More on how scam OA journals make OA look bad The New York Times has an article today on scam conferences...

More on how scam OA journals make OA look badThe New York Times has an article today on scam conferences and scam OA journals.http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/08/health/for-scientists-an-exploding-world-of-pseudo-academia.html?hp&_r=1&pagewanted=all&It doesn't say how widespread the problem of scam OA journals really is. But the fact that the Times is covering it already leaves the impression that the problem is widespread. Moreover, the article says much less about honest OA journals than dishonest ones, and says nothing at all about dishonest subscription-based or non-OA journals.How widespread is the problem of bottom-feeding OA journals? See David Solomon and Bo-Christer Björk, "OA Coming of Age," The Scientist, August 6, 2012. "While poor quality publishers are proliferating, often creating hundreds of cookie-cutter journals, they tend to publish relatively few articles. On the other hand, PLoS recently published its 50,000th article. We reanalyzed data from a study we recently published in the Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology that characterized the APCs [article processing charges] of journals charging them. We found that two thirds of the approximately 106,000 articles published in 2010 in these journals, listed in the Directory of Open Access Journals, were in publications listed by the 2010 Journal Citation Report (JCR) and another 11 percent were listed in the Scopus abstract and citation database but not in the JCR. The publishers of these indexes screen the journals they list for quality including ensuring that they are properly peer-reviewed. This suggests that the majority of scientists publishing in OA journals that charge APCs are savvy enough to avoid low quality publishers. It appears that they care about the quality of the journals in which they publish, as do the promotion and tenure committees that evaluate researchers. Beall and others have pointed out a legitimate concern with predatory publishing, but it is important to keep that concern in perspective."http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/32460/title/Opinion--OA-Coming-of-Age/For my own take on scam OA journals, see my article, "Ten challenges for open-access journals," SPARC Open Access Newsletter, October 2, 2009. "Are OA journals a scam? Are fee-based OA journals a scam? Are some fee-based OA journals scams? Do some observers believe that some fee-based OA journals are scams? Does this belief harm OA journals as a class? Although you edit or publish OA journals yourself, you probably gave one, two, or three "yes" answers to these five questions. That's the challenge....The challenge behind this challenge is that we rarely have more than grounds for suspicion. We'll often have doubts about our doubts about a journal's honesty. In my own mind, it's important to leave space to distinguish a scam from a clumsy start-up....My recommendation is two-sided. On the one hand, don't be the last to criticize dishonest practices and low standards. The longer you hesitate, the more it appears that you will overlook a journal's vices as long as it is OA....On the other hand, don't create a hostile or unwelcoming environment for new start-ups....Don't let ours become a revolution that eats its own children....The OASPA [Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association] code of conduct is a beacon here. Not only does it say the right things: disclose your peer review process, your contact info, your fees, and don't spam. It is the voice of OA publishers themselves, not critics of OA publishers. It shows that OA publishers are willing to articulate these norms and willing to enforce them. It's public self-regulation. It's available for supporters, critics, and start-ups to consult it as an emerging standard....[T]he Davis/Anderson hoax from June 2009 ...made all OA journals look bad....You might quarrel with the word "all". Not all OA journals charge publication fees. Not all OA journals that do charge fees take the money and fail to deliver honest peer review, or even a cursory human glance. True and true. The actual number of journals like TOISCIJ [The Open Information Science Journal] is very small. But most people who hear about the Davis/Anderson hoax don't understand the distinctions among OA journals, just as most people who heard about the 1996 Sokal hoax didn't understand the distinctions among cultural studies journals or even among humanities journals. Jumping to the conclusion that the problem lies with OA as such or publication fees as such is not justified and not fair. But that's the challenge. By contrast, TA [toll-access] journal scams –- like the nine fake journals published by Elsevier –- seldom trigger generalizations about the faults of TA journals as such. From long familiarity, most academics have learned to discriminate among TA journals. But most are still learning to discriminate among OA journals."http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:4316131BTW, I just beefed up my web handout on How to make your own work open access. It now includes suggestions on evaluating O