The first predatory journal was the Journal of Biological Sciences, which was first published by ANSInet in January 2001. To arrive at this conclusion the 18 publishers that were analyzed by Jeffrey Beall in four papers that he published between 2009 and 2012 were considered. These 18 publishers were publishing 1,328 journals when Beall carried out his analysis.
Predatory publishing is the practice of publishers/journals charging fees to publish scientific articles, yet not providing the services that would normally be expected of a scientific journal. This includes not having robust peer review, thus not ensuring the quality and integrity of the papers which will form part of the scientific archive.
In 2010, Jeffrey Beall established a blog which listed what he believed were predatory journals and publishers. Beall’s List became the “go to” place for anybody who wished to know whether the journal they were planning to submit to was predatory or not. He started the list in 2010, but took it offline, without notice, in 2017, after coming under pressure from publishers, his peers and his own institution. Although the list was criticized, many saw it as a valuable resource and were sorry to see it go.
An ISSN is a way to uniquely identify a serial, which includes scientific journals. This article gives you all you need to know about ISSNs.
We expect scientific publishers to follow certain standards. This is especially important in order to maintain the integrity of the scientific archive.
In this article, we touch upon three elements and question whether a predatory publisher is able to uphold these principles.
In this article we put a spotlight on, Beall, J. 2009. Bentham Open. The Charleston Advisor 11(1) 29-32. This paper was the first paper by Jeffrey Beall to discuss predatory publishing. In the paper, he analyzes the publisher Bentham Open which, at the time, published 236 journals.
We suggest that you stop tying to identify predatory journals. Instead, spend time finding legitimate journals and, if you are not sure, just move on. The world is not short of journals that you can submit to.
We ran a Twitter poll where we asked is there was a legitimate reason to publish in a predatory journal? This article presents, and discusses, the results.
The acronym for the International Scientific Index is ISI. Is this just a coincidence that this is the same term often used for the Web of Science’s impact factor? In this article, we explore this question.
The African Quality Centre for Journals (AQCJ) provides an alternative impact factor to the ones that are most often used. We argue that this impact factor is not fit for purpose.