Five months after Jeffrey Beall, librarian at the University of Colorado, Denver, shut down his widely consulted blog (Scholarly Open Access) that listed predatory journals and publishers, Cabell’s International based in Beaumont, Texas launched the Cabell’s Blacklist of predatory journals on June 15. Predatory journals cheat researchers by charging fees to publish papers but without carrying... Continue Reading →
At last, Jeffrey Beall reveals the reasons for shutting down his blog on predatory journals
Unlike what most people had guessed, it was not a lawsuit from any of the predatory journal publishers that forced Jeffrey Beall, Librarian at the University of Colorado Denver and publisher of the famous Scholarly Open Access blog, to shut down the blog one fine day in January 2017, five years after he started it... Continue Reading →
Predatory journals in India make desperate bid to gain authenticity
One more evidence that India has a huge and growing number of predatory journal publishers comes from the India office of the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ). Since March 2014, when the new criteria for DOAJ listing were put out, there have been about 1,600 applications from Open Access journal publishers based in... Continue Reading →
IISER Thiruvananthapuram Director: There’s more to it than meets the eye
In response to the Faulty IISER-Tvm Facebook post that I shared about the lack of action against Prof. V. Ramakrishnan, the Director of IISER Thiruvananthapuram, despite my article pointing out the “copy and paste” content in his papers, Harsh Jog from IISER Pune asked: Can't the IISER Tvm faculty issue a statement? Why wait for... Continue Reading →
I am still trying to figure out what my new research agenda will be: Jeffrey Beall
Contrary to what Cabell's International, a publishing services company, had said in a tweet on January 17 that Jeffrey Beall has been working with them as a consultant since 2015 to develop a B-list of predatory journals and publishers, Prof. Beall denies any connection with Cabell's in a Facebook chat with me today at around... Continue Reading →
Will we see Jeffrey Beall’s predatory journal list in a new avatar?
Though the actual reason why Prof. Jeffrey Beall, who maintained a list of “potential, possible, or probable" publishers that produced predatory journals and another list of standalone predatory journals, took down his website scholarlyoa.com is not known, RetractionWatch posted saying that it was Prof. Beall's decision to take down his website. RetractionWatch has posted the... Continue Reading →
India’s white list to curb researchers from publishing in predatory journals
In a bid to tackle the growing menace of researchers publishing in predatory journals, the University Grants Commission notified on January 10 a list of journals in different disciplines where researcher scholars and teachers can publish their papers. Only papers published in the approved journals will be recognised at the time of recruitment and for granting... Continue Reading →
India should show sustained commitment to science: Venkatraman Ramakrishnan
In an hour-long interview, Nobel Laureate Prof. Venkatraman Ramakrishnan, President of the Royal Society, who called the Indian Science Congress a “circus”, discussed the implications of some of the Indian government policies on science and technology. He summarily rejects the idea of scientists needing permission from directors before discussing the results of a public-funded, published... Continue Reading →
Researchers from Indian national institutes publish in predatory journals
India not only publishes the most number of predatory journals in the world but researchers based in India are one of the biggest contributors to such bogus journals; an earlier study found that researchers in India accounted for 35 per cent of publication in bogus journals. Predatory journals very often trick authors into submitting papers,... Continue Reading →
