The predatory publishing phenomenon: dead end or just an inconvenience on the road to a new scholarly publishing landscape?

Exploitation of the open access (OA) model by unscrupulous publishers can seem a threat to the future of scholarly publishing. Some see the proliferation of these publishers as a simple case of bad actors who need to be stopped. Further reflection and reading can lead to a realization that the situation is not nearly as simple as bad guys vs. good guys. Rather, what is happening can be seen as a natural outgrowth of the ease of publishing on the internet and the rise of OA publishing. A global economic market for publishing scholarly articles on the internet has emerged and is responsible in part for this phenomenon. There is a continuum of publishers that some term ‘predatory’ which ranges from clueless new publishers to outright frauds. The good news is that the emergence of this phenomenon has resulted in the development of professional associations, educational movements and best practices that can help educate authors, publishers, researchers and academia alike. In the end the situation might turn out to be one of ‘temporary inconvenience, permanent improvement’.  'Based on a breakout session presented at the 39th UKSG Annual Conference, Bournemouth, April 2016