Predatory Publishing

Guides:

• Think Check Submit
• Open Access Journal Quality Guide Indicators
• Assessing Journal Quality
  • Great primer on impact factors and other metrics for assessing quality.
• Blobaum's Checklist for Review of Journal Quality for Submission of Scholarly Manuscripts
• Open Access Publishing Mandates and the Illinois Open Access to Research Articles Act
  • Excellent overview of open access mandates from Paul Blobaum at Governor's State University.

Articles:

• Predatory Journals: What are They and How to Avoid Them. Toxicology Pathology. 6/2020
• Predatory Journals: No Definition, No Defence. Nature. 12/11/2019
• FTC Hits Predatory Scientific Publisher with a $50 Million Fine. ARS Technica. 04/02/19. 
• Open Access Journals: Promise, Perils, and Pitfalls. Academic Medicine, 12/18/18.
• Statement on Article Publication Resulting from NIH Funded Research. National Institutes of Health, 11/03/17.  
• What I Learned from Predatory Publishers. Biochemia Medica. 2017;27(2):273-9. 
• "Academic Terrorist." Insider Higher Ed, 06/02/17. 
• Controversial Website That Lists 'Predatory' Publishers Shuts Down. Nature, 01/18/17.
• A Peek Inside the Strange World of Fake Academia. New York Times, 12/29/16.
• Predatory Conferences Undermine Science and Scam Academics. Huffington Post. 10/31/2016.  
• U.S. Charges Journal Publisher with Misleading Authors. Science, 10/07/16.
• "Predatory" Online Journals Lure Authors Who Are Eager to Publish. The Chronicle of Higher Education, 03/04/12.
  • This article is a great starting point if you're unfamiliar with predatory publishing.
• Investigating Journals: The Dark Side of Publishing. Nature, 03/27/13.
• Beyond Beall's List: Better Understanding Predatory Publishers. Association of College and Research Libraries News, March 2015.
• Tricked Into Submission: Health Science Librarian's Role in Fighting Predatory Publishing and Spamferences

Fun Stuff:

• SCIgen - An Automatic Computer Science Paper Generator.
  • A computer program that generates grammatically-correct but context-free (i.e. real words/sentences, but nonsense) computer science papers. The creators of this program used it to generate a paper that was accepted for publication with a supposedly peer-reviewed journal.  
• Who's Afraid of Peer Review?
  • A spoof paper concocted by Science reveals little or no scrutiny at many open-access journals.

Recordings:

Click on the image below to view a recording of our Predatory Publishing Workshop 1/31/23