We are excited to share that this year, the OASPA Annual Conference will be held on Monday September 21 - Wednesday September 23 at the Hotel Dubrovnik, Zagreb <https://www.hotel-dubrovnik.hr/> in Croatia. Please save the date!
Last year we heard from delegates that they found the conference to be a useful, interesting and enjoyable event where they learned about the latest in open access and networked with many colleagues, both known and new.
Here’s a sobering announcement from Cabell’s, publisher of Predatory Reports — to date the most rigorously documented and curated database of deceptive journals and publishers.
The problem of predatory publishing continues to grow, and (in my view<https://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2018/08/07/denialism-rocks-just-got-lot-harder-pretend-predatory-publishing-doesnt-matter/>) to be under-discussed in the research library space.
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Rick Anderson
University Librarian
Brigham Young University
(801) 422-4301
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From: [log in to unmask] <[log in to unmask]> on behalf of Michael Bisaccio via groups.io <[log in to unmask]> Date: Wednesday, February 4, 2026 at 9:21 AM To: [log in to unmask] <[log in to unmask]> Subject: [LIBLICENSE-L] Press Release: Cabells’ Predatory Reports Database Hits 20,000 Deceptive Journals
I have no hard data or evidence on this, but my suspicion is that it’s a mix of factors, including:
* Money-laundering (I see no reason to doubt that this is one element) * A very large and constantly growing number of tenure-seeking authors who may not need to publish “a paper a day,” but who do need one or two more legitimate-looking articles to pad out their CVs, and who see placement in a predatory journal as a quick and easy way to achieve that * Unethical researchers and corporate shills looking to create what will
Why do authors publish in predatory journals? by Serhat Kurt Learned Publishing First published: 18 January 2018 https://doi.org/10.1002/leap.1150 This study examines the reasons why authors publish in ‘predatory’ OA journals. In total, 50 journals were randomly selected from Beall's list of ‘predatory’ journals. Different methods, including WHOIS tracking, were utilized to query basic information about the selected journals, including location and registrant. Then, 300 articles were randomly selected from within selected journals in various scientific fields. Authors of the selected articles were contacted and sent survey questions to complete. A grounded theory qualitative methods approach was used for
I'd suggest well-meaning researchers duped by the journals as a major income source. I suspect this is especially the case for early career researchers and researchers from less well-resourced institutions. My suspicion is that a large amount of the money going to predatory journals is from people that just don't know any better. Certainly, "how do I know if this OA journal is legitimate" is a really frequent question from our researchers.
I agree, and I think the article Lisa shared points that up as well. For those of us who are more experienced (and/or who are steeped in the culture of scholarly communication) it can be baffling to think that a potential can really be taken in by these journals, but I think it’s more common than we generally assume, especially among students and early-career researchers.
I think this is a common problem with ‘the academy’ being a bit un-worldly. When the subscription agent SWETS went bust in 2014, nobody in the content distribution industry was surprised, but many librarians were completely amazed, including those that had recently selected SWETS in competitive procurement processes to handle large budgets. Similarly, when used to sell software to librarians, I found that all were very suspicious of salespeople, but also that most believed almost everything they were told by those salespeople. It was perplexing.
At Charleston Asia I attended a session on paper mills and predatory journals run by Tech Press’ John Chen. At the end of the session he pointed out that some institutions (meaning universities) in Asia are supporting/involved with predatory journals as a means of boosting their own positions in ranking systems . . .
"Researchers/authors" is a much larger group than "faculty" ... in some countries people have to publish in order to be awarded their degree, medical professionals must publish to keep practicing medicine, etc.
Lisa Janicke Hinchliffe [log in to unmask]
On Thu, Feb 5, 2026, 1:48 PM Comcast < [log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Yes agree. Researchers are being fooled or selecting and some company and > universities are scamming. I’m still not sure I understand growth so maybe > just not fully getting it. Growth of predatory journals and papers is > faster or more than legit research output still recently and much more than
Just sharing a webinar that might be of interest to your communities related to my after-hours work with the DefendResearch.org<https://www.defendresearch.org/events/webinar-series> team and the Declaration<https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1hTIfev5Fuxs16Onl7lLlAFBIkwK1nf1dRES_yhgHwU4/edit> to Defend Research from US Govt Censorship.
The group is kicking off a monthly webinar series to educate scholarly communicators and the general public about the dangers of censorship to academic freedom — something many are tackling at home and abroad.
[Forwarding this on behalf of Glenn Hampson, whose posts are not getting to the list for some reason…]
From: Glenn Hampson Sent: Thursday, February 5, 2026 8:11 AM To: [log in to unmask] Subject: RE: [OPENCAFE-L] A sobering milestone (FW: Press Release: Cabells’ Predatory Reports Database Hits 20,000 Deceptive Journals)
Hi Rick, Lisa, Everyone,
For your consideration, there are a probably a couple other explanations for this increase. One is that Cabell’s just started building its resource nine years ago. The number of listings it includes has crept up over time as a function of the hard work it’s doing. The second explanation
