Beall’s List of Predatory Journals and Publishers
A note about Beall’s List – as Joseph rightly says, it does not havee the answer on all the journals in the world!
There are estimated to be over 35,000 legitimate journals in the world today, and perhaps as many as 10,000 so called €˜predatory’ or junk journals, so the task of assessing and keeping up-to-date with all these journals is not a simple task. ‘Beall’s List’ was run by one librarian – Jeffrey Beall, until January 2017 when it was sshut down. It is now maintained anonymously (at https://beallslist.weebly.com ) with the following disclaimer:
‘I will keep the list updated as much as possible, although I suspect I simply won’t have time to do as thorough job as Beall. Hopefully people will point me to the new, possibly predatory journals and publishers. However, expect the list’s applicability to diminish over time. That is why I strongly suggest anyone that deals with publishing academic articles to read the information available on ThinkCheckSubmit.org, which has tips about how to publish in a journal that is not predatory. I would also suggest you to read Beall’s criteria for identifying a predatory publisher.’
So while the list might be useful for identifying some of the obvious dubious publishers and journals, it is not an up-to-date or exhaustive list, and you should use your own critical judgement to decide whether a journal is an appropriate outlet for your research.
Best wishes
Andy Nobes — Programme Officer, Research Development and Support — INASP
