Examination of academic librarian websites in Anglophonic countries to assess the integrity of information related to predatory publishing

AbstractThe debate on “predatory” publishing within academic scholarly communication continues. Blacklists (or watchlists) pertaining to “predatory” open access publishing by Jeffrey Beall, anonymous websites that cloned Beall’s blacklists, with or without updates, as well as a now-defunct blacklist, Dolos list, contain classification errors. During a Google search in 2021–2022, we found that dozens of academic libraries around the world, primarily in the USA, had continued to promote those blacklists. The list was revisited on 23 February 2023, focusing on libraries in seven Anglophonic countries, noting that 37 libraries were still promoting the Beall-based blacklists.Keywords: Academic and scholarly communicationblacklistsdisinformationopen accessquality NotesAuthors’ contributionsThe authors contributed equally to the intellectual discussion underlying this paper, literature exploration, writing, reviews and editing, and accept responsibility for the content and interpretation.DisclaimerAn earlier version of this paper was published as a preprint: https://doi.org/10.31235/osf.io/2xscwDisclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.Notes1 Select websites: https://predatoryjournals.com/ (now defunct); https://beallslist.net/; https://www.researchgate.net/post/List_of_Predatory_Journals_2019; https://predatory-publishing.com/info/; https://www.openacessjournal.com/blog/predatory-journals-list/2 RMH, RWH, PMCC and Victorian Mental Health, Health Sciences Library; Western Sydney University Library.3 Saint Mary’s University, Patrick Power Library; Eastern Michigan University Library; Frontier Nursing University Library; Hofstra University School of Medicine Library; Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey Library; Salisbury University Libraries.4 https://predatoryjournals.com/5 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predatory_publishing (last accessed: 23 February 2023)