engleski

Many shades of journal publishing: what colour is peer review in a predatory journal?

Objective: In this study, scholarly publishing environment and different journal publishing models will be analyzed in order to determine the reasons for appearance, characteristics and a way for the abolition of so-called “predatory publishers”. Method: A survey was conducted of important articles, books and other sources pertaining to the business models in scholarly publishing, authors’ preferences and “predatory publishers”. Results: Business models vary among publishers, and a majority did a shift from reader-pays to author-pays OA model. High APCs, authors’ pressure to publish more and more papers and lack of the transparency of peer-review process has led to the emergence of many publishers with a dubious quality of the editorial process. “Predatory publishers” attracted almost 500.000 papers in 2014. Authors are faced with ever intense competition to publish in a vast array of journals that employ diverse publishing practices, often without transparent editorial policy and clearly stated business model. They are not familiar with the concepts of “traditional academic journals”, “prestigious journals”, “mega-journals”, “high profitable journals”, “hybrid journals”, “predatory journals”, and it is a difficult task for them to select the right journal for submission. Authors tend to value the benefits of OA journals but their career often depends on a number of papers they publish. Although Baell defined 52 characteristics and maintain the list of “predatory publishers”, the publishing landscape is far away from being black and white. Many shades of journal publishing make increasingly hard to find out what is a trustworthy journal, and “predatory journals” have found their niche in gray range. Conclusion: Scholarly publishing fundamentally relies on the integrity of all participants. Transparency of editorial policies, open and valued peer-review and open access to the research data could solve many present problems. Publishers focused on the evolution of scholarly publishing instead on their profits, could contribute to the advancement of science. In the era where APC will be related to publisher’s services, different articles’ format, an inclusion of additional multimedia material, interactive features, data mining and text mining tools, and other advantages supported by available technologies, the color of predatory publishers will probably fade away.

journal ; business model ; APC

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