Cautions against predatory open access publishers

Abstract

As open access (OA) advances, emergence of "predatory publishers" is viewed as a problem. This article describes the situation and discussions about this problem, with a focus on activities of Jeffrey Beall, who created a black list of predatory publishers. While Beall's list is highly regarded by many people, some critics say that it doesn't show enough evidence. There was a case that a publisher whose name was on his list asked him to pay $1 billion for damages. Also, he lost his credibility a little because of his attitude against OA movement. On the other hand, John Bohannon revealed that there are many OA journals which accept articles without peer review by submitting a nonsense paper to them. Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), in contrast to Beall, aims to create a white list of good OA publishers.