Why Beall’s List Died — and What It Left Unresolved About Open Access - The Chronicle of Higher Education

"Publicly, Mr. Beall has put most of the blame on his own university [for the demise of his blacklist of predatory journals]. As his professional home, that’s where he felt the longest and most direct pressure. Despite being a tenured associate professor of library science, Mr. Beall has spent the past two years working out of a small cubicle similar to a student’s study carrel, in daily fear, he says, of a new supervisor’s threats to make his conditions much worse.

The university, for its part, has said it values Mr. Beall’s work on his list, has spent many years defending it, and provides him a work space similar to that of other librarians. "There have been no documented cases of internal threats against him that leadership or university counsel is aware of," says Emily Williams, a university spokeswoman.

“They're trying to make me as uncomfortable as possible.” Mr. Beall insists otherwise. "They’re trying to make me as uncomfortable as possible," he said in an interview from an empty room down the hall, where he escapes for private conversations.

But the Swiss publisher angry that it had showed up on his blacklist, Frontiers Media, may have played an even bigger role...."