An Exploratory Survey of the Suspicious Open Access Journals

This paper describes the results of a survey of possibly predatory open access journals. Based on Jeffrey Beall's compilations of predatory publishers and standalone journals, the study identified 891 publishers and 7,726 journals with content at the end of January 2015, of which 1,989 journals were published by twelve mega publishers that had published over one hundred journal titles. The distributions of all journals versus journals from the mega publishers by paper quantity, journal debut year/journal age, and subject were systematically examined and compared. It was found that, at the time of this study, nearly half of the publishers had only one non-empty journal. Nearly 2/3 of the 7,726 non-empty journals had published only 50 or less papers, and half of them were debuted within two years. As high as 90% of the journals targeted science, technology, and medicine (STM), and the three domains had roughly equal shares of the journals. A sample of 11,419 articles was further drawn from the journals with more than 100 papers and those with 10 or less papers. The analysis of the first authors showed that India, United States and Nigeria were the top three contributors to suspicious journals; they together constituted approximately 50% of the sample.

關鍵字

Open Access Journals ； Predatory Publishing ； Scholarly Communication

並列摘要

本文調查具有掠奪嫌疑的開放近用期刊，以Jeffrey Beall’s所編的Beall’s List為基礎，其中包含出版商及獨立期刊（standalone journals）兩份清單。至2015年1月底，扣除無效連結與空刊，本文發現891個尚有活動的出版商及7,726份有內容的期刊；其中，1,989份期刊是由12個鉅型出版商所出版（旗下均擁有100份以上非空刊）。在調查當時，將近一半的出版商僅出版一份有內容的期刊；將近2/3的期刊，其論文數低於50篇；且將近一半的期刊是兩年內創刊的。高達90%的期刊屬科學、科技或醫學領域，且在數量上幾乎鼎足而三，不分軒輊。本研究並分析11,419篇論文的第一作者來源國，文章樣本取自擁有百篇以上論文的期刊及總數少於10篇論文的期刊；結果顯示印度、美國、奈及利亞為作者來源前三大，共佔樣本50%。

並列關鍵字

開放近用期刊；掠奪型出版；學術傳播

參考文獻

Beall, J. (2012a). Predatory publishers are corrupting open access. Nature, 489(7415), 179. doi: 10.1038/489179a

Berger, M., & Cirasella, J. (2015). Beyond Beall's list: Better understanding predatory publishers. College & Research Libraries News, 76(3), 132-135. doi: 10.5860/crln.76.3.9277

Bohannon, J. (2013). Who's afraid of peer review? Science, 342(6154), 60-65. doi: 10.1126/science.342.6154.60

Budapest Open Access Initiative. (2002). Read the Budapest open access initiative. Retrieved from http://www.budapestopenaccessinitiative.org/read

Butler, D. (2013). Investigating journals: The dark side of publishing. Nature, 495(7422), 433-435. doi: 10.1038/495433a

國際替代計量

An Exploratory Survey of the Suspicious Open Access Journals

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