Interview with the Author: Monica Berger on Predatory Publishing

Predatory publishing is a concern in all areas of librarianship. In special libraries, librarians work with experts in various fields. It is vital that special librarians understand the sector-relevant publishing landscape, and which publications maintain academic integrity.

Specifically, in regards to predatory publishing, special librarians need to consider resource quality, credibility, and the reputation of the publishers across disciplines such as healthcare, research and development, manufacturing, financial services, law, and many other sectors.

Monica Berger is the author of Predatory Publishing and Global Scholarly Communications published by the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL). My interview with her is below.

1. Please introduce yourself to our readers.

I am an academic librarian at a large public college in Brooklyn, New York, New York City College of Technology (nicknamed City Tech) that is part of the City University of New York (CUNY). For my first fifteen years at City Tech, my functional position was overseeing technical services (cataloging, print serials) and electronic resources. I developed considerable expertise related to periodicals and serials, which ties into how I got involved in writing about predatory publishing. More recently, my functional position focuses on instruction and scholarly communications. Librarians at CUNY are faculty and I decided to dive into scholarly communications as my area for scholarship. I love how my day-to-day work informs my scholarship, which in turn informs my work as I am continually learning as a practitioner and an author.

2. Briefly summarize Predatory Publishing and Global Scholarly Communications.

Predatory publishing is a “wicked problem”. A wicked problem is a dilemma that is the result of numerous other systemic troubles—climate change for example—and that cannot be solved with only one solution. Accordingly, predatory publishing requires reform from the top down and the bottom up. In my book, rather than jump into discussing the characteristics of predatory publishing, I give the reader a fair amount of background on why predatory publishing is a wicked problem. For example, I introduce the idea of the knowledge commons and knowledge as a public good (as articulated by Hess and Ostrom and explicated by Peter Suber) as fundamental concepts underlying open access. Open access, which has many benefits to the author and is required by many funders, is seriously under stress because it has evolved to be exploited as a business model by all types of commercial publishers, not only predatory publishers.

I also discuss the invisible pervasiveness of neoliberalism in higher education and science which has resulted in an accelerated, metrics-driven publish-or-perish environment for authors, including those in the less developed countries of the Global South, whose universities and colleges compete in international rankings. Other areas in the background section of the book include the history of predatory publishing and the oversized role of Jeffrey Beall who defined and influenced predatory publishing’s problematic conceptualization. The section ends with a precis of scholarly assessment and details why current practices that privilege bibliometrics are negative. I also provide an overview of unethical research and scholarly practices.

After covering the characteristics, which are nice to know but never diagnostic, I cover the research on predatory authors, publishers, editors, and other stakeholders as well as spam, citation, and indexing. I think the section on citation and indexing is particularly important since it highlights how articles in predatory journals are scarcely cited and rarely indexed. Bibliometric and bibliographic indexing or lack thereof is an especially meaningful indicator when evaluating journals, especially those outside of the humanities. The research is ever-evolving and every day there are multiple, new research studies. To help the reader understand the highly varied mindsets of authors and editors, I created personas for each.

The middle of the book is on the geopolitics of scholarship, chiefly discussing the position of the Global South, the site of significant authorial and publisher activity in predatory publishing. I break down how and why this is the case overall as well as on a regional and country-by-country level. Seeking balance and nuance, I also unpack the myriad reasons why the Global South is marginalized in knowledge creation, including how predatory publishing harms legitimate publishers in the South. There is minimal predatory authorship and publishing in Latin America which has its own rich, extensive community-based scholarly infrastructure including diamond (free to author) open access.

This discussion segues to the final section where I discuss structural solutions including open peer review and the creation of more diamond open access. The book wraps up with two chapters on pedagogical solutions to predatory publishing chiefly geared to librarians. I would be remiss not to urge readers to explore Think. Check. Submit., a fantastic resource for authors and others concerned with journal selection. I also emphasize that one-on-one consultations where librarians meet with authors are especially effective because of the unique situation of each author as well as the sensitive nature of the conversation. Librarians have so much to offer in terms of guiding authors towards positive outcomes for their publishing by teaching them how to evaluate journals and publishers. However, librarians need to know where to draw boundaries around content expertise and should urge authors to reach out to respected scholars in their niche.

3. Why did you decide to write this book?

I wrote this book for librarians like me who do not necessarily have training or mentoring in scholarly communications, but face questions about predatory publishing, open access, and publishing venues. Because the scholarly publishing and communications landscape has changed so dramatically over the last ten to twenty years and new journals are being launched regularly, colleagues are unsure about where to publish or how to evaluate their fellow faculty.

It was necessary to unpack many aspects of scholarly communications so the reader could understand predatory publishing as a phenomenon and, more importantly, why predatory publishing continues to exist. The “why” is more important to me than anything else because without understanding the “why,” we cannot begin to mitigate predatory publishing. I was also dissatisfied with the discourse on predatory publishing being so polarized and often one-dimensional. Lastly, I am hoping that the solutions that I introduce will be helpful to readers who can play a role as educator-advocates in reforming scholarly communications.

4. How has scholarly communication changed in the last five years, specifically in the area of predatory publishing?

The main difference between contemporary predatory publishing and its predecessors ties into authorial funding and need. Specifically, many highly specialized predatory journals in biomedicine and other STEM areas, for example, engineering, were launched or survived because these authors have funding and are under intense pressure to publish. There is also a phenomenon of larger predatory publishers rebranding existing journals to evade detection. Predatory publishers also scrape Google Scholar to send personalized messages to authors.

Lastly, I’d like to call out the concept of ‘grey’ publishers who aren’t predatory per se but overpublish lower quality content, particularly in special issues. Several of these ‘grey’ publishers were, to great controversy, listed as predatory by Jeffrey Beall. These ‘grey’ publishers are owned by or were absorbed into well-known, prestigious commercial publishers. The problem is not exclusive to these specific publishers. Readers should follow Retraction Watch as well as Nature News to keep up with publishing ethics and misconduct that largely does not focus on predatory publishing. The point here is that the predatory/non-predatory binary of publisher quality is very misleading: in the zeal to increase shareholder profits, some corporate publishers may lower standards or otherwise behave in an exploitive manner.

5. How do you see scholarly communication changing in the next five years?

To piggyback on my last statement, and as I wrote previously, there’s a great tension around open access and author fees including a tremendous pushback to Plan S, a European-funder based initiative to rapidly flip the publishing ecosystem to open access that sent shockwaves* throughout scholarly communications globally. Plan S’s original preference, in the interest of scale and speed, emphasized a model where commercial publishers charge author fees for immediate open access. It is clear this has not worked out well for most authors, particularly those in the Global South. Plan S has walked back its thinking and is now encouraging diamond open access and other efforts to support more equitable knowledge creation.

Even the Gates Foundation took a position, recently announcing that they will no longer fund author fees and, instead, will require authors to post their preprints. The Gates Foundation policy signals increasing support for preprint-as-green open access and diamond open access. I am optimistic that more authors will chose beyond luxury brands of the big Four commercial publishers as diamond open access publishing—whether via library publishing or other university-based publishing—continues to grow in sophistication and scale. There is more sharing of expertise and resources and an array of options for libraries to support non-profit open access, for example, Subscribe to Open (S2O).

The other big area for change relates to assessment. Starting with the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment, best known as DORA, the scholarly and scientific community have been calling for reform of scholarly assessment, including consideration of the social value of scholarship, as well as greater bibliodiversity. The current system has resulted in science that is not reproducible as well as exclusion of authors in the Global South. COaRA, based in Europe, launched in 2022, and is doing significant work advocating for rewards systems that consider the social benefit of scholarship. Narrative CVs are practical solutions to labor shortages for evaluation. I also see a broader movement towards values-driven frameworks, for example, the library publishing community’s FOREST framework.

*The ‘S’ in Plan S stands for ‘shock.’

6. How can librarians support systems that lead to a decrease in predatory publishing?

To start, librarians need to know their scholarly communication 101s and I recommend the Scholarly Communications Notebook OER. They also should keep up with news about scholarly communications and can read College and Research Libraries News. Retraction Watch is also essential. Experience peer reviewing and working with journals is also invaluable for librarians. I also recommend that librarians spend time examining those weird publishers, journals, and conferences promoted by the spam emails that we all receive. Academics and other scholarly authors continue to hold misguided notions about open access and predatory publishing. They might conflate the two or they might presume open access is lower quality.

Confusion about author fees is rampant and librarians need to understand how these fees work, especially now that transformative agreements are part of the picture. Being able to work effectively with administrators and others dealing with personnel actions is also important. For example, a small humanities journal may be high quality but appears unprofessional and lacks a journal impact factor, resulting in evaluators having a negative impression of the journal without regard to the quality of the scholarship. Evaluators and authors, as I wrote, also “need to read,” whether to judge scholars or to select a journal for their work. That is why narrative CVs are so helpful because they point the evaluator to the author’s best work and clearly communicate its evolution and meaning.

7. Is there anything else you would like to share?

Although predatory publishing is a very controversial and, at times, ambiguous concept, is indeed a serious problem that harms different stakeholders. Most importantly, as I write in my conclusion, predatory publishing is “the canary in the coalmine of scholarly communications.” Librarians as educators play a critical role in creating change from the grassroots. The first chapter of my book is freely available and I hope your readers will download it to learn more about my book.

Final Thoughts

Monica Berger’s book Predatory Publishing and Global Scholarly Communications provides many insights into predatory publishing and the broader scholarly communications network. I encourage special librarians to educate themselves on this topic so they are prepared to provide the most reputable sources for their users.