Pay-to-play? Predators in the Academy
If you're an early-career researcher, and you want to be a professor, how do you demonstrate your suitability for an open position? You typically have to:
- Provide a cover letter
- Provide a Curriculum Vitae
- Provide a Teaching Statement and/or a Statement of Research
- Provide your unofficial transcripts
One way is to be well-connected; a recommendation from a luminary in your field can go a long way! Another option is to have an extensive list of publications, especially if your publications are in prestigious journals with a high impact factor.
It's the latter that I'd like to focus on today.
Since there is an absolutely massive amount of demand for journal publications, the free market has responded to the pressure: the rise of so-called "predatory journals."
https://contexts.org/articles/pay-to-play-journals/
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2014/sep/18/who-should-pay-to-publish-scientific-research
An interview with Jeffrey Beall and overview of the challenges of identifying "predatory publishers:" http://www.nature.com/news/investigating-journals-the-dark-side-of-publishing-1.12666
An archived version of the famous (or infamous) Beall's List: https://beallslist.weebly.com/
A sting operation to identify predatory publishers who will accept anybody as an editor: http://www.nature.com/news/predatory-journals-recruit-fake-editor-1.21662
It's gotten to the point where people are publishing journal articles about predatory journals! http://www.bioone.org/doi/10.2983/035.035.0101
An advocate of open access to research has become disillusioned by the systemic abuses that take place under the auspices of openness: https://ocsdnet.org/confessions-of-an-open-access-advocate-leslie-chan/
How do you tell a "good" journal from a "bad" one? Well, if you're looking for a single list...alas, there isn't one. However, the DOAJ [Directory of Open Access Journals] lists some helpful guidelines on how to identify a high-quality publisher. And the website ThinkCheckSubmit.org [archived version here] also gives authors guidelines.
