Just a quick post to say that I think Beall’s list of “predatory journals” should be expanded to include dubious subscription access journals.
I think it’s rather unfair on the open access movement to claim it’s just the open access business model that faces this kind of desperate exploitation.
It’s long been known that even big established scholarly publishers have published fake journals in the past but there are also independent, low-quality fakes out there, like the new DeNovo journal that’s recently published a “peer-reviewed” (?) paper on the Sasquatch Genome.
This paper is behind a paywall. It’s a hybrid subscription/oa journal that’s accepting submissions right now. I haven’t seen a single good word from any scientist I know about this paper. Here’s just some popular reviews of it.
Are there any other really poor quality subscription access journals out there that should be listed on this list of journals/publishers to avoid?
Discuss.