Of course being trapped by a predatory publisher is a terrible thing for an individual. Just as sending your bank details to a Nigerian oil scammer and ending up being ripped off is a terrible thing. And some of these 'publishers' are behaving reprehensibly.
But I think we have the right to know the size of the problem. Is this happening to tens, hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands of authors? You are asking us as a community to invest time and effort into providing solutions - let's know how much of a problem it is first. David, Well, I suggested a crowdsourcing effort, which could involve a small effort by a lot of people. But the larger point I am making is that it is time for the research community to stop putting all the blame on rogue publishers and take responsibility for the role it is playing in allowing predatory publishing to exist, and to continue to grow. Actually, it turns out that some resources have been put aside for addressing this issue, so perhaps there is a willingness to do something. The question then becomes: is this money being spent wisely. I attach below the latest comment and response on my blog >> Bev Acreman @ BMC said... Richard, you may be interested in an upcoming OA campaign funded by OA publishers, industry bodies (OASPA, STM, DOAJ, INASP, LIBER, ISSN Centre) to try and address this through information - the site is only in beta, and I believe the campaign will be formally launched at ALPSP's conference this week: www.thinkchecksubmit.org <http://www.thinkchecksubmit.org> Richard Poynder said... Thanks for the link Bev. It looks to me to be more of the same. What happens when an early career researcher looks at the editorial board of a predatory publisher and sees the names of several senior and respected scientists in their field listed? They assume all is well and go ahead and submit their paper. Why would they not? What better recommendation could there be? But what they may not know is that a few months ago those senior and respected scientists were sent, out of the blue, an email inviting them to sit on the editorial board, and they accepted the invitation without bothering to check the journal out. And since they accepted that invitation they have never been sent a paper to review and they have had no further contact with the publisher. They know nothing about the journal (beyond perhaps having noticed that another senior and respected scientist is listed on the editorial board), but they are happy to add the name of the journal to their CV and then forget about the journal. If OASPA, STM, DOAJ, INASP, LIBER, ISSN Centre education etc. think that the answer lies in education, then can I suggest that it needs to extend its program to also address the huge number of researchers who are joining the editorial boards of questionable journals without doing due diligence?
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