Beware of Predatory Publishers
INVITATIONS TO RE-PUBLISH WORKS
Have you received an invitation to have your work re-published by commercial publishers, a work that is already published and available in Digital Commons on an open access basis?
WHAT IS A PREDATORY PUBLISHER?
A predatory publisher is a publisher that exploits the open access system. As Jeffrey Beall wrote in Nature in 2012:
[Predatory publishers] publish counterfeit journals to exploit the open-access model in which the author pays. These predatory publishers are dishonest and lack transparency. They aim to dupe researchers, especially those inexperienced in scholarly communication. They set up websites that closely resemble those of legitimate online publishers, and publish journals of questionable and downright low quality. Many purport to be headquartered in the United States, United Kingdom, Canada or Australia but really hail from Pakistan, India or Nigeria.
SEPARATE THE WHEAT FROM THE CHAFF
Some requests to re-publish can be legitimate requests. Because the Macalester library, as publisher, allows and encourages all students to retain their copyright, students may re-publish in anthologies or special issues of journals, or in monographs if they so choose. However, some invitations are by questionable commercial publishers who are solely in the business of making money by charging a “small author fee” to re-publish works. Sometimes referred to as “Vanity Presses,” these organizations are not interested in disseminating high quality, peer-reviewed scholarly works. Rather, they are seeking to find ways to make money with questionable practices.
MOST IMPORTANT: HOLD ON TO YOUR COPYRIGHT
The most important thing for to you to remember is to not transfer your copyright to another publisher for any reason. If you are contacted and wish to learn more about the publisher who has contacted you, please contact the library at scholarpub@macalester.edu.
QUESTIONS?
If you have questions concerning your rights as copyright owner, please contact us or consider contacting your liaison librarian who can assist you with intellectual property questions.
MORE RESOURCES
If you would like to read more about predatory publishers, you may find the following articles and resources of use:
- Anderson, Rick. August 14, 2014. “Housecleaning at the DOAJ,” The Scholarly Kitchen. http://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2014/08/14/housecleaning-at-the-directory-of-open-access-journals/ (accessed August 14, 2014)
- Beall, Jeffrey. 2012. "Predatory publishers are corrupting open access." Nature 489, no. 7415: 179. Academic Search Premier, EBSCOhost (accessed August 5, 2014).
- Advice on Predatory Publishers, University of Manchester, http://www.openaccess.manchester.ac.uk/checkjournal/predatoryjournals/ (accessed August 5, 2014).
