Published by UNESCO.
Swan, Alma. (2012). Policy guidelines for the promotion of open access. (Open guidelines series). Paris: UNESCO. ISBN: 978-92-3-001052-2 Available: http://unesdoc.unesco.org/imag.es/0021/002158/215863e.pdf
This is a book about using mandates and sanctions to promote open-access publishing. Read the rest of this entry »
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Mandates, Open-access policy, Open-access sanctions, Scholarly Open-Access Publishers | Tagged: open access, review | 
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Posted by Jeffrey Beall
Oftentimes, predators appear harmless.
Photo by Marek Szczepanek.
1. New Facebook page: We’ve created a presence on Facebook for Beall’s List of Predatory Open-Access Publishers. The page is here: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Bealls-List-of-Predatory-Open-Access-Publishers/329861460417572 Please “like” the page if you are so inclined.
2. I am adding two more publishers and one new journal to my lists of predatory publishers/journals. They are: Read the rest of this entry »
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Posted by Jeffrey Beall
Global Journals™ Inc. (US)
Global Journals™ Inc. (US) is a brand-new publisher of scholarly, academic journals. Or at least it aims to be. Its website first appeared only recently, and the publisher is now involved in an intense spam email campaign to recruit editors, editorial board members, and most importantly, article submissions. Read the rest of this entry »
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Posted by Jeffrey Beall
A platinum nugget.
Photo by Wikimedia Commons user Alchemist-hp and used according to the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License.
Recently I used the term “platinum open access” in an email I sent to several scholarly communication listserves.
I was immediately castigated by Stevan Harnad, one of today’s more bellicose open access advocates.
He blasted, “There is no “Platinum” Road to OA,” reflecting the now little-used “road” metaphor do describe the different types of scholarly open-access publishing.
To back up his claim, he threw in a link to an email he penned five years ago. The email simply stated that there is no such thing as platinum open access.
Platinum open access is a model of scholarly publishing that does not charge author fees. The costs associated with scholarly publication are covered by the benevolence of others, such as through volunteer work, donations, subsidies, grants, etc.
The term has been used for many years in numerous open-access publications, including books and blog entries, and on websites.
Platinum open-access is mentioned in Walt Crawford’s 2011 book Open Access: What You Need to Know Now. ¹
A selection from the book “Open Access: What You Need to Know Now” by Walt Crawford.
I think the distinction between gold (author-pays) and platinum open access is significant and the distinction between the two worth maintaining. I’ll continue to make that distinction by using the two terms.
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[1]. Crawford, Walt. (2011). Open Access: What You Need to Know Now. Chicago: American Library Association.
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Posted by Jeffrey Beall
The logo for OMICS Publishing Group’s new brand SciTechnol.
India-based OMICS Publishing Group has just launched a new brand of scholarly journals called “SciTechnol.” This new OMICS brand lists 53 new journals, though none has any content yet. Read the rest of this entry »
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Posted by Jeffrey Beall
I discover a new open-access scholarly publisher based in India almost every week. The most recent find is the Indian Society for Education and Environment, cleverly abbreviated as “I See.” Read the rest of this entry »
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Posted by Jeffrey Beall
The logo for Springer Open
The logo for Islamic Azad University
The scholarly open-access publisher Springer Open has partnered with Iran’s Islamic Azad University (IAU) to publish at least ten platinum, open-access journals (listed below). Read the rest of this entry »
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Posted by Jeffrey Beall
The homepage of the Journal of Menstrual Cycle, one of 262 journals published by Mehta Press.
Mehta Press, based in Rajkot, Gujarat, India, is a brand-new publisher of online scholarly journals. The publisher currently lists 262 journals (see titles below), but only one, Current Chemical Research, has any content. However, it only has abstracts; I cannot access the actual articles. Read the rest of this entry »
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Posted by Jeffrey Beall
The Macrothink Institute logo.
The term “institute” is used a lot these days in the open-access scholarly publishing industry. It’s used to add credibility to an operation that is essentially a scholarly vanity press.
Why just be a mere publisher when you can be an institute? As an added bonus, institutes can also sponsor conferences, providing an additional revenue stream for their owners.
I recently added the following two publishers to my list of questionable open-access publishers:
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Posted by Jeffrey Beall
A light switch.
Photo by Funpika, and shared under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States license.
One of the tactics that predatory open-access publishers use is to solicit and accept manuscripts from authors, publish the manuscripts, and then invoice the authors for the author fee.
The solicitation is done without informing the authors that an author fee will be charged. This information is generally stated in the publishers’ websites, but it is buried and most prospective authors don’t know about it.
Below are four cases of this bait-and-switch practice that I am aware from. The first is taken from an article in the Chronicle of Higher Education. The second, third, and fourth are taken from unsolicited emails I received through my website. Read the rest of this entry »
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Posted by Jeffrey Beall
