ABSTRACT
Predatory journals charge publication fees from authors and publish without an adequate peer review, and often do not provide editorial and/or publishing services. Our objective was to evaluate e-mail solicitations received by authors in a defined time period to identify attributes of these solicitations as a metric to identify legitimacy of the journal. All e-mails seeking article submission received between January 1 and September 30, 2019, were evaluated. Each e-mail along with its respective webpage was evaluated for the journal’s and publisher’s names, mention of peer review, any assurance of publication, a mention of article processing charges (APC), composite invites [in the e-mail] and mention of peer review, the presence and functionality of archives, presence of manuscript management tab, mention of APC [on the webpage]. Descriptive statistics were used for the analysis. Of the 135 e-mails screened, 100 were finally included in the analysis. We found that 72% of the journals and/ or publishers were included in Beall’s list. According to our criteria, a total of 85% of the solicitations were from journals that we identified as “presumed predatory”. Our study has identified assurance of publication, rapid turnaround time, ambiguous information in the email and webpage, false claims of indexing as some descriptors which may help young authors and researchers assess a journal’s legitimacy.
ABSTRACT
The impact of scholarly journals has increased with invent of Internet due to improved access, faster dissemination, and ease of searching a variety of publications. With the increasing trend of research, open access (OA) publishing has increased intensely over the last few years. The core intent of OA is faster dissemination of research by making it available to readers free of cost. However, some publishers exploited this novel idea for their own benefit. Beall termed them as predatory publishers/journals. In this article, authors have made efforts to understand the predatory publishers/journal, reasons behind their upsurge, their modus operandi, their common targets, and the points which will help readers to identify them. The aim of this article is to expose facts behind the predatory journal and to create awareness among not only budding researchers but also faculty members, authors, and editors about the threat predatory journals carry toward scientific world and to their own curricula.
ABSTRACT
Open access (OA) publishing is a recent phenomenon in scientific publishing, enabling free access to knowledge worldwide. In the Indian context, OA to science has been facilitated by government-funded repositories of student and doctoral theses, and many Indian society journals are published with platinum OA. The proportion of OA publications from India is significant in a global context, and Indian journals are increasingly available on OA repositories such as Pubmed Central, and Directory of Open Access Journals. However, OA in India faces numerous challenges, including low-quality or predatory OA journals, and the paucity of funds to afford gold OA publication charges. There is a need to increase awareness amongst Indian academics regarding publication practices, including OA, and its potential benefits, and utilize this modality of publication whenever feasible, as in publicly-funded research, or when platinum OA is available, while avoiding falling prey to poor quality OA journals.
Subject(s)
Humans , Accidental Falls , Bibliographies as Topic , Financial Management , India , Open Access Publishing , Platinum , PublicationsABSTRACT
El acceso abierto o libre (OA, por su sigla en inglés) es una iniciativa que promueve elacceso gratis al texto completo de los documentos, principalmente a través de internet. ElOA ha traído consigo un cambio en el modelo de negocios de las casas editoriales y lasha transformado de vendedoras de contenidos a proveedoras de servicios. En este artículose explica el modelo de negocios del OA y su implicación para la diseminación del conocimientopor medio de las revistas. Mi argumento es que el OA incrementa la diseminacióndel conocimiento científico, a la vez que provee ventajas para las revistas y los autores, entérminos de visibilidad en la red. Por ejemplo, el factor de impacto de las revistas de OA estáaumentando, como ha sido descrito por otros autores. A pesar de las ventajas que el OAconlleva para la comunidad científica, todavía la mayor parte de las revistas en la red sonparte del modelo de acceso cerrado, que impide la distribución gratis de los documentos.Usualmente, el acceso a estos artículos es costoso para las organizaciones y los países.Los autores deberían ser conscientes del valor del OA y tratar de esforzarse para hacer sutrabajo más visible y accesible...
Open Access (OA) is an initiative that promotes free access to the full text of documents,mainly through the Internet. OA has implied a change in the business model of publishers,transforming them from being content sellers to service providers. In this article I explainthe business model of OA and its implication for the spread of scientific knowledge throughjournals. My argument is that OA increases the spread of scientific knowledge while atthe same time provides advantages for journals and authors in terms of visibility on theweb. For example, the Impact factor of OA journals is increasing, as it has been shown byother researchers. Despite the possibilities that OA brings for the scientific community, stillmost journal articles in the web are part of a closed access model that impedes the freedistribution of documents. Usually, access to those articles is costly for organizations andcountries. Authors should be aware of the value of OA and try to make every effort in orderfor their work to be mor e visible and accessible...
Subject(s)
Access to Information , RecordsABSTRACT
Se presenta un estudio descriptivo, de corte transversal, con el objetivo de estimar el nivel de conocimiento y las actitudes de los investigadores cubanos del sector salud hacia las revistas de acceso abierto. Para ello, entre marzo y junio de 2007, se aplicó un cuestionario impreso a una muestra de investigadores de los institutos nacionales de salud de Cuba, seleccionados por muestreo aleatorio estratificado (160 investigadores en 11 institutos). Las variables analizadas fueron Nivel de información sobre términos e iniciativas del Movimiento de Acceso Abierto, Publicación en revistas de acceso abierto; así como Razones para publicar en revistas de acceso abierto y Razones para no publicar en revistas de acceso abierto. Las estadísticas descriptivas, correlaciones bivariantes y el análisis de correspondencia se realizaron mediante el programa estadístico SPSS versión 10.0 para Windows. Se observó poca familiarización con las revistas de acceso abierto y otros términos e iniciativas del Movimiento de Acceso Abierto, así como poca utilización de las revistas de acceso abierto como medio de publicación.
A descriptive, cross-sectional study is presented whose objective was to determine the level of knowledge about and the attitudes toward open access journals among Cuban health researchers. To this end, a printed questionnaire was distributed between March and June 2007 to a group of researchers from Cuban national health institutes, who were chosen through stratified randomized sampling (160 researchers from 11 institutes). Variables included level of information about Open Access Movement terms and initiatives; papers published in open access journals; and reasons to publish or not papers in such journals. Descriptive statistics, bivariate correlations, and correspondence analysis were done using the SPSS statistical software, version 10.0 for Windows. Little knowledge of open access journals and other Open Access Movement terms and initiatives, and little use of open access journals as a publication means, were observed.