them. To my mind, the silliest one is the
suggestion that we (all of us?) are going to stop buying and owning, and start renting everythingand
the discussion behind that seems to say that true
futurists are generally agreed that U.S. unemployment would remain above 6.5% through the end of
2015. So, you know, go read the article and see if
you find it any more convincing than I do.
Top Travel Trends

Richard Watson posted this on October 9, 2013 at
Whats Next. Examples from this post:
Ubiquitous connectivity. Heres the lede: In
the future everyones life will be carried
around with them in the palm of the hand, on
their wrist or in other wearable devices. Access to information will define social status
and identity and personal technology will be
an ever-present companionat home and on
holiday. [Emphasis added.] As long as in the
future is however far out you want to make it,
its tough to disprove that nonsense, but its
gonna be a while before (a) everybody in every
nation, no matter how poor, can afford or will
wish to deal with this, (b) everyone does it, (c)
social status has nothing to do with wealth
or worth, only with access to information.
Which, at that point, would seem pretty ubiquitous, so I guess there will be no status distinctions? Anyway, later in the discussion he
reveals his true expectation: Ultimately, it is
likely that micro-technology will be embedded
inside us, with the human body becoming a
future computer interface. Fortunately, Ill be
dead long before were forced to be chipped.
Personalization. In the future, the personalisation of everything will be the norm. Everythingpresumably including the food you eat
and the water you drink. Well all be able to
express our individuality in every facet of
April 2014
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our lives. [Gee, that organic navel orange

looks good, but its not personalized]
Flexibility. The jargon in this description is
breathtaking, including the rental economy
and modular cars and zero-hours workplaces and
Premiumisation. Huh? Another jargonfest,
and we (everybody?) will pay to upgrade
everything. Everybody pays for scarcity and
rareness, thus making such thingsnot
scarce and not rare. Never mind.
There are a couple of predictions here that might
make sensee.g., some people want to expand their
horizons through travel (always been true, so why
wouldnt it be true in the future), some people want
to simplify their life on holiday (and Watson says
people may be prepared to pay to be deprived of
technology, I guess because actually disconnecting
and turning off is impossible unless you pay for it).
Then theres the final trend, and it makes me sad to
see where Watsons really at. Ill quote it in full:
Sustainability. Only joking. Despite millions
being poured into everything from towel reuse schemes to airline miles offsets, most customers, it seems, really couldnt care less.
Sigh.
Turns out thats just the broad-brush picture; he
did a series of at least ten more future of travel
posts that seem to have more to do with travel. Id
tagged several of them (the 10th seems to be a rehash
of the list above, omitting the last one), but looking
at them now I find that a little bit of Watson goes a
long way. Most projections now seem to be for
2030, by which point he will presumably have gone
on to greater things. Will I have an embedded communications/computing device in 2030 (yes, I expect to be around thenId only be 84, after all)? I
strongly doubt it, unless they somehow become
mandatoryand I even more strongly doubt that.
Will peoples social status be determined entirely or
in large part by their access to information? Bwahahahah.librarians rule!
Seven predictions for media in 2014

Bill Cromwell on December 20, 2013 at media life
and its worth noting that this online magazine is
explicitly for media planners and buyers, which is
to say Its All About the Money. Thus, the media
economy might better be called the ad-supported
media economy. (Which, if you leave out books,
sound recordings, movies, public broadcasting, theater, opera, ballet, symphony, sculpture and some
Cites & Insights
magazines, is media.) That said, heres the list

with [my comments] but without full expansion.
Netflix becomes available on cable. [I suspect Comcast Owns Everything will make
this less likely.]
Upfront deals are done on C7. [If you even
understand that prediction, youre probably
in the media economy itself. Its saying that
advance advertising buys in TV are likely to
take into account the first full week of DVR
playback as part of TV show ratings. You
thought broadcast/cable TV was dead? Guess
again: its still a huge ad market.]
A celebrity magazine folds. [With a dozen
such magazinesincluding one added just last
fallthis seems likely. Print magazines are going to survive, but a given specialty can only
have so many competitors before it gets silly.]
Instagram advertising takes off. [What? You
didnt think youd see your Instagram streams
increasingly polluted with ads? You do know
who owns Instagram, dont you? Facebook
has never seen a venue it cant shove more
ads into.]
Tablets hit 50 percent penetration. [Which
the writer points up as meaning Huge Opportunities for iPad-specific Ads, of course.]
Big changes in newspaper delivery models.
[Print newspapers arent going away all that
rapidly, but seven-day-a-week home delivery
does seem likely to be cut in various places,
as it already has.]
A strong year for ad spending. [I guess
thats the seventh, although its not numbered.]
I find media life useful; I find the standing assumption that media equals advertising annoying. But, of
course, Im not the target audience. Oh, the writer
claimed these were all bold predictions. Really? They
sure dont look bold to me!
Ten Bold Predictions for Ebooks and Digital

Publishing in 2014
Speaking of bold predictions, heres Jeremy Greenfields December 20, 2013 list at digitalbookworld.
He starts by linking back to a set of 2012 predictions, also that magic number 10 and key bold.
How bold and successful? For 2013, they predicted more consolidation among big publishers.
But the biggie (Penguin and Random House) was
already in the works, and I havent heard of any others. They said 2013 would be the year of the enhanced ebook. Bold, yes. Right, not as far as I
April 2014
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know. The $0 Kindle. Also wrong. More DRM-free

ebooks from publishers, sold directly to consumers:
Partly right. Ebook marketplace growth will slow:
Right, but not bold, since the slowdown began in
2012. Ebook marketing will be completely rethought: Huh? Major privacy breach at a library involving ebooks/reader info: Not that I know of. 65%
of U.S. children having access to e-reading devices
by years end: I dont believe that happened. There
are a couple of others. I see some bold and some
correct predictions, but few that are both.
So lets move on to some of 2013s calls for this
year, with the usual [bracketed notes]:
Barnes & Noble will close or sell Nook and
go private. [No idea.]
Amazon will go the way of Barnes & Nobleand open its own physical stores in
2014. [Could happen.]
Trade publishers will sell and acquire assets
to verticalize their businesses. [Dontcha
love jargon? Youll have to read this one yourself.]
The illustrated book business will become
severely challenged. [The writeup for this
seems to assume that ebooks are the future
even as their market share seems to be settling
in at 30% or so; otherwise, its an odd one.]
Publishers will go after new revenue
streams as ebook revenue growth continues
to taper. [Like, for example, print books?
Nahhnot in digitalbookworld. They mean
things like conferences and education and institutional customers.]
Paraphrased: Publisher support for subscription ebooks. [I continue to doubt that
subscription ebooks make much sense on a
large scale. That may be me.]
Paraphrased: More publishers add magazines and websites around ebook specialties. [What? Dead magazines? Seems likely.]
Publishers will move toward data-drive decision making. [Yes, the typos in the boldface
numbered highly important presumably-edited
heading. I suspect publishers have been trying
to be data-driven for yearsbut, as one observer says, the data aint all that good.]
More price experimentation. [Not a bold
projection, but a near-certainty.]
Paraphrased: The big five make all their
ebooks available to libraries for purchase.
[With purchase in scare quotes; seems at
least plausible.]
Cites & Insights
Clearly, bold in the predictions business has taken

on a different meaning than I would have expected,
based on this and the previous item.
2014 Top Tech Trends

This one is a slideshow appearing on January 13,
2014 on John R. Langs The Proverbial Lone Wolf Librarians Weblogbut it seems to come from Experts
Exchange, and, well, Theyre Experts, so they must
be Right. (Read the Talk page for the Experts Exchange Wikipedia article for more about this; I
wouldnt bother with the advertorial that appears as
an Experts Exchange Wikipedia page, although its
long list of footnotes, almost none of which meet
Wikipedias supposed criteria for trustworthy
sources and almost all of which are the operations
own website, certainly gives one pause.)
Anyway..heres what I can glean as the ten Top
Tech Trends (yes, of course its ten) from this group
of anonymous Experts, paraphrased and with my
own [snark] as appropriate:
Windows 8 will continue to declineMS
will release next codebase in late 2014 or
2015. [Windows 8.1 is up to 200 million licenses, not including bulk purchases. But,
yknow, that doesnt compare to the overwhelming marketplace dominance of OS X
10.9 Maverickoh, wait]
Fewer companies will manufacture tablets
as profit margins plungethey will not replace computers. [Well, for starters, tablets
are computers, oh ye Expertsbut no, tablets
wont entirely replace desktops and notebooks. Why would they? As for fewer companiesnot that I can see.]
TV + Internet = one in the same. [The expansion talks about demise of cable and satellite subscriptions, similar to what happened
to newspapers, demonstrating ignorance of
media in general. Talk to Comcast about the
death of cable some time]
Smartphones and other mobile devices will
become more attached to other hardware
[Examples? Those smart refrigerators and
wifi-connected toys you always wanted. In
2014 or shortly thereafter, youll be able to
make dinner from your smartphone and
use it to drive the car. OK.]
HTML 5 will continue to grow in popularity,
and more functionality will be added. [Even
a stopped clock is right twice a day.]
Flash will DIE. [Because Apple, apparently.]
April 2014
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Social mining [Says more of it, right, but

also that the sites will need to take more responsibility for protecting users. Nice dream.]
Overall? Not impressed. Id prefer Pews big surveybased pontifications, and Im no great friend of Pew.
The Fortune Crystal Ball

I read this piece in print, as part of Fortunes January
13, 2014 Future Issue, but the same piece appears
to be available online. I say appears because its
one of those 33-page ad-laden listicles and I wasnt
willing to plow through it all after reading the
friendly, easy-to-navigate, read-anywhere print version. (The same issue has wowie-zowie future essays on Qualcomm, Google Ventures, Robert
Downey Jr. as futurist (!), and Snapchat as a revolutionary new model.)
Fortune hasnt done this sort of thing very often,
and they have fun with itbut also offer a percentage probability of the prediction coming true by December 31, 2014. The last two sentences of the
introduction are key: The only thing were quite
sure of? Its more fun than predicting the weather.
A few of the many items, paraphrased:
The Fed will screw up tapering and trigger a
financial crisis. (They say 19%, basically saying highly unlikely.)
Democrats will hold a Senate majority. (71%)
Bravo will develop a reality show about people at a conference about conferences (yes,
there are such thingse.g., the American
Planning Association). (97%)
Fuel-cell cars will hit showrooms (97%)
Oregon and New Mexico will legalize marriage equality; Oregon will legalize marijuana.
Google will release a quantified self Glass
app to determine your emotional well-being
and let your friends know when youre having a bad day. (76%)
The smart money will bail out of tech. (56%)
Apple will shoot another blankthat is,
wont have an OMG product in 2014 (60%).
Lots more, some of it at least fun.
World-Changing Ideas of 2014

How better to end a silly section like this than with
cultist predictionsthat is, this article from the February 2014 Fast Company. (Again: I read it in print,
but this online versionif youre willing to figure out
how to navigate itmay be the same thing.)
As I was reading these, I began to realize that
they have to be taken within a specific context:
FastCos target readership, the affluent young folk
Cites & Insights
who actually buy into the whole FastCo mythos. I

treat it as a National Lampoon variant or a badly done
print version of The Onion, albeit with less separation
between ads and editorial than either of those. Oh, by
the way, these are 12 BOLD PREDICTIONS (in boldface and all caps in the magazine) and very specifically claim to be world-changing in 2014.
Ill summarize a few. Your phone will listen to
younot like Siri, but serving up information before you even ask for it. You will make 4 billion
new friends because some new satellites will deliver 3G to isolated areas in developing countries.
Your eye will unlock everythingin 2014, because, I guess, youre going to replace all your devices with new iris-reading replacements. In 2014.
You will actually use a 3-D printer. Not more people will, but you will. If youre a proper FastCo reader, that is. They may be right on that one.
Oh, and you will swallow a sensor (because
sensor-equipped smart pills will be ubiquitous in
2014!) and Google will perfect the data pipeline,
which seems to imply that Google Fiber will move
from Kansas City and a handful of other cities to
everywhere. This year. Whatever.
Pay What You Wish

Cites & Insights carries no advertising and has no
sponsorship. It does have costs, both direct and indirect. If you find it valuable or interesting, you are
invited to contribute toward its ongoing operation.
The Paypal donation button (for which you can use
Paypal or a credit card) is on the Cites & Insights
home page. Thanks.
Masthead
Cites & Insights: Crawford at Large, Volume 14, Number 4,
Whole # 172, ISSN 1534-0937, a journal of libraries, policy,
technology and media, is written and produced irregularly by
Walt Crawford.
Comments should be sent to waltcrawford@gmail.com.
Cites & Insights: Crawford at Large is copyright 2013 by Walt
Crawford: Some rights reserved.
All original material in this work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License. To view a
copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/bync/1.0 or send a letter to Creative Commons, 559 Nathan Abbott
Way, Stanford, California 94305, USA.
April 2014
URL: citesandinsights.info/civ14i4.pdf
22

Jeffery Beall Exposed

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Jeffery Beall Exposed

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Jeffery Beall

This book contains few articles about Jeffery Beall

Beall has no real substantial authority to evaluate scholarly Journals

Jack of all trades: Not Academically Inclined

Self-Proclaimed Journal Critic: No Governing Body

Jeffrey Beall: Potentially, possibly, or probably a predatory blogger

Bealls Questionable and Predatory Criteria

Questionable Bealls Platinum and Gold Predatory Criteria

University Funds Scammer: Beall is a huge cost to the University of Colorado

Jeffrey Beall's Bogus profile

From the profile (http://library.auraria.edu/directory/staff/beall/jeffrey) ,it is glaringly

Academic Fraudster and Imposter

Phony Bealls Kangaroo court

Used personal biases, useless blogger

Jeffrey Beall just simply confusing us

Drunken Stupor Jeffery Beall:

Beall utilizes his blog to extort open

Academic Exchange Quarterly

Predatory Blogger Beall Exposed

NO, Not at all

NO, Not at all

NO, Not at all

NO, Not at all

NO, Not at all

NO, Not at all

NO - only a bogus Blog

Beall is not a recognized authority in evaluating scholarly Journals.

Exposed: "Randykitty" is a Jeffrey Beal

Beall is a fake Ph.D.

Beall has no credibility

I have just seen Jeffrey Beall's "analysis" of MDPI

Mr. Jeffrey Beall is a librarian at the Auraria Library, University of Denver,

Predatory Bealls so called review board, appeal board has No names, no

Response to Jeffrey Beall

Beall's criteria almost laughable

Beall should quit this nonsense

Beall lists should be ignored

Jeffrey Beall is not an academic of any standing nor a scholar

Beall is not a scholar promote his (unqualified) services

Bogus Jeffrey Beall

Beall has no PhD but in his blog refer him as Dr.

Beall's stories are not substantiated by sufficient evidence

I recently forwarded an email to him from this Publisher: xyz

Beall is an academic terrorist

Jeffrey Beall's list is not accurate to believe

Beall's List of Predatory Publishers or Beall's Predatory Business at the

To whom it may concern

-------- Original Message -------Subject:Open Access Publishing

I maintain list of predatory open access publishers in my blog

Beall's another predatory and scamming activity

Originally published on http://publishopenaccess.blogspot.ca/2012/01/bealls-list-ofpredatory-open-access.html

Predatory Blogger: Jeffrey Beall

Backlash over journals blacklisting

Beall acting as a mouthpiece

Motion to repudiate Bealls attack on Open access journals

Jeffrey Beall and Blacklists

A Response to Jeffrey Bealls Critique of Open Access

Beall's goes bananas, then predatory practice exposed

Another laugher: Beall academic Joker and Colorado Clown

especially predatory publishing), he ought to be advocating for some form of open

Beyond Bealls List: We need a better understanding of predatory publishing

problematic submissions (e.g., Andrew Wakefield et al.s article linking autism to

and Access 1: The Sad Case of Jeffrey Beall.

Furthermore, we need to make sure that researchers understand that OA can be