AJCU Business Deans: Resolution Regarding Predatory Journals

"The Business Deans of the Association of Jesuit Colleges and Universities (AJCU) endorse academic freedom and encourage scholarly inquiry of the highest caliber. We recognize the legitimacy of both print and online formats for the publication of professional research, and acknowledge that academic and practitioner-oriented studies, both peer-reviewed and non-refereed, can make valuable contributions to the theory, teaching, and practice of business. At the same time, we oppose the practice now commonly known as predatory publishing. Journals— whether physical or electronic—that purport to be outlets for scholarly research while accepting manuscripts with little or no serious peer-review and charging submission and/or publication fees to authors, demonstrate a clear disregard for time-honored intellectual and ethical standards of scholarship in their pursuit of profit. We object to unscrupulous practices that lure researchers into submitting papers with the promise of rapid acceptance and publication in exchange for financial payments. Such practices prey especially on the needs of junior faculty members to meet tenure requirements through publication, and in so doing, encourage a dilution of quality and the wasting of intellectual resources. Inasmuch as many predatory journals are now only available in a virtual format and have no physical repository in libraries, there is an additional risk that articles appearing in such an outlet will simply disappear from circulation if and when the journal shutters its website. We therefore encourage all scholars to avoid publishing their research in, and citing articles that appear in, predatory journals. To that end, we recommend that authors carefully scrutinize target journals before citing or submitting papers to them, utilizing all available information on publication standards, including the provision of referee reports to authors and the data annually offered by Beall’s List of Predatory Publishers as a guide. While no single evaluative source can be regarded as infallible or keep up with the proliferation of these journals, we note that other industry leaders, such as Cabell’s Directory of Publishing Opportunities, have adopted Beall’s List as a credible database for identifying suspect journals and publishers, at least within the open-access realm ..."