Predatory, open-access publishers

Beall's List of Predatory, Open-Access Publishers has been updated, including publishers who are essentially fraudulent in their claims of scholarly peer-review and others who are launching far too many journals to adequately ensure a quality editorial process.  Extraordinary author fees for manuscript submission do not guarantee an ethical, reliable scholarly communication cycle.  Some are hardly more than vanity presses, according to Jeffrey Beall, academic librarian at the University of Colorado Denver.  Researchers are forced into the position of "buyer beware" if sending a manuscript to one of these publishers, and, even more to the point for undergraduate students, readers must be very discerning to understand which papers have been given a rigorous peer-review by knowledgable scholars in the discipline of the article in question.

Journals from some of these publishers are listed in the Directory of Open Access Journals, which strives to list "quality controlled" scientific and scholarly journals.  Inclusion in the DOAJ may help assure the reader of peer-review, but does not preclude predatory practice by the publisher to garner as many authors' manuscripts as possible, at the highest price, in a process that may undermine the goals of scholarly communication.