Interestingly surprising! Well, I do agree with you about ethics and quality. I do agree that it is annoying to read a paper full of mistakes and false claims. But who defines the standard of ethical behaviour and quality? I was questioning who determines the criteria and based on whose standards. You may not appreciate whatever I said because probably you take most things you came to meet on this earth as given.
By my submission, I wanted to draw attention to the fact that there are varied reasons for the proliferation of OA journals: some want to cheat academics who want promotion and others do set up these journals because they want a forum where their academics can engage in discussion about issues of national interest. And these issues are less likely to be of adequate universal interest (where universal is what is of interest to home-country academics of many of the established journals). So Jeff’s list must distinguish between pay-and-publish-subscribe journals from publish-and-subscribe journals. Again, a team should work on such lists as peer review that those journals are accused of not carrying out equally exists; that said, there is the risk that the list may be scientific and “useless”. This is because it doesn’t follow the research protocols that can give users assurance of accuracy and lack of bias. If we claim that We love what Jeff is doing, let’s encourage him to share the methodology used (not a list of criteria) and data by way of publication.
Postmodernist philosophy and critical realism question views that empirical world is the real world. Underneath the empirical world is the real world and that needs deconstruction. No wonder critical realists describe the positivist reality as naive realism. In short, there is always a motive underneath the surface that we must search for. Questions like: Who funds this research and why? Is the principal researcher on the board any of the established journals? Are there any conflicts of interest that we must know? Has there been any incident at his university that drove him to do this and full disclosure thereof? Accurate answers will increase confidence in the list.
Though I believe that such a list properly produced by all stakeholders is needed (and he has shown the way), I will not be a good boy and accept it just because it has been produced.
