GEMINILOGGBOOKOBERDADAISTICUS

Predatory journals

I've been out of academia for years and still am, but recently I had a sudden relapse into publishing papers. Readers inside of the Ivory Tower may need to be reminded that all the journals they have free access to read are sealed off behind ridiculously priced paywalls for the rest of us. That fact alone makes it hard to keep up with the current trends in your field of interest if you're not inside the system. Fortunately, the notion that publicly funded research should be freely accessible is gaining momentum with Plan S and similar initiatives.

Open access journals are becoming more common, but still, too many interesting papers are locked in and not even shared in preprint versions on archives or the author's homepage. As an academic freelancer, or outcast depending on the perspective, there is no funding so publishing should not cost the author anything. Which open access often does. In my field there are perhaps two or three journals of solid reputation, but their licences are too restrictive and it's rare to see papers published in any of these journals in preprint versions, not to mention open access. So I started looking among less well known journals for those that would meet the following criteria:

Open access, preferably creative commons or similar licence

Free of charge for the author

Should be peer reviewed

Must be focused on my field of research

The first two points together are known as diamond open access. Need I say the alternatives were not plentiful? Anyhow, I found a few journals, submitted the first paper, waited six months and got a terse reply: "Editorial decision: Decline publishing". Finally, I got the two papers published in journals that I suspect don't have a very high impact factor (which probably means that if the papers were asteroids they wouldn't kill many dinosaurs), but they were serious enough and engaged in some peer review and minor copy editing.

The most enjoyable part about publishing is the overnight fame that follows. All those obscure journals that turn up and offer to publish whatever article you have about agriculture, engineering, mathematics, quantum physics, biology, sociology ... believe it or not, all in the same journal. A physics journal wrote and asked me to be their peer reviewer, which totally makes sense since my research field is music, which in antiquity was considered part of the quadrivium along with astronomy, arithmetics, and geometry.

The first offer came from a guy who wrote in Portugese, a language I'm not very well versed in, although the gist of the email seemed to be something about publishing a book manuscript without any cost and retaining the copyright. So, I requested some more information in English, and sure enough, it sounded almost too good to be true. The publisher was this infamous Lambert lad. I did a search and found some hilarious stories on research gate and elsewhere that I won't quote here.

Why not publish a book for free? For one thing, publishing a book might flatter your ego. That's important, I don't have a beef with that. It's a nice feeling as long as it lasts. Serious book editors would consider whether or not there is a market for the book. You don't have to think twice about that one: a book based on previously published research papers has a very limited audience. Usually, an audience of one: The author.

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