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Librarian removes controversial list of "predatory" journals and publishers

insidehighered.com

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Re: Librarian removes controversial list of "predatory" journals and publishers

#21

Post by dragandj »

HarryHirsch wrote: post #20
dragandj wrote: post #6

TL;DR What Jeffrey Beall was doing could be described as one honest man trying to fight the predatory publishing mafia, by nothing else but exposing their misdeeds. Unfortunately, the mafia managed to silence him. For those who do not know what predatory publishing is, it is basically the "business" similar to diploma mills: they issue crap credentials (by publishing "scientific articles") for a "modest" fee to peopl…

It mostly happens in developing nations... You wish. You see the same crap in regional universities - faculty must do "research" with undergrads and "publish" the stuff. Back then you had campus journals run by students, but now you have predatory journals. What you don't have is administration with a clue. Administration entered working life sometime in the early 1990s with maybe one or two papers out of their PhD,…

I live in a developing country, and I assure you it's much worse here. I know it _also_ happens in the developed world, that's why I wrote "mostly" in developing nations. The problem exists everywhere, though, and tends to increase.

Re: Librarian removes controversial list of "predatory" journals and publishers

#22

Post by HarryHirsch »

dragandj wrote: post #21
HarryHirsch wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It mostly happens in developing nations... You wish. You see the same crap in regional universities - faculty must do "research" with undergrads and "publish" the stuff. Back then you had campus journals run by students, but now you have predatory journals. What you don't have is administration with a clue. Administration entered working life sometime in the early 1990s with maybe one or two papers out of their PhD,…

I live in a developing country, and I assure you it's much worse here. I know it _also_ happens in the developed world, that's why I wrote "mostly" in developing nations. The problem exists everywhere, though, and tends to increase.

and I assure you it's much worse here

That's interesting. What did faculty do before predatory open access came along? Are the pressures the same as here in the US at minor colleges?

Re: Librarian removes controversial list of "predatory" journals and publishers

#23

Post by stinkytaco »

HarryHirsch wrote: post #20
dragandj wrote: post #6

TL;DR What Jeffrey Beall was doing could be described as one honest man trying to fight the predatory publishing mafia, by nothing else but exposing their misdeeds. Unfortunately, the mafia managed to silence him. For those who do not know what predatory publishing is, it is basically the "business" similar to diploma mills: they issue crap credentials (by publishing "scientific articles") for a "modest" fee to peopl…

It mostly happens in developing nations... You wish. You see the same crap in regional universities - faculty must do "research" with undergrads and "publish" the stuff. Back then you had campus journals run by students, but now you have predatory journals. What you don't have is administration with a clue. Administration entered working life sometime in the early 1990s with maybe one or two papers out of their PhD,…

I've always wondered about academia's habit of pulling its administrators from its ranks. I guess it makes some sense (similar to how an athlete might become a coach), but given that higher ed is essentially a government entity in the US, it seems to make more sense to bring in professional civil servants and administrators. It may create a different set of problems, of course, but academia's tendency to view itself as a thing apart, a thing it's not -- an independent, strictly scholarly entity -- seems to actually hurt its goals.

Re: Librarian removes controversial list of "predatory" journals and publishers

#24

Post by justgottasay3 »

unwiredben wrote: post #15

It looks like the December 23rd archive at http://web.archive.org/web/20161230053202/https://scholarlyo... still has a lot of this information. The January 2017 archiving had it missing.

I see names a-plenty in this entry... http://web.archive.org/web/20170112125427/https://scholarlyo...

Re: Librarian removes controversial list of "predatory" journals and publishers

#25

Post by ivansavz »

unwiredben wrote: post #15

It looks like the December 23rd archive at http://web.archive.org/web/20161230053202/https://scholarlyo... still has a lot of this information. The January 2017 archiving had it missing.

If I had time today, I would totally put this up on a github repo. It might not be easy for one person to keep this up, but with pull requests + a github.io domain, we could keep this good work going.

I'll be happy to help with getting the data archive.org data if someone gets this started.

Re: Librarian removes controversial list of "predatory" journals and publishers

#26

Post by dragandj »

HarryHirsch wrote: post #22
dragandj wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live in a developing country, and I assure you it's much worse here. I know it _also_ happens in the developed world, that's why I wrote "mostly" in developing nations. The problem exists everywhere, though, and tends to increase.

and I assure you it's much worse here That's interesting. What did faculty do before predatory open access came along? Are the pressures the same as here in the US at minor colleges?

The formal requirements were looser, with no requirement to publish X papers in "international journals".

Re: Librarian removes controversial list of "predatory" journals and publishers

#27

Post by dragandj »

stinkytaco wrote: post #23
HarryHirsch wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It mostly happens in developing nations... You wish. You see the same crap in regional universities - faculty must do "research" with undergrads and "publish" the stuff. Back then you had campus journals run by students, but now you have predatory journals. What you don't have is administration with a clue. Administration entered working life sometime in the early 1990s with maybe one or two papers out of their PhD,…

I've always wondered about academia's habit of pulling its administrators from its ranks. I guess it makes some sense (similar to how an athlete might become a coach), but given that higher ed is essentially a government entity in the US, it seems to make more sense to bring in professional civil servants and administrators. It may create a different set of problems, of course, but academia's tendency to view itself…

The formal, professional administration might be one of the sources of the problem. How is a professional administrator going to distinguish people? By looking at formal requirements, of course. So, how many papers does person X have? 3? Want to beef up the resume? Some hundreds/thousands of dollars invested and here you are - the same person with 78 papers.

Re: Librarian removes controversial list of "predatory" journals and publishers

#28

Post by HarryHirsch »

dragandj wrote: post #27
stinkytaco wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've always wondered about academia's habit of pulling its administrators from its ranks. I guess it makes some sense (similar to how an athlete might become a coach), but given that higher ed is essentially a government entity in the US, it seems to make more sense to bring in professional civil servants and administrators. It may create a different set of problems, of course, but academia's tendency to view itself…

The formal, professional administration might be one of the sources of the problem. How is a professional administrator going to distinguish people? By looking at formal requirements, of course. So, how many papers does person X have? 3? Want to beef up the resume? Some hundreds/thousands of dollars invested and here you are - the same person with 78 papers.

What you really need is a sensible process that isn't administered by those subject to it. Else you have all the tenured faculty sitting in a circle, handing an easy job to the person on their right, and all the hard work that's left is dropped onto the untenured faculty. Or you have senior tenured faculty in their mid-50s dumb as nuts (because when they entered working life anyone with a pulse could find a nice job in industry) holding back junior faculty and progress in general, for fear that their achievements would throw shade on them. You can't rely on a sense of duty and community, that train left the US when Reagan came in.

The citation problem you already have. In a previous workplace the materials science people would push for a publication count. Of course they would! In that field the bar for a viable publication is much lower than in the life sciences.

Re: Librarian removes controversial list of "predatory" journals and publishers

#29

Post by DashRattlesnake »

stinkytaco wrote: post #23
HarryHirsch wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It mostly happens in developing nations... You wish. You see the same crap in regional universities - faculty must do "research" with undergrads and "publish" the stuff. Back then you had campus journals run by students, but now you have predatory journals. What you don't have is administration with a clue. Administration entered working life sometime in the early 1990s with maybe one or two papers out of their PhD,…

I've always wondered about academia's habit of pulling its administrators from its ranks. I guess it makes some sense (similar to how an athlete might become a coach), but given that higher ed is essentially a government entity in the US, it seems to make more sense to bring in professional civil servants and administrators. It may create a different set of problems, of course, but academia's tendency to view itself…

I don't really agree. I'm not an academic, but it's my understanding is that academia's function is to advance human understanding of various topics. I would think injecting "professional civil servants and administrators" into the process would simply push the focus away from scholarship and towards more quotidian things that the government and the administrators are interested in.

Lists like Beall's seem like the way it ought to be done. The academic identify and compile lists of shoddy publications and their peers can treat those journals an as persona non grata.

Re: Librarian removes controversial list of "predatory" journals and publishers

#30

Post by whorleater »

ivansavz wrote: post #25
unwiredben wrote: post #15

It looks like the December 23rd archive at http://web.archive.org/web/20161230053202/https://scholarlyo... still has a lot of this information. The January 2017 archiving had it missing.

If I had time today, I would totally put this up on a github repo. It might not be easy for one person to keep this up, but with pull requests + a github.io domain, we could keep this good work going. I'll be happy to help with getting the data archive.org data if someone gets this started.

I started it at: https://github.com/peixian/predatory-publishers. I'll probably do a few more mirrors and setup a github pages site for it too. Feel free to make PR's.
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