Comments for Scholarly Open Access

Sorry, don’t know where to submit a journal for you to consider, so I just place this here:

http://www.ijpsbm.com/home

I think this one fits just about all your criteria of a predatory OA journal

Pretty cheap, but they sent me a message promising a 4-day review procedure…

Recently, Retraction Watch mentioned the web site Journalguide: http://www.journalguide.com/

The site offers information on fees, indexing, etc. Since the site is quite new, the information is often still incomplete, but in time it might become a valuable ressource for finding a place where to publish. I checked some journals I know, and the information on them was accurate.

Of course, the best way of selecting a journal remains to carefully survey where serious fellow scientists of your field publish.

No, not by itself, in my opinion.

Dear Claudia:

Non-profit does not mean they do not make money. It is a tax code designation. PLoS has its financials on line as does most other publishers. Springer does not because it is a privately held company, but it is in all likelihood about the same as everyone else.
However, you have to see what the publisher owns and how it makes its money. Some publish scholarly journals, trade advertising based magazines too, and other properties so their profit picture would look different than just a STM publisher.

I would look at:

Wiley and Elsevier
ASM and Amer Soc of Micro as well as FASEB

PLoS

When looking at PLoS see if you can break out PLoS one from the start ups.

Marco, Thank you -- I had not heard of this journal before. Now I have analyzed it and added to my list <a href="http://wp.me/P280Ch-J" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">here</a>. In addition to the problems you observed, it also makes prominent use of bogus metrics, claiming it has an impact factor when it does not. Again, thanks for letting me know about it.

You may also want to check one called “Journal of Earth Science Research” Just got that one today, which automatically went straight into Spam.

[…] Meanwhile, are researchers experiencing article processing charge (APC) fatigue? […]

[…] Sudanese researcher has fallen victim to a questionable publisher, Jeffrey Beall […]

There are several journals with very similar titles, but I think you probably mean <a href="http://www.bowenpublishing.com/jesr/http://" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">this one</a> published by Bowen Publishing. I do have Bowen Publishing on my list, and I am happy to hear that the spam filter is working so well. Thanks.

This may have been pointed out previously, but it is notable that Bowen and World Academic appear to be working from the same webpage template.
Bowen:

http://www.bowenpublishing.com/jesr/Publisher.aspx

WA:

http://www.academicpub.org/ijeme/PeerReview.aspx

Thanks for catching that. I am starting to realize that many of the questionable OA publishers have multiple “brands” or imprints. But because they are so intransparent, it is hard to always know who owns whom.

Harvey, APCs and page charges are different things, in my opinion. Page charges generally are made by tight-budgeted, non-profit scholarly societies.

Indeed. Having spent a great deal of time working for a nonprofit publisher on a society portfolio, I know for a fact in my case that (1) the society aggressively pushed to lower page charges while keeping subscription rates low (which wasn’t a great deal for staff salaries, but there were other benefits) and (2) the EICs had a dedicated budget for waiving page charges.

So, yes, some of the better-funded authors’ page charges went to subsidizing those who didn’t have that luxury. I’m not aware of anyone having complained about this. Similarly, although the publisher was nonprofit, some divisions wound up subsidizing others, as well having funds going to IT development, etc.

Right now, those page charges stand at just over $100 per page, which includes manuscript editing, and the subscription cost is under $3000 for print + electronic, for a large journal with a 6+ IF.

I disagree with Harvey Kane. The major attraction for authors to submit papers to commercial publishers was the lack of page charges.

$100 per page plus $3K for the subscription seems like a very profitable endeavor. I was a VP at two non-profits and would have very much enjoyed having a journal that generated that kind of cash flow. With only 500 subscribers, and I am sure you had more, that was a $1.5 million journal without page charges.

I would look at more than just the profit part of the equation. OA is not a profitless endeavor regardless of who is the publisher – for profit or not for profit. I would think the most important part of the equation is what the faculty thinks. By instituting a tiered system based on “profit” one has to determine what profit means.

Also, any system that penalizes with whom to publish is a form of censorship and I would hate to think a librarian would be involved in that kind of activity.

With only 500 subscribers, and I am sure you had more, that was a $1.5 million journal without page charges.

And, apparently, magically without expenses. The only thing left to pare from that budget was manuscript editorial, which, done properly, is more than moving commas around. And, of course, the publisher’s upper management itself, which ain’t going nowhere.

A quick glance at a recent Form 990 puts the society (fee-for-service) expenses at just over $800,000. For about 30,000 pages. Subscription revenue goes to the society. There aren’t many people getting rich here.

Hi, Apologies if my first comment was not clear. I am really interested in if anyone has any data on the different models of OA. I would like to know what the breakdown of OA models are– Gold vs. free. If you can point me in the direction of any data/publications I would appreciate it. My own searches have turned up very little. Thank you.