Your Guide to Possibly/Probably Predatory Online Open-Access Journals

As regular readers of NursingWriting.com are well aware, in recent years the scholarly publishing landscape has become confused with online open-access journals whose publishers employ aggressive spam marketing and dubious peer review and publishing practices.

For centuries, traditional publishers have used a subscription business model: the cost of publishing and circulation a journal is subsidized by subscribers who have exclusive access to the material. The proliferation of the World-Wide Web and expanded wireless or WiFi bandwidth has introduced a new business model: open-access journals whose costs are subsidized by the authors who are published in it, not by readers. This business model introduces a conflict of interest: the journal needs to publish authors who pay the journal. Some online open-access journals appear to employ little or no reputable peer-review and some publish junk science. (It pays the bills!)

Assembled by members of the International Academy of Nurse Editors are a variety of resources to help you discern which online open-access journals are reliable.

A statement provided by the Academy’s Predatory Publishing Practices Collective http://naepub.com/predatory-publishing/2014-24-3-2/

A list of journal editorials published on the topic of standards for open-access publishing https://nursingeditors.com/inane-initiatives/open-access-editorial-standards/editorials-published-open-access-editorial-standards/

Articles in the online publication Nurse Author & Editor concerning predatory publishing http://naepub.com/category/predatory-publishing/

Librarian Jeffrey Beall’s “black list” of “possibly/probably predatory journals” https://scholarlyoa.com/

A “white list” of respected and credible nursing journals https://nursingeditors.com/journals-directory/

 

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