Dear Colleagues,
It has come to our attention that several CUNY authors, including PSC-CUNY grant funded researchers, may have been exposed to ‘so-called’ predatory publishers, including having to pay open-access fee charges for articles appearing in journals of ill repute.
Could you please alert your faculty of these dangers, perhaps by circulating the attached Nature article on “The Dark Side of Publishing”?
http://www.nature.com/news/investigating-journals-the-dark-side-of-publishing-1.12666
Here, D. Butlers suggests the following (quoted from p. 435):
“A checklist to identify reputable publishers
How to perform due diligence before submitting to a journal or publisher.
● Check that the publisher provides full, verifiable contact information, including address, on the journal site. Be cautious of those that provide only web contact forms.
● Check that a journal’s editorial board lists recognized experts with full affiliations. Contact some of them and ask about their experience with the journal or publisher.
● Check that the journal prominently displays its policy for author fees.
● Be wary of e-mail invitations to submit to journals or to become editorial board members.
● Read some of the journal’s published articles and assess their quality. Contact past authors to ask about their experience.
● Check that a journal’s peer-review process is clearly described and try to confirm that a claimed impact factor is correct.
● Find out whether the journal is a member of an industry association that vets its members, such as the Directory of Open Access Journals (www.doaj.org) or the Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association (www.oaspa.org).
● Use common sense, as you would when shopping online: if something looks fishy, proceed with caution. D.B.”
Thanks,
Mark E. Hauber, Ph.D., D.Sc.
University Vice Provost for Research
City University of New York
205 E 42nd Street, New York, NY 10017, USA
+1/646-664-8910; mark.hauber@cuny.edu
www.cuny.edu/research @CUNYResearch
www.cowbirds.org @cowbirdlab
Editor-in-Chief, The Auk: Ornithological Advances
www.americanornithologypubs.org @AukJournal
