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Predatory journals and their article publishing charges
Author(s) -
XIA Jingfeng
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
learned publishing
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.06
H-Index - 34
eISSN - 1741-4857
pISSN - 0953-1513
DOI - 10.1087/20150111
Subject(s) - publishing , payment , computer science , measure (data warehouse) , charge (physics) , world wide web , political science , law , physics , data mining , quantum mechanics
This study examines the payment policies of a list of standalone predatory open access journals available on scholarlyoa.com . It is found that 72% do charge article publication fees (APCs), which is a higher percentage than found in DOAJ journals. The mean number of articles published during 2013 was 227, but ranged from 4 to 2,286 articles. The majority of journals charge low APCs and can be assumed to have modest annual incomes. There was no correlation between the amount of APC charged and the number of articles published. Comparing the number of journals charging APCs compared to the percentage from DOAJ, the findings suggest a connection between predatory practices and charging author fees. However, a comprehensive assessment of the dynamics of open access journal publishing beyond author charges should be done to avoid using APCs alone as a measure of whether a journal is predatory or not.