Open Access Publishing

Ethics in OA Publishing - Beware of Predatory Publishers

With the advent of open access publishing, printing barriers are removed and the assembly and dissemination of information requires little more than Internet access. Unfortunately, this has led to a proliferation of open access publishers with little or no subject expertise and of questionable repute. Scholars and researchers may receive email solicitations for fee-based paper submissions to journals that make false or misleading claims about the stringency of their peer-review process, members of their editorial board or indexing status. The following sites are a good place to start when investigating the legitimacy of a journal or publisher.

Criteria to consider

Before deciding to publish in any journal, consider the following criteria:

Here are some resources that can help you vet an OA journal:

  • Directory of Open Access Journals - The largest list of OA journals. Titles indexed in DOAJ after March 2014 (noted with a green check mark or "DOAJ Seal"), underwent a more stringent review process than those indexed prior to that date.
  • ThinkCheckSubmit - This tool, produced with the support of a coalition from across scholarly communications in response to discussions about deceptive publishing, walks you through the process of evaluating journals.
  • Quality Open Access Market - QUAM uses academic crowd sourcing to provide ratings on journals.

Adapted from Paul Blobaum's Checklist for Review of Journal Quality, Governor's State University