Jeffrey Beall
Jeffrey Beall | |
---|---|
predatory open access publishing |
Jeffrey Beall is an American librarian and
When Beall created his list, he was employed as a librarian and associate professor[5] at the University of Colorado Denver. More recently, he was a librarian at Auraria Library in Denver.[6] He retired in 2018.[7]
Education and career
Beall has a
Criticism of open access publishing
Beall classifies
In a June 2012 interview, Beall said that while he supported what he called "platinum open-access", he concluded: "The only truly successful model that I have seen is the traditional publishing model."[12]
In December 2013, Beall published a comment in tripleC, an
Beall provided an overview of the history of predatory publishing, his involvement with the issue, and a summary and reiteration of most of the above criticisms in an article published in June 2017.[14]
Predatory open access publishing
Beall is well known for his investigations of
Predatory meetings
Beall coined the term "
Beall's list and the Science sting
In 2013, Science published the results of a sting operation in which a scientifically flawed spoof publication was submitted to open access publications.[25] Many accepted the manuscript, and a disproportionate number of the accepting journals were on Beall's list.[26] The publication, entitled Who's Afraid of Peer Review?, concluded that Beall is "good at spotting publishers with poor quality control". Of publishers on his list that completed the review process, it was accepted by 82%.[25] Beall remarked that the author of the sting, John Bohannon, "basically found what I've been saying for years".[27]
Counter-criticism
Phil Davis, in an analysis of the Who's Afraid of Peer Review? sting operation, observed that "Beall is falsely accusing nearly one in five as being a 'potential, possible, or probable predatory scholarly open access publisher' on appearances alone."[28] He continued to say that Beall "should reconsider listing publishers on his 'predatory' list until he has evidence of wrongdoing. Being mislabeled as a 'potential, possible, or probable predatory publisher' by circumstantial evidence alone is like the sheriff of a Wild West town throwing a cowboy into jail just 'cuz he's a little funny lookin.' Civility requires due process."[28]
Joseph Esposito wrote in
Wayne Bivens-Tatum, librarian at Princeton University, published a rebuttal in tripleC, regarding Beall's criticisms of open access publishing. He stated that Beall's "rhetoric provides good examples of what Albert O. Hirschman called the 'rhetoric of reaction'", and concluded Beall's "argument fails because the sweeping generalizations with no supporting evidence render it unsound."[30]
City University of New York librarians Monica Berger and Jill Cirasella said his views are biased against open-access journals from less economically developed countries. Berger and Cirasella argued that "imperfect English or a predominantly non-Western editorial board does not make a journal predatory".[31] While recognizing that "the criteria he uses for his list are an excellent starting point for thinking about the hallmarks of predatory publishers and journals",[31] they suggest that, "given the fuzziness between low-quality and predatory publishers, whitelisting, or listing publishers and journals that have been vetted and verified as satisfying certain standards, may be a better solution than blacklisting."[31]
One major journal
Rick Anderson, associate dean in the J. Willard Marriott Library, University of Utah, challenged the term "predatory open access publishing" itself: "what do we mean when we say 'predatory,' and is that term even still useful?... This question has become relevant because of that common refrain heard among Beall's critics: that he only examines one kind of predation—the kind that naturally crops up in the context of author-pays OA." Anderson suggested that the term "predatory" be retired in the context of scholarly publishing. "It's a nice, attention-grabbing word, but I'm not sure it's helpfully descriptive… it generates more heat than light." In its place, he proposed the term "deceptive publishing".[34]
Website removal
On 15 January 2017, the entire content of the Scholarly Open Access website was removed, along with Beall's faculty page on the University of Colorado's website.[35] The removal was first noticed on social media, with speculation on whether the removal was due to migration of the list to the stewardship of Cabell's International.[36] The company later denied any relationship, and its vice president of business development declared that Beall "was forced to shut down blog due to threats and politics".[36] The University of Colorado also declared that the decision to take down the list was a personal decision from Beall.[37] Beall later wrote that he had taken down his blog because of pressure from the University of Colorado, which threatened his job security.[14] Beall's supervisor, Shea Swauger, wrote that the university had supported Beall's work and had not threatened his academic freedom.[38] A demand by Frontiers Media to open a research misconduct case against Beall, to which the University of Colorado acquiesced, is reported as the immediate reason for Beall to take down the list. The university's investigation was closed with no findings.[39][40]
In an interview in 2018, Beall stated that "my university began to attack me in several ways. They launched a research misconduct investigation against me (after seven months, the result of the investigation was that no misconduct had occurred). They also put an unqualified, mendacious supervisor over me, and he constantly attacked and harassed me. I decided I could no longer safely publish the list with my university threatening me in these ways."[41]
After the website was taken down, medical researcher Roger Pierson of the University of Saskatchewan said, "To see Beall's work disappear would be an absolute disaster," adding, "From an academic perspective, this represents the absence of an extremely important resource."[42]
Subsequently, an anonymous person created an archive of Jeffrey Beall's work on lists of predatory publishers and journals.[43]
Legal threats
In February 2013, the open-access publisher Canadian Center for Science and Education sent a letter to Beall stating that Beall's inclusion of their company on his list of questionable open-access publishers amounted to defamation. The letter also stated that if Beall did not remove this company from his list, they would subject him to "civil action".[44]
In May 2013,
"prohibits the defendants from making misrepresentations regarding their academic journals and conferences, including that specific persons are editors of their journals or have agreed to participate in their conferences. It also prohibits the defendants from falsely representing that their journals engage in peer review, that their journals are included in any academic journal indexing service, or any measurement of the extent to which their journals are cited. It also requires that the defendants clearly and conspicuously disclose all costs associated with submitting or publishing articles in their journals."[57]
References
- ^ Deprez, Esmé E.; Chen, Caroline (August 29, 2017). "Medical Journals Have a Fake News Problem". Bloomberg. Retrieved August 30, 2017.
- PMID 22972258.
- S2CID 12334948.
- . Retrieved June 1, 2018.
- ^ Straumsheim, Carl (January 18, 2017). "No More 'Beall's List". Inside Higher Ed. Retrieved April 10, 2020.
- ^ In copies of the staff directory of Auraria Library archived in the Wayback Machine, the library listed Beall as Scholarly Communications Librarian on August 27, 2017, as Copyright and Information Access Librarian on March 7, 2018, and no longer listed Beall on April 30, 2018. See also his credentials reported in a 2014 interview: Pasquale, Cynthia (June 11, 2014). "Five questions for Jeffrey Beall". CU Connections. University of Colorado.
- ^ "Jeffrey Beall". Twitter. Retrieved April 10, 2022.
- ^ "Beall's Curriculum Vitae" (PDF). auraria.edu. Auraria Library. Archived from the original (PDF) on November 2, 2013. Retrieved November 25, 2013.
- ^ "About the Author". Scholarly Open Access. Archived from the original on October 21, 2015. Retrieved October 23, 2015.
- ^ .
- ^ . Retrieved March 27, 2014.
- ^ Elliott, Carl (June 5, 2012). "On Predatory Publishers: a Q&A With Jeffrey Beall". Brainstorm. The Chronicle of Higher Education.
- S2CID 167862818. Retrieved May 23, 2016.
- ^ PMID 28694718.
- ^ Beall, Jeffrey (September 2009). "Bentham Open". The Charleston Advisor. 11 (1): 29–32.
- ^ PMID 23538810.
- ^ "LIST OF PUBLISHERS". Scholarly Open Access. Archived from the original on September 17, 2016. Retrieved January 18, 2014.
- ^ Kolata, Gina (April 7, 2013). "Scientific Articles Accepted (Personal Checks, Too)". The New York Times. Retrieved January 18, 2014.
- ^ Jump, Paul (August 2, 2012). "Research Intelligence – 'Predators' who lurk in plain cite". Times Higher Education. Retrieved August 29, 2015.
- ^ Carey, Kevin (December 29, 2016). "A Peek Inside the Strange World of Fake Academia". Upshot. The New York Times.
- ^ Harbison, Martha (April 9, 2013). "Bogus Academic Conferences Lure Scientists". Popular Science. Retrieved January 31, 2015.
- Inside Higher Education. Retrieved September 23, 2016.
- ^ Scholarly Open Access. Archived from the originalon June 5, 2016. Retrieved October 22, 2016.
- Scholarly Open Access. Archived from the originalon September 5, 2015. Retrieved June 28, 2017.
- ^ PMID 24092725.
- ^ "LIST OF PUBLISHERS | Scholarly Open Access". March 6, 2015. Archived from the original on March 6, 2015. Retrieved February 6, 2017.
{{cite web}}
: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link) - ^ Knox, Richard (October 3, 2013). "Some Online Journals Will Publish Fake Science, For A Fee". NPR. Retrieved May 3, 2014.
- ^ The Scholarly Kitchen.
- ^ a b Esposito, Joseph (December 16, 2013). "Parting Company with Jeffrey Beall". The Scholarly Kitchen.
- .
- ^ from the original on October 23, 2023. Retrieved August 1, 2015.
- ^ Scholz, Dieter (2013). "Open Access Publishing in Aerospace–Opportunities and Pitfalls" (PDF). In Proceedings of the 4th CEAS Conference in Linköping, Linköping, Sweden: 503–515.
- S2CID 4425229.
- ^ Anderson, Rick (May 11, 2015). "Should We Retire the Term "Predatory Publishing"?]". The Scholarly Kitchen. Retrieved September 20, 2015.
- ^ "Why did Beall's List of potential predatory publishers go dark?". Retraction Watch. January 17, 2017. Archived from the original on April 18, 2018. Retrieved January 18, 2017.
- ^ a b "Librarian's list of 'predatory' journals reportedly removed due to 'threats and politics'". Retrieved January 25, 2017.
- ^ Singh Chawla, Dalmeet (January 17, 2017). "Mystery as controversial list of predatory publishers disappears". Science. American Association for the Advancement of Science. Retrieved January 18, 2017.
- .
- ^ Paul Basken (September 12, 2017). "Why Beall's List Died — and What It Left Unresolved About Open Access". The Chronicle of Higher Education.
- ^ Paul Basken (September 22, 2017). "Why Beall's blacklist of predatory journals died". University World News.
- ^ "Jeffrey Beall: 'Predatory publishers threaten scientific integrity, are embarrassment to India'". The Indian Express. July 20, 2018.
- ^ Spears, Tom (January 17, 2017). "World's main list of 'predatory' science publishers vanishes with no warning". Ottawa Citizen. Retrieved January 18, 2017.
- ^ "Beall's List of Predatory Journals and Publishers". beallslist.net. Retrieved February 2, 2020.
- ^ Flaherty, Colleen (February 15, 2013). "Librarians and Lawyers". Inside Higher Ed. Retrieved December 8, 2014.
- The Scholarly Kitchen. Retrieved October 24, 2016.
- Chronicle of Higher Education. Retrieved January 18, 2014.
- ^ Chappell, Bill (May 15, 2013). "Publisher Threatens Librarian With $1 Billion Lawsuit". NPR. Retrieved January 18, 2014.
- ^ Venkataramakrishnan, Rohan (May 19, 2013). "Send Section 66A bullies home". India Today. Retrieved October 24, 2016.
- ^ Sriram, Jayant (March 25, 2015). "SC strikes down 'draconian' Section 66A". The Hindu. Retrieved October 24, 2016.
- ^ a b Molteni, Megan (September 19, 2016). "The FTC is Cracking Down on Predatory Science Journals". Wired. Retrieved November 2, 2016.
- ^ a b Shonka, David C.; Rusu, Ioana; Ashe, Gregory A.; Bogden, Daniel G.; Welsh, Blaine T. (August 25, 2016). "Case No. 2:16-cv-02022 – Complaint for Permanent Injunction and Other Equitable Relief" (PDF). Case 2:16-cv-02022. Federal Trade Commission. Retrieved October 22, 2016.
- ^ a b c Straumsheim, Carl (August 29, 2016). "Federal Trade Commission begins to crack down on 'predatory' publishers". Inside Higher Ed. Retrieved October 22, 2016.
- ^ a b "FTC sues OMICS group: Are predatory publishers' days numbered?". STAT News. September 2, 2016. Retrieved October 22, 2016.
- ^ a b McCook, Alison (August 26, 2016). "U.S. government agency sues publisher, charging it with deceiving researchers". Retraction Watch. Retrieved November 2, 2016.
- ^ "FTC Charges Academic Journal Publisher OMICS Group Deceived Researchers: Complaint Alleges Company Made False Claims, Failed To Disclose Steep Publishing Fees". ftc.gov. Federal Trade Commission. August 26, 2016. Retrieved December 13, 2017.
- ^ Bailey, Jonathan (September 12, 2016). "Federal Trade Commission Targeting Predatory Publishers". iThenticate – Plagiarism Blog. Retrieved November 2, 2016.
- ^ "FTC Halts the Deceptive Practices of Academic Journal Publishers". Federal Trade Commission. November 22, 2017. Retrieved January 15, 2019.
External links
- "Scholarly Open Access: Critical analysis of scholarly open-access publishing". Archived from the original on December 30, 2016. Retrieved December 13, 2017. (now offline)
- "Jeffrey Beall – Google Scholar Citations". scholar.google.com. Google Scholar. Retrieved December 13, 2017.