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Comment on List of Predatory Publishers 2014 by Nana Yaw

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It is quite interesting to note this list again. Well, I have mixed feelings about such list. First, this list does what western social science does so well: creation of binary opposites in which the category that is associated with established western institutions is deemed correct/better/standard.

Second, OA journals (I mean those that do not charge authors processing fee and still make their articles publicly available) particularly from non-western societies seem to challenge the old opinion that English, French, and German and their institutions are the epistemic centres for knowledge production and production (this is probably unknown to many young western scholars and the older ones who have taken everything they find in academia for granted as what ought to be or ordained by providence) . Indeed, they have challenged the old view that scientific knowledge production is lower in non-western societies relative to western societies.

Unknown to many western scholars, these journals are springing up in reaction to the view that to be recognized one must publish in western journals. What you don’t realize is that many of them have national reputation and are a reflection of their national self-determination.

Again, the use of language as one of the criteria of assessment worries me. If you are a native speaker of English , pray that what happened to Latin does not happen to English and Chinese takes over as the next so-called international language. My English may not be as good as that of a native speaker and I won’t apologize for it.

Now I see why Russia and other BRICS countries have their own national citation index; I believe many more separate national citation indices will appear just for simple reason of national self-determination. And one thing that is also certain is that Jeff’s list will get longer and longer each year because people are just tired of this academic imperialism and want academic independence. Note that many of these journals are part of the calls to indigenize the social sciences and as much as the indigenization fire burns, Jeff you will have a great deal to do.

Indeed, things fall apart (Chinua Achibe); the centre can no longer hold and must give way for multi-epistemic centres of knowledge production and dissemination.

So do you think any western journal will publish such style of writing? We know to be published in “Jeff’s acceptable journals”, one must be a “good boy” and not challenge anything but “bad boys” must also publish so the OA journals proliferation. Posterity in their own nations will judge the worth of their work.They represent part of a long struggle for mental emancipation from the shackles of the colonial mentality of reduced self-esteem and dependency.

Well, these are my thoughts. You will want to read Claude Ake’s “Social Science Imperialism” and Kwesi Yankah’s “Globalization and the African Scholar”.


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