OA 101: Problematizing “Predatory” Publishing

Speakers: Matt Ruen, Head of Collections and Digital Scholarship, Grand Valley State University; Teresa Schultz, Scholarly Communication and Social Sciences Librarian, University of Nevada Reno

“Predatory” publishing, which generally refers to a set of practices in academic publishing aimed at deception for financial gain at the expense of rigor, remains a hot topic among researchers and scholarly communication specialists. There are disagreements on how to define it and to whom and what it applies. This session will explore a variety of publishing practices that could be considered predatory - including ones that are applicable to well established subscription publishers and journals - and problems with lists that claim to make clear-cut decisions on "good" and "bad" journals. Finally, we’ll discuss how librarians can help researchers evaluate scholarly journals based on their needs.

Recordings of each session will be made available afterward. These sessions are intended to provide lightweight professional development for librarians whose work intersects with open access or may do so in the future.

These sessions are open to anyone working in libraries, and participants can register here. SPARC membership is NOT required, and our goal in this series is to support the wider community, particularly those at institutions with fewer resources to support OA-related work.