[IRTalk] Not the Beall and end-all*: Assessing quality publications from multiple perspectives

[Ina Smith]

Dear Colleagues

A blog post by the Australasian Open Access Strategy Group (AOASG) commenting on the removal of Bealls List.

https://aoasg.org.au/2017/03/27/not-the-beall-and-end-all/

"In the wake of the Scholarly Open Access blog<https://scholarlyoa.com/> shutting down (January 15, 2017), many commentators have focused on its author Jeffrey Beall and the now defunct blacklists he once maintained on 'predatory' publishers and journals, 'misleading' metrics and 'hi-jacked' journals. Adding to the mystery, Beall's typically active Twitter account<https://twitter.com/jeffrey_beall?lang=en> was recently dormant for over two months, with until recently the only public statement on the matter<http://www.nature.com/news/controversial-website-that-lists-predatory-publishers-shuts-down-1.21328> being supplied by his employer, the University of Colorado. Beall now says<http://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/paging-dr-fraud-the-fake-publishers-that-are-ruining-science> that "there was pressure from my university to stop".

Regardless of whether you considered his work divisive, an essential service to the academic community, or somewhere in between, these opinions are beside the point. No single person or source is equipped to bear the responsibility of being the ultimate authority on what constitutes as a best (or poor) practice scholarly publishing outlet. And nor should we - as a community of academic researchers and support staff - be so willing to bestow such authority on individuals, lists, metrics or indexing databases alone. Outlets need to be assessed in the context of many measures of quality and this will always require some level of additional work<http://oaspa.org/identifying-quality-in-scholarly-publishing-not-a-black-and-white-issue/>."

Kind regards
Ina

Ina Smith
Planning Manager, Academy of Science of South Africa (ASSAf)
DOAJ Ambassador, Southern Africa Region
LIASA Librarian of the Year 2016

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