From Carl Straumsheim at Inside Higher Ed:
Beall’s lists have been controversial among researchers and scholarly communications experts. Advocates of open-access publishing have criticized Beall for being overly negative toward the model. In a 2013 essay, for example, Beall wrote that the open-access movement is an “anti-corporatist, oppressive and negative movement, one that uses young researchers and researchers from developing countries as pawns.”
Some publishers have objected to being featured on the lists. OMICS International, a publisher Beall has previously described as “the worst of the worst,” in 2013 threatened to sue Beall, seeking $1 billion in damages.
But Beall has also received credit for highlighting a growing problem in the field of scholarly publishing. A 2015 study by researchers at the Hanken School of Economics in Finland found that “predatory” publishing skyrocketed between 2010 and 2014, during which the number of scholarly articles published in journals on Beall’s list increased nearly tenfold. Many academics also rely on the lists to determine if a journal or a publisher is legitimate. Some of Beall’s fans are advocates of open access who believe it’s important for scholars to be able to differentiate between legitimate and less legitimate publishers.More.
Also, from Dalmeet Singh Chawla at Science,
Some are circulating a cached version of Beall’s list on Twitter. Others speculated on social media that the shutdown may have something to do with the transfer of its lists to the company Cabell’s International in Beaumont, Texas. But the firm has publicly said it is in “no way involved” with the blog’s closure. Nevertheless, Cabell’s noted that it has been developing its own blacklist, working with Beall as a consultant, since 2015, and plans to launch it later this year.
If the system even needed Jeffrey Beall, a U Colorado librarian, to do this job, don’t we already know how bad things are? It would be nice if science boffins would quit pontificating about politics and religion and—to borrow a phrase from somewhere or other—drain their own swamp instead.
See also: Cracking down on predatory science journals?
Hold science journals accountable – or just scrap the system? All these clarion calls for reform are stirring but they dance around the issue: Science need no more depend on journal structure as it is now than newsgathering need depend on the daily paper. What replaces it will be more suited to our times, for better or worse.
Fakes, science journals Fake reviews, sure… but fake science journals? The internet doesn’t provide the physical cues and clues that help us spot scams.
Fakes, science, fake journals Artificial intelligence Even a machine can get a degree if no one reads any more Or, as one tech mag put it, “Essay generator can spew out BS, still get you an ‘A’”. And it’s still B.S. And that’s a problem.
Fakes, Even science journals can be fooled into publishing gibberish.
Fakes, bafflegab, Generating science bafflegab for fun
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