The predatory publishing phenomenon: dead end or just an inconvenience on the road to a new scholarly publishing landscape?
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1629/uksg.325Keywords:
predatory publishing, open access, ISSN, scholarly publishing, predatory publishers, best practicesAbstract
Exploitation of the open access (OA) model by unscrupulous publishers can seem a threat to the future of scholarly publishing. Some see the proliferation of these publishers as a simple case of bad actors who need to be stopped. Further reflection and reading can lead to a realization that the situation is not nearly as simple as bad guys vs. good guys. Rather, what is happening can be seen as a natural outgrowth of the ease of publishing on the internet and the rise of OA publishing. A global economic market for publishing scholarly articles on the internet has emerged and is responsible in part for this phenomenon. There is a continuum of publishers that some term ‘predatory’ which ranges from clueless new publishers to outright frauds. The good news is that the emergence of this phenomenon has resulted in the development of professional associations, educational movements and best practices that can help educate authors, publishers, researchers and academia alike. In the end the situation might turn out to be one of ‘temporary inconvenience, permanent improvement’.
Based on a breakout session presented at the 39th UKSG Annual Conference, Bournemouth, April 2016
Published
Issue
Section
Categories
License
Copyright (c) 2016 The Author(s)
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms. If a submission is rejected or withdrawn prior to publication, all rights return to the author(s):
- Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Licence that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal. Please note if accepted for publication your work will be open access and distributed under a CC-BY Licence, unless previously agreed with Insights Editors before submission.
- Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work (See The Effect of Open Access).
Submitting to the journal implicitly confirms that all named authors and rights holders have agreed to the above terms of publication. It is the submitting author's responsibility to ensure all authors and relevant institutional bodies have given their agreement at the point of submission.
Note: some institutions require authors to seek written approval in relation to the terms of publication. Should this be required, authors can request a separate licence agreement document from the editorial team (e.g. authors who are Crown employees).