How can Research Libraries Deal with Predatory Publishing?

There are many open access journals that are funded by article processing charges (APCs), also known as publication fees. A small number of these journals provide little or no peer review and editorial or publishing services in return for the money they charge. These kinds of business practices are referred to as “predatory publishing”. At least since the media coverage in summer 2018 it has become clear that libraries, which consider themselves as supporters for researchers in every stage of the research cycle and which facilitate access to curated scientific content need to take action. The issue of predatory publishing mainly tackles the following working fields in research libraries:

• services regarding open access publishing: financing of open access publication fees by institutional funds;
• advisory services: providing help to researchers to select appropriate publication (open access) venues or to those who fell prey;
• acquiring and indexing of open access content: exclude predatory journals in order to make sure that they will not get further attention or legitimacy.

There are several approaches to deal and identify predatory journals:

• blacklists e.g. Beall’s list, Cabell’s that name “the black sheep”;
• white lists which – according to the context – name positive examples or recommend venues for publishing, e.g. journal lists issued by societies or departments;
• neutral lists which were actually set up for other purposes but can also be used in the context of predatory publishing e.g. journal lists of indexing services such as PubMed or Web of science;
• list of criteria, tailored to subject field and target audience, e.g. those by THINK-CHECK-SUBMIT.

The presentation will discuss a kind of “inventory”: How can the different approaches be used in the library context and what are the advantages and disadvantages of the different approaches? When it comes the list: Which criteria can be applied to identify predatory journals? How can research libraries raise awareness among researchers? How to deal with predatory journals in the context of acquisition and indexing?

The presentation will also report on some results of a workshop on predatory publishing that was held at ZB MED – Information Centre for Life Sciences in December 2018 with delegates from different library departments.