1. History
    Legal threats  Who's Afraid of Peer Review?  Removal  Successors 

2. Criteria for inclusion

3. Criticism

4. References

5. External links

Beall's List was a list of predatory open-access publishers that was maintained by University of Colorado librarian Jeffrey Beall on his blog Scholarly Open Access. The list aimed to document open-access publishers who did not perform real peer review, effectively publishing any article as long as the authors pay the open access fee. Originally started as a personal endeavor in 2008, Beall's List became a widely followed piece of work by the mid-2010s. Its influence led some publishers on the list to threaten defamation lawsuits against Beall, as well as to lodge official complaints against Beall's work to the University of Colorado. As a result, Beall deactivated his blog and the list in January 2017.

The closure of Beall's List was cited by some as a tragedy,^[1] and successors have set out to continue Beall's work.

History

Beall first became interested in so-called predatory open-access journals (a term he coined) in 2008, when he started to receive numerous requests from dubious journals to serve on their editorial boards. He said that he "immediately became fascinated because most of the e-mails contained numerous grammatical errors."^[2] Starting in 2008, he maintained a well-known and regularly updated list of what he stated were "potential, possible, or probable predatory scholarly open-access publishers".^[3][4][5] In 2011, Beall's list had 18 publishers on it; by December 29, 2016, this number had grown to 923.^[6]

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 its company on his list of questionable open-access publishers amounted to defamation. The letter also stated that if Beall did not remove the company from his list, it would subject him to "civil action".^[7]

In 2013, the OMICS Publishing Group threatened to sue Beall for $1 billion for his "ridiculous, baseless, [and] impertinent" inclusion of it on his list, which "smacks of literal unprofessionalism and arrogance".^[8] An unedited sentence from the letter read: "Let us at the outset warn you that this is a very perilous journey for you and you will be completely exposing yourself to serious legal implications including criminal cases lunched against you in INDIA and USA."^[9] Beall responded that the letter was "poorly written and personally threatening" and expressed his opinion that the letter "is an attempt to detract from the enormity of OMICS's editorial practices".^[10] OMICS' lawyers stated that damages were being pursued under section 66A of India's Information Technology Act, 2000, which makes it illegal to use a computer to publish "any information that is grossly offensive or has menacing character" or to publish false information.^[11] The letter stated that three years in prison was a possible penalty, although a U.S. lawyer said that the threats seemed to be a "publicity stunt" that was meant to "intimidate".^[8]

Who's Afraid of Peer Review?

In 2013, Science correspondent John Bohannon submitted 304 fake scientific articles to various open access journals, many of which were published by publishers on Beall's List. Among these publishers that completed the review process, 82% accepted the paper. Bohannon stated "the results show that Beall is good at spotting publishers with poor quality control". Beall stated that the results support his claim to be identifying "predatory" publishers.^[12] However, the remaining 18% of publishers identified by Beall as predatory rejected the fake paper, leading science communicator Phil Davis to state "That means that Beall is falsely accusing nearly one in five".^[14]

Removal

On January 15, 2017, the entire content of Beall's Scholarly Open Access website was removed, along with Beall's faculty page on the University of Colorado's website.^[13] 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.^[16] 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".^[14] The University of Colorado also declared that the decision to take down the list was a personal decision from Beall.^[15] Beall later wrote that he had taken down his blog because of pressure from the University of Colorado, which threatened his job security.^[16] Beall's supervisor, Shea Swauger, wrote that the university had supported Beall's work and had not threatened his academic freedom.^[17] 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.^[18][19] Beall has not reactivated the list.

Successors

Since "Beall's List" closed, similar lists have been started by others,^[20] including CSIR-Structural Engineering Research Centre, and an anonymous group at Stop Predatory Journals.^[20][21] Cabell's International, a company that offers scholarly publishing analytics and other scholarly services, has also offered both a black list and a white list for subscription on their website.^[22][23]

Criteria for inclusion

Beall applied a diverse set of criteria before including a publisher or journal on his lists. Examples included:^[24]

• Two or more journals have duplicate editorial boards (i.e., same editorial board for more than one journal).
• There is little or no geographical diversity among the editorial board members, especially for journals that claim to be international in scope or coverage.
• The publisher has no policies or practices for digital preservation, meaning that if the journal ceases operations, all of the content disappears from the internet.
• The publisher copy-proofs (locks) their PDFs, thus making it harder to check for plagiarism.
• The name of a journal is incongruent with the journal's mission.
• The publisher falsely claims to have its content indexed in legitimate abstracting and indexing services or claims that its content is indexed in resources that are not abstracting and indexing services.

Criticism

The list's 82% accuracy rate in the Who's Afraid of Peer Review? sting operation led Phil Davis to state that "Beall is falsely accusing nearly one in five as being a 'potential, possible, or probable predatory scholarly open access publisher' on appearances alone."^[25] He wrote 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."^[25]

Joseph Esposito wrote in The Scholarly Kitchen that he had been following some of Beall's work with "growing unease",^[26] and that Beall's "broader critique (really an assault) of Gold OA and those who advocate it" had "crossed the line".^[26]

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."^[37] 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."^[37] In its place, he proposed the term "deceptive publishing".^[28]

References

External links

• {{cite web |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170112125427/https://scholarlyoa.com/publishers/ |archive-date=2017-01-12 |url=http://scholarlyoa.com/publishers/ |title=Beall's List: Potential, possible, or probable predatory scholarly open-access publishers |dead-url=unfit |first=Jeffrey |last=Beall |edition=last archived}}
• {{cite web |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170111172309/https://scholarlyoa.com/individual-journals/ |archive-date=2017-01-11 |url=http://scholarlyoa.com/individual-journals/ |title=List of Standalone Journals: Potential, possible, or probable predatory scholarly open-access journals |dead-url=unfit |first=Jeffrey |last=Beall |edition=last archived}}

• Updated [https://beallslist.weebly.com/ "Beall's List of Predatory Journals and Publishers"] – maintained by an anonymous postdoctoral European researcher
• [https://predatoryjournals.com/publishers/ "List of Predatory Publishers"] – maintained by an anonymous group of scholars and information professionals

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