I was surprised when one of our editors told me that the name of Ashdin Publishing is found in the list of “Beall’s List: Potential, possible, or probable predatory scholarly open-access publishers” (http://scholarlyoa.com/publishers/) and I was surprised because of the following reasons:
- The author did not just mention the criteria for determining predatory open-access publishers, but he insisted on mentioning the full names and details of the publishers as well.
- Some of these criteria, for determining predatory open-access publishers, can be applied on a huge number of publishers (include some of the large and famous ones), but he did not mention any of them.
- Some of the publishers names are removed from this list without saying the reasons for this removal.
After I received the e-mail below, I am not any more surprised. Now, I am sure that the author, irrespective the good reasons he may has for preparing this list, wants to blackmail small publishers to pay him.
Dr Gillian Dooley (Special Collections Librarian at Flinders University):
Jeffrey Beall’s list is not accurate to believe. There are a lot of personal biases of Jeffrey Beall. Hindawi still uses heavy spam emailing. Versita Open still uses heavy spam emailing. But these two publishers have been removed in Jeffrey Beall’s list recently. There is no reason given by Jeffrey Beall why they were removed. Jeffrey Beall is naive in his analysis. I think some other reliable blog should be created to discuss more fruitfully these issues. His blog has become useless.
Mark Robinson (Acting Editor, Stanford Magazine):
It is a real shame that Jeffrey Beall using Nature.com’s blog to promote his predatory work. Jeffrey Beall just simply confusing us to promote his academic terrorism. His list is fully questionable. His surveying method is not scientific. If he is a real scientist then he must do everything in standard way without any dispute. He wanted to be famous but he does not have the right to destroy any company name or brand without proper allegation. If we support Jeffrey Beall’s work then we are also a part of his criminal activity. Please avoid Jeffrey Beall’s fraudulent and criminal activity.
Now a days anyone can open a blog and start doing things like Jeffrey Beall which is harmful for science and open access journals. Nature should also be very alert from Jeffrey Beall who is now using Nature’s reputation to broadcast his bribery and unethical business model.
Now, I invite all of you in order to take all precautions and not being misled by this blackmailer.
Ashry A. Aly
Director
Ashdin Publishing
http://www.ashdin.com
——– Original Message ——–
| Subject: | Open Access Publishing |
|---|---|
| Date: | Mon, 03 Dec 2012 17:39:18 +0000 |
| From: | Jeffrey Beall <jeffrey.beall@ucdenver.edu> |
| To: | info@ashdin.com |
I maintain list of predatory open access publishers in my blog http://scholarlyoa.com Your publisher name is also included in 2012 edition of my predatory open access publishers list. My recent article in Nature journal can be read below http://www.nature.com/news/predatory-publishers-are-corrupting-open-access-1.11385 I can consider re-evaluating your journals for 2013 edition of my list. It takes a lot my time and resources. The fee for re-evaluation of your publisher is USD 5000. If your publisher name is not in my list, it will increase trustworthiness to your journals and it will draw more article submissions. In case you like re-evaluation for your journals, you can contact me. Cordially Jeffrey Beall
editorjccr 
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