Comment on Two Predatory Bloopers by Robin Hood

Naser, Good ideas, but practically impossible. One simple reason. The ISSN washes its hands of assuming any responsibilities associated with assigning ISSN numbers. A real Judas-like association. I have for years claimed that the ISSN is one of the BIGGEST causes of the massive expansion and out-of-control state of OA predatory publishing. My claims were ignored. Maybe now people will start to pay attention. We need to fight the ISSN, too. So, every scientists should strongly condemn the ISSN for dishing out ISSN numbers like it is water. Regarding the use of a country or region’s name, your logic is flawed. For example, some publishers use those terms even if they are physically based elsewhere, however, they resevre publication space specifically only for researchers in that geographic zone, e.g. only for EU scientists for a journal starting with European. So, I think you can scrap that idea because it won’t gain support for its lack of logic. It will also be perceived as racist and elitist. As for asking Jeff to do everything, please consider him as a human, like you or I. He is not the police of the world and for all scientists. He is playing his part and we should respect him for that. The question that needs to be asked is what are YOU doing in your part of the world (India, Pakistan?) to fight OA predatory publishers? Pro-active action is required, not just lip service. Finally, where can we find a public list of black-listed publishers as published by the PME?