Dive Summary:
- Jeffrey Beall, associate professor and scholarly initiatives librarian at the University of Colorado Denver, is being sued for libel by the open-access journal publisher Canadian Center for Science and Education.
- Beall included the publisher on blog post titled "Beall's List of Predatory Publishers 2013," which included the publisher on a list of possible-to-probable "predatory" journals--an action that, along with the recommendation that “researchers, scientists and academics avoid doing business with these publishers and journals," is being viewed by the publisher's lawyer as "actionable libel."
- Beall told InsideHigherEd that predatory open-access journals exploit the author-pays, open-access model for their own profit, and he guess that accounted for as much as 10% of open-access journals.
From the article:
With the proliferation of scholarly journals - particularly open-access Internet journals that charge author fees - some librarians consider themselves on the front lines of the fight to preserve quality publishing. The weapon of choice for some, including Jeffrey Beall, associate professor and scholarly initiatives librarian at the University of Colorado Denver? The blog. ...