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Jeffrey Beall is an American librarian and library scientist, best known for drawing attention to " predatory open access publishing", a term he coined, and for creating what is now widely known as
Beall's list Beall's List was a prominent 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 pe ...
, a list of potentially predatory open-access publishers. He is a critic of the open access publishing movement and particularly how predatory publishers use the open access concept, and is especially known for his
blog A blog (a Clipping (morphology), truncation of "weblog") is a discussion or informational website published on the World Wide Web consisting of discrete, often informal diary-style text entries (posts). Posts are typically displayed in Reverse ...
''Scholarly Open Access''. He has also written on this topic in ''
The Charleston Advisor ''The Charleston Advisor'' is a peer-reviewed publication that reviews proprietary and free Internet resources that libraries license and make available to their patrons. The journal's tag line is "Critical reviews of web products for informationa ...
'', in ''
Nature Nature, in the broadest sense, is the physical world or universe. "Nature" can refer to the phenomena of the physical world, and also to life in general. The study of nature is a large, if not the only, part of science. Although humans are ...
'', in '' Learned Publishing'', and elsewhere. When Beall created his list, he was employed as a librarian and
associate professor Associate professor is an academic title with two principal meanings: in the North American system and that of the ''Commonwealth system''. Overview In the '' North American system'', used in the United States and many other countries, it is ...
at the
University of Colorado Denver The University of Colorado Denver (CU Denver) is a public research university in Denver, Colorado. It is part of the University of Colorado system. History University of Colorado System Anschutz Medical Campus The University of Colorado creat ...
. More recently, he was a librarian at
Auraria Library Auraria Library is an academic library in downtown Denver, Colorado. It provides academic resources and research experiences to students, staff, and faculty at the University of Colorado Denver (CU Denver), the Metropolitan State University of ...
in
Denver Denver () is a consolidated city and county, the capital, and most populous city of the U.S. state of Colorado. Its population was 715,522 at the 2020 census, a 19.22% increase since 2010. It is the 19th-most populous city in the Unit ...
until March 2018. Currently, he is retired.


Education and career

Beall has a
bachelor's degree A bachelor's degree (from Middle Latin ''baccalaureus'') or baccalaureate (from Modern Latin ''baccalaureatus'') is an undergraduate academic degree awarded by colleges and universities upon completion of a course of study lasting three to si ...
in Spanish from
California State University, Northridge California State University, Northridge (CSUN or Cal State Northridge) is a public university in the Northridge neighborhood of Los Angeles, California. With a total enrollment of 38,551 students (as of Fall 2021), it has the second largest un ...
(1982), as well as an MA in English from
Oklahoma State University Oklahoma (; Choctaw: ; chr, ᎣᎧᎳᎰᎹ, ''Okalahoma'' ) is a state in the South Central region of the United States, bordered by Texas on the south and west, Kansas on the north, Missouri on the northeast, Arkansas on the east, New ...
(1987) and an MSc in
library science Library science (often termed library studies, bibliothecography, and library economy) is an interdisciplinary or multidisciplinary field that applies the practices, perspectives, and tools of management, information technology, education, an ...
from the
University of North Carolina The University of North Carolina is the multi-campus public university system for the state of North Carolina. Overseeing the state's 16 public universities and the NC School of Science and Mathematics, it is commonly referred to as the UNC S ...
(1990). Until December 2012, he served on the
editorial board The editorial board is a group of experts, usually at a publication, who dictate the tone and direction the publication's editorial policy will take. Mass media At a newspaper, the editorial board usually consists of the editorial page editor, ...
of '' Cataloging & Classification Quarterly''. In that same year, Beall was awarded tenure by the
University of Colorado Denver The University of Colorado Denver (CU Denver) is a public research university in Denver, Colorado. It is part of the University of Colorado system. History University of Colorado System Anschutz Medical Campus The University of Colorado creat ...
and promoted to associate professor. In an interview with ''
The Charleston Advisor ''The Charleston Advisor'' is a peer-reviewed publication that reviews proprietary and free Internet resources that libraries license and make available to their patrons. The journal's tag line is "Critical reviews of web products for informationa ...
'' in July 2013, he said that his biggest influence was
Fred Kilgour Frederick Gridley Kilgour (January 6, 1914 – July 31, 2006) was an American librarian and educator known as the founding director of OCLC (Online Computer Library Center), an international computer library network and database. He was its pre ...
.


Criticism of open access publishing

Beall classifies
open access Open access (OA) is a set of principles and a range of practices through which research outputs are distributed online, free of access charges or other barriers. With open access strictly defined (according to the 2001 definition), or libre op ...
(OA) publishers as following a "gold model" in which authors pay for their work to be published and a "platinum model" in which they do not pay, and sees the gold model as being prone to abuse. He has argued that "the act of instituting financial transactions between scholarly authors and scholarly publishers is corrupting scholarly communication. This was one of the great benefits of the traditional scholarly publishing system – it had no monetary component in the relationship between publishers and their authors. Adding the monetary component has created the problem of predatory publishers and the problem of financing author fees." In a June 2012 interview, Beall said that while he supported what he called "platinum open-access", he concluded: "The only truly successful model that I have seen is the traditional publishing model." In December 2013, Beall published a comment in ''tripleC'', an
open access journal Open access (OA) is a set of principles and a range of practices through which research outputs are distributed online, free of access charges or other barriers. With open access strictly defined (according to the 2001 definition), or libre op ...
, in which he articulated his criticism of open access publishing advocates. He noted that the quality of articles published in many OA journals is low, that peer review in many OA journals is negligible or non-existent, that public access to poor-quality articles harms the public, and that the careers of young scholars who publish in poor-quality OA journals are harmed. He portrayed the open access movement as an anti-corporatist movement whose advocates pursue the goal of "kill ngoff the for-profit publishers and mak ngscholarly publishing a cooperative and socialistic enterprise" while ignoring the benefits of traditional academic publishers, including consistent peer review and attention to the long-term preservation of articles they publish. He has also been critical of the
Directory of Open Access Journals The Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) is a website that hosts a community-curated list of open access journals, maintained by Infrastructure Services for Open Access (IS4OA). It was launched in 2003 with 300 open access journals. The proje ...
for relying on data supplied by journal publishers to determine whether the journal in question should be included in the directory. Beall provided an overview of the history of predatory publishing, his involvement with the issue, and a summary and reiteration of most of the above criticisms in an article published in June 2017.


Predatory open access publishing

Beall is well known for his investigations of predatory open access publishing, a term he coined. He has published a number of analyses of predatory OA journals, such as one of Bentham Open in ''The Charleston Advisor'' in 2009. However, his interest in such journals began when, in 2008, he started to receive numerous requests from dubious journals to serve on their
editorial board The editorial board is a group of experts, usually at a publication, who dictate the tone and direction the publication's editorial policy will take. Mass media At a newspaper, the editorial board usually consists of the editorial page editor, ...
s. He has said that he "immediately became fascinated because most of the e-mails contained numerous grammatical errors." Since 2008, he has maintained a well-known and regularly updated list of what he states are "potential, possible, or probable predatory scholarly open-access publishers". In 2011, Beall's list had 18 publishers on it; by December 29, 2016, this number had grown to 923. Beall has estimated that predatory open access journals publish about 5-10 percent of all open access articles, and that at least 25 percent of open access journals are predatory. He has been particularly critical of
OMICS Publishing Group OMICS Publishing Group is a predatory publisher of open access academic journals. It started publishing its first journal in 2008. By 2015, it claimed over 700 journals, although about half of them were defunct. Its subsidiaries and brands in ...
, which he described as "the worst of the worst" in a 2016 '' Inside Higher Education'' article.


Predatory meetings

Beall coined the term " predatory meetings" for a new activity of OMICS and others in organizing
scientific conference An academic conference or scientific conference (also congress, symposium, workshop, or meeting) is an event for researchers (not necessarily academics) to present and discuss their scholarly work. Together with academic or scientific journals an ...
s claiming editorial boards and organizing committees with prominent academics who have not agreed to participate, with high fees for attendance, and with poor reviewing standards for acceptance. Deceptively similar names to existing reputable conferences are also used. Beall has criticised the financial arrangements for OMICS conferences, noting that the "registration policy shows that they never grant refunds for registration fees – even if they themselves cancel or postpone the conference. Instead, they grant a credit for other OMICS conferences." He also recommends, "in the strongest terms possible, that all scholars from all countries avoid doing business in any way with the OMICS Group. Do not submit papers. Do not agree to serve on their editorial boards. Do not register for or attend their conferences." He notes a profusion of such conferences located in Asia and identified features of these predatory meetings.


Beall's list and the ''Science'' sting

In 2013, ''
Science Science is a systematic endeavor that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe. Science may be as old as the human species, and some of the earliest archeological evidence ...
'' published the results of a
sting operation In law enforcement, a sting operation is a deceptive operation designed to catch a person attempting to commit a crime. A typical sting will have an undercover law enforcement officer, detective, or co-operative member of the public play a role ...
in which a scientifically flawed spoof publication was submitted to open access publications. Many accepted the manuscript, and a disproportionate number of the accepting journals were on Beall's list. The publication, entitled ''
Who's Afraid of Peer Review? "Who's Afraid of Peer Review?" is an article written by ''Science'' correspondent John Bohannon that describes his investigation of peer review among fee-charging open-access journals. Between January and August 2013, Bohannon submitted fake sc ...
'', concluded that Beall is "good at spotting publishers with poor quality control". Of publishers on his list that completed the review process, it was accepted by 82%. Beall remarked that the author of the sting,
John Bohannon John Bohannon is an American science journalist and scientist who is Director of Science at Primer, an artificial intelligence company headquartered in San Francisco, California. He is known for his career prior to Primer as a science journalist ...
, "basically found what I've been saying for years".


Counter-criticism

Phil Davis, in an analysis of the ''Who's Afraid of Peer Review?'' sting operation, observed that "Beall is falsely accusing nearly one in five as being a 'potential, possible, or probable predatory scholarly open access publisher' on appearances alone." He continued to say 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." Joseph Esposito wrote in '' The Scholarly Kitchen'' that he had been following some of Beall's work with "growing unease" and that Beall's "broader critique (really an assault) of Gold OA and those who advocate it" had "crossed the line". Wayne Bivens-Tatum, librarian at
Princeton University Princeton University is a private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and one of the ...
, published a rebuttal in ''tripleC'', regarding Beall's criticisms of open access publishing. He stated that Beall's "rhetoric provides good examples of what
Albert O. Hirschman Albert Otto Hirschman (born ''Otto-Albert Hirschmann''; April 7, 1915 – December 10, 2012) was a German economist and the author of several books on political economy and political ideology. His first major contribution was in the area of de ...
called the 'rhetoric of reaction'", and concluded Beall's "argument fails because the sweeping generalizations with no supporting evidence render it unsound."
City University of New York The City University of New York ( CUNY; , ) is the public university system of New York City. It is the largest urban university system in the United States, comprising 25 campuses: eleven senior colleges, seven community colleges and seven pro ...
librarians Monica Berger and Jill Cirasella said his views are biased against open-access journals from less economically developed countries. Berger and Cirasella argued that "imperfect English or a predominantly non-Western editorial board does not make a journal predatory". While recognizing that "the criteria he uses for his list are an excellent starting point for thinking about the hallmarks of predatory publishers and journals," they suggest that, "given the fuzziness between low-quality and predatory publishers, whitelisting, or listing publishers and journals that have been vetted and verified as satisfying certain standards, may be a better solution than blacklisting." One major journal whitelist is the
Directory of Open Access Journals The Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) is a website that hosts a community-curated list of open access journals, maintained by Infrastructure Services for Open Access (IS4OA). It was launched in 2003 with 300 open access journals. The proje ...
; Lars Bjørnshauge, its managing director, estimated that questionable publishing probably accounts for fewer than 1% of all author-pays, open-access papers, a proportion far lower than Beall's estimate of 5–10%. Instead of relying on blacklists, Bjørnshauge argues that open-access associations such as the DOAJ and the
Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association The Open Access Scholarly Publishing Association (OASPA) is a non-profit trade association of open access journal and book publishers. Having started with an exclusive focus on open access journals, it has since expanded its activities to include ...
should adopt more responsibility for policing publishers: they should lay out a set of criteria that publishers and journals must comply with to win a place on a whitelist, indicating that they are trustworthy. Rick Anderson, associate dean in the
J. Willard Marriott Library The J. Willard Marriott Library is the main academic library of the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, Utah. The university library has had multiple homes since the first University of Utah librarian was appointed in 1850. The current building ...
,
University of Utah The University of Utah (U of U, UofU, or simply The U) is a public research university in Salt Lake City, Utah. It is the flagship institution of the Utah System of Higher Education. The university was established in 1850 as the University of De ...
, 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." 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." In its place, he proposed the term "deceptive publishing".


Website removal

On 15 January 2017, the entire content of the ''Scholarly Open Access'' website was removed, along with Beall's faculty page on the University of Colorado's website. 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. 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". The University of Colorado also declared that the decision to take down the list was a personal decision from Beall. Beall later wrote that he had taken down his blog because of pressure from the University of Colorado, which threatened his job security. Beall's supervisor, Shea Swauger, wrote that the university had supported Beall's work and had not threatened his academic freedom. A demand by
Frontiers Media Frontiers Media SA is a publisher of peer-reviewed, open access, scientific journals currently active in science, technology, and medicine. It was founded in 2007 by Kamila and Henry Markram, and has since expanded to other academic fields. Fron ...
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. In an interview in 2018, Beall stated that "my university began to attack me in several ways. They launched a research misconduct investigation against me (after seven months, the result of the investigation was that no misconduct had occurred). They also put an unqualified, mendacious supervisor over me, and he constantly attacked and harassed me. I decided I could no longer safely publish the list with my university threatening me in these ways." An anonymous European post-doc carried on Jeffrey Beall's work on lists of predatory publishers and journals. After the website was taken down, medical researcher Roger Pierson of the
University of Saskatchewan A university () is an institution of higher (or tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. Universities typically offer both undergraduate and postgraduate programs. In the United State ...
said, "To see Beall's work disappear would be an absolute disaster," adding, "From an academic perspective, this represents the absence of an extremely important resource."


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 their company on his list of questionable open-access publishers amounted to defamation. The letter also stated that if Beall did not remove this company from his list, they would subject him to "civil action". In May 2013,
OMICS Publishing Group OMICS Publishing Group is a predatory publisher of open access academic journals. It started publishing its first journal in 2008. By 2015, it claimed over 700 journals, although about half of them were defunct. Its subsidiaries and brands in ...
, which had also been included on Beall's list of predatory open access publishers, issued a warning to Beall in a poorly-written letter stating that they intended to sue him, and were seeking $1 billion in
damages At common law, damages are a remedy in the form of a monetary award to be paid to a claimant as compensation for loss or injury. To warrant the award, the claimant must show that a breach of duty has caused foreseeable loss. To be recognised at ...
under section 66A of India's Information Technology Act, 2000. However, section 66A was struck down as unconstitutional by the
Supreme Court of India The Supreme Court of India ( IAST: ) is the supreme judicial authority of India and is the highest court of the Republic of India under the constitution. It is the most senior constitutional court, has the final decision in all legal matters ...
in an unrelated case in 2015. In 2016, Beall welcomed news that the U.S.
Federal Trade Commission The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is an independent agency of the United States government whose principal mission is the enforcement of civil (non-criminal) antitrust law and the promotion of consumer protection. The FTC shares jurisdiction o ...
had filed a lawsuit in Federal District Court against the OMICS group. The complaint is the first against an academic publisher and alleges that the defendants have been "deceiving academics and researchers about the nature of its publications and hiding publication fees ranging from hundreds to thousands of dollars", holding manuscripts hostage by seeking fees to allow them to be withdrawn, and promoting predatory conferences; '' Inside Higher Education'' reports that Beall has published examples of these sorts of activities by OMICS, and he has previously said of the organization: "If anything is predatory, it's that publisher. It's the worst of the worst." OMICS' attorneys have described the allegations as baseless. In November 2017, a federal court in the District of Nevada granted a preliminary injunction that
"prohibits the defendants from making misrepresentations regarding their academic journals and conferences, including that specific persons are editors of their journals or have agreed to participate in their conferences. It also prohibits the defendants from falsely representing that their journals engage in peer review, that their journals are included in any academic journal indexing service, or any measurement of the extent to which their journals are cited. It also requires that the defendants clearly and conspicuously disclose all costs associated with submitting or publishing articles in their journals."


References


External links

* (now offline) * {{DEFAULTSORT:Beall, Jeffrey Academic librarians American male bloggers American bloggers American librarians California State University, Northridge alumni Living people Oklahoma State University alumni Place of birth missing (living people) University of Colorado Denver faculty UNC School of Information and Library Science alumni Year of birth missing (living people)