Unpublishing 101 – fake journals and the grey economy of open access publishing

In this ‘post-truth world’, fake journals are beginning to become a serious nuisance.

Open-access publication now operates in a kind of academic parallel universe, with over 2000 predatory and exploitative publishers, author fees up to $3,700, automatic acceptance of papers, contrived metrics, fake (or partly-fake) review boards, fake conferences, and bogus proofreading services (for which you pay extra in order to ‘get your English up to international standards’). This grey economy offers academics who are desperate to publish an outlet. And that may be a good thing. But of course if the articles that are published have not been through a rigorous review process, they may be scientifically worthless- or even dangerous.

See my blog at http://colinharrison83.tumblr.com/ for a longer discussion of this topic.

Thanks for reading!