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Our Guiding Principles

Our Guiding Principles

Here are the principles that we use when posting either on this web site or to our social media accounts, such as X (Twitter).

  1. Evidence based: We report information that has either been peer reviewed or where evidence has been collected. We will report where that evidence has come from and, if we can, we will archive that evidence. We may make the evidence available, but see next point.
  2. Publications: Were possible we will report out findings in the peer reviewed literature. Not only will this validate some of our findings, but it will also make us apply some academic rigour to the investigation we carry out. Given this, we may not be able to make any evidence we collect immediately available as we would want to retain possession of it until we have published the results.
  3. Reporting: As well as reporting from the peer reviewed literature, we will also report non peer reviewed material such as blog posts, social media posts and media reports. Some of this material may not be acceptable to everybody but, we believe that we are reaching out to an educated audience who are sensible enough to judge what they are reading, taking into account where that material has come from.
  4. Disagreements: You may not agree with everything we say, or report, and that is fine. You are entitled to your view and we respect that. Indeed, we hope that these differing views lead to a healthy discussion. We just ask that everybody is polite and bears in mind that everybody is entitled to have a view, even if that differs from you.
  5. Domain name: The domain name of this web site is predatory-publish.com but we no longer believe that the term predatory publishing is valid, or at least it should be used with caution. We elaborate on this view in one of our blog posts.
  6. We don’t like lists: We do not believe in lists that categorise journals (or publishers) as being predatory (or not).
    Like many people, we used to refer to Beall’s List, but this list is (at the time of writing) now seven years out of date and is no longer useful, even if you believed it was when Beall was maintaining the list.
    Others have tried to either maintain a version of Beall’s List, or set up their own. We do not believe that such lists are valid as it is not possible to categorise a journal, or publisher, as predatory (or not) as there is no widely accepted/agreed definition. We discuss this more in this blog post.
  7. Due Diligence: We believe that scholars have to decide for themselves whether a journal is predatory, or not, as they will have their own view as to what makes a journal predatory.
    But, it goes deeper than that. Even if you believe that a journal is legitimate, you still need to decide whether you submit your article to that journal.That is, scholars need to carry out their own due diligence before submitting to a journal and should not rely on others to make that decision for them.
  8. Media:We would welcome the opportunity to work with the media so, if you work in that sector and see something of interest, please reach out to us.
  9. Some views may not necessarily align with ours: We report from many different sources and some of the information we report may not necessarily align with our own views, even though we report it.
  10. Commenting on ‘colleagues’: As a general rule, I will not comment on people I have worked with, or published with.This may be a cause of frustration, but I feel that it is the right thing to do. There may be exceptions that prove the rule but, generally, you won’t find me talking about these people.
Document history
  • 17 Aug 2024: Original version
  • 18 Aug 2024: Added point 10
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