ABSTRACT
This chapter presents a three-phase analysis of the 521 journals that use the open source publishing platform Open Journal Systems (OJS) while appearing on Beall’s list of predatory publishers and journals and/or in Cabells Predatory Reports, both of which purport to identify journals that charge authors article processing fees (APC) to publish in the pretense of a peer-reviewed journal. As members of the Public Knowledge Project, which develops this freely available publishing platform, the authors feel a responsibility to explore what platform developers can do to address both the real problem of duplicitous journals and the over-ascription of the “predatory” label to publishers and journals. Drawing on data from the 25,671 journals using OJS in 2020, the chapter represents an assessment and intervention. The first phase involved the researchers reaching out to publishers and editors on Beall’s list using OJS; the second phase involves determining the extent to which journals using OJS appeared on the two predatory lists, and the third reports on a new system, involving trade organizations, such ORCID and Crossref, for authenticating journal practices. The goal is to provide a publicly accessible industry standard for readers to more reliably assess journal quality than depending on two impressionistic lists of predatory journals.
