Never mind predatory publishers... what about ‘grey’ publishers?

  1. Nicholas, David 1
  2. Herman, Eti 1
  3. Abrizah, Abdullah 2
  4. Rodríguez-Bravo, Blanca 3
  5. Boukacem-Zeghmouri, Cherifa 4
  6. Watkinson, Anthony 1
  7. Świgoń , Marzena 5
  8. Xu, Jie 6
  9. Jamali , Hamid R. 7
  10. Tenopir, Carol 8
  1. 1 CIBER Research Ltd, United Kingdom
  2. 2 University of Malaya, Malaysia
  3. 3 Universidad de León
    info

    Universidad de León

    León, España

    ROR https://ror.org/02tzt0b78

  4. 4 Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1, France
  5. 5 University of Warmia and Mazury in Olsztyn
    info

    University of Warmia and Mazury in Olsztyn

    Olsztyn, Polonia

    ROR https://ror.org/05s4feg49

  6. 6 Wuhan University, China
  7. 7 Charles Sturt University
    info

    Charles Sturt University

    Bathurst, Australia

    ROR https://ror.org/00wfvh315

  8. 8 University of Tennessee, USA
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Revista:
El profesional de la información

ISSN: 1386-6710,  1699-2407

Ano de publicación: 2023

Título do exemplar: Disinformation and online media

Volume: 32

Número: 5

Tipo: Artigo

DOI: 10.3145/EPI.2023.SEP.09 DIALNET GOOGLE SCHOLAR lock_openAcceso aberto editor

Outras publicacións en: El profesional de la información

Obxectivos de Desenvolvemento Sustentable

Resumo

The Harbingers project, which studied the working lives and scholarly communication behaviour of early career researchers (ECRs) over 6 years, found evidence of changing attitudes to questionable (grey) publishing. Thus, whilst predatory publishers have come to be treated with equanimity, as a problem easily dealt with, there was growing concern with the high volume of low-grade research being generated, some of which by "˜grey´ open access publishers for want of a better name (questionable and non-standard have also been used). With the recent announcement (2023) that the government of Malaysia (a Harbinger case country) is not providing Article Processing Charges (APCs) for articles published by MDPI, Frontiers and Hindawi on quality and cost grounds, we set out to see what lay behind this decision and whether other countries exhibited similar concerns. Information was obtained by asking Harbinger country leads, mostly embedded in research universities, from Australia, China, France, Israel, Malaysia, Poland, Spain, UK, and the US to conduct desk research to establish what is happening. It was found that countries, like ECRs, appear to have formed into two different camps, with China, Poland, France, and Spain joining Malaysia in the camp of those who felt concerned about these publishers and the UK, US, Israel, and Australia belonging to the camp of the unconcerned. Explanations for the split are furnished and whether the Malaysian position will prevail elsewhere is considered. Finally, in this paper, we have aired issues/concerns, rather than provided robust, systematic data. For a systematic study we shall have to wait for the fuller study we are hoping to conduct.

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Fonte de datos: Dialnet