What should we do now Beall’s List has gone?

It’s now been widely discussed that Jeffrey Beall’s list of predatory and questionable open-access publishers — Beall’s List for short — has suddenly and abruptly gone away. No-one really knows why, but there are rumblings that he has been hit with a legal threat that he doesn’t want to defend.

To get this out of the way: it’s always a bad thing when legal threats make information quietly disappear; to that extent, at least, Beall has my sympathy.

That said — over all, I think making Beall’s List was probably not a good thing to do in the first place, being an essentially negative approach, as opposed to DOAJ’s more constructive whitelisting approach. But under Beall’s sole stewardship it was a disaster, due to his well-known ideological opposition to all open access. So I think it’s a net win that the list is gone.

But, more than that, I would prefer that it not be replaced.

Researchers need to learn the very very basic research skills required to tell a real journal from a fake one. Giving them a blacklist or a whitelist only conceals the real issue, which is that you need those skills if you’re going to be a researcher.

Finally, and I’m sorry if this is harsh, I have very little sympathy with anyone who is caught by a predatory journal. Why would you be so stupid? How can you expect to have a future as a researcher if your critical thinking skills are that lame? Think Check Submit is all the guidance that anyone needs; and frankly much more than people really need.

Here is the only thing you need to know, in order to avoid predatory journals, whether open-access or subscription-based: if you are not already familiar with a journal — because it’s published research you respect, or colleagues who you respect have published in it or are on the editorial board — then do not submit your work to that journal.

It really is that simple.

So what should we do now Beall’s List has gone? Nothing. Don’t replace it. Just teach researchers how to do research. (And supervisors who are not doing that already are not doing their jobs.)