Comments for Scholarly Open Access

Publication time 8-10 months? That seems terribly long to me, on top of all the fee unpleasantness.

I don’t think your argument is very cogent.

“The journal has an impact factor of 0.049 according to Thomson Reuters’ Journal Citation Reports.”

Statistically significant!

[…] Here is a list of predatory open access publishers and journals to avoid […]

Although seen from another angle an APC of $150 plus a complimentary print subscription is hardly outrageous, and also the equivalent of ‘society members’ (academics and students from the Colegio de Posgraduados) do receive a discount on this price.
I understand this policy has been in force for Agrociencia since 1997, and it is unusual for a Latin American journal to charge for publishing there. They are usually free to publish in and free to access.

The conditions should be mentioned clearly in the author instructions, I quite agree.

To add insult to injury, the publisher is an institution of the Mexican federal ministry of agriculture! http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colegio_de_Postgraduados (in Spanish)

This is not an article processing charge. In my experience, APCs are only charged after acceptance. Here “this payment does not imply that the manuscript will be published.” I do not know of any other Journal that charges the complete fee regardless of acceptance (maybe they’re a few, but it is very uncommon and does seem risky for authors.)

Hi Jeff,

Need to your feedback as one of my journal got accepted by hindawi. As I am reading mixed reviews wondering is it legit or spam? Could you please advise

Noted and Thanks.

Date: Tue, 21 Apr 2015 15:02:57 +0000 To: ayetuoma@hotmail.com

Hindawi is not on my list. You should be fine.

I work for a reasonably well-known set of research journals, and while this practice is not just limited to predatory publishers, it is something that I would encourage all editorial staff to nip in the bud if possible! I do my best to encourage our Editors not to make a decision on manuscripts until all invited reviews are received, and not to invite more reviewers than the manuscript needs.

Mistakes will happen, obviously, but I agree with the previous poster who said that this is potentially disrespectful to reviewers. Academics can waste precious time and energy on a review, only to be told at the last minute that their review is no longer needed. This is not a good way to treat people who invest their time and energy (often free of charge) into helping other academics in the field.

Actually, I can confirm that this does happen, but it’s not good practice.

Jeff – I have no idea about this specific journal, but fees for submission of a manuscript are charged by other reputable journals published by large scholarly societies. For example the Journal of Neuroscience charges $ 130 for submission, regardless of the eventual fate of the manuscript, and this is separate from publication fees charged if the manuscript is accepted for publication- see http://www.jneurosci.org/site/misc/ifa_fee.xhtml

If you had spent more than 5 minutes with Dr. Perry, you would know that it’s a bit like watching the Road Runner zip from place to place. He’s efficient, brilliant, and effective. He hasn’t managed to be one of the top Alzheimer’s researchers in the country by accident. Likewise, he is engaged in his role as dean. Attacking him (and yes, I also read it as an attack) because you don’t believe it’s possible to be that productive is a pointless exercise since he’s got the goods to back it up. How scholarly productivity and dissemination are being changed by the internet and new technologies has been a fascination of his for decades, and he is better equipped to compare, contrast, and discuss these issues that anyone I know. You’d better serve your cause by engaging him in dialogue about the topic further than writing posts that question his ability to be effective in the roles he plays.

Agreed, but the point I was trying to make is that the fees are not mentioned on the website. Authors find out about them the hard way, after they’ve submitted a paper.

Yes, MDPI is on my list at this time. I list at the publisher level whenever possible, so when I publisher is included on the list, I do not separately list all its individual journals.

What is MPRA?

They have also option for 3-days publishing for 130 USD.

I think it is, and I recommend that you avoid it.

Yes the names are funny, Helen White and other very simple names – and I am sure people with these names exist. And they had all been female, never a Henry Miller or a John Clark :-) Nothing is real all is imagination

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