For crying out loud, I am still getting crappy spammy mail from various "Bentham Open" journals. The most annoying part to me of Bentham Open is that they try to make it seem that anything published in an Open Access journal is better than anything published in a non Open Access journal. While I personally believe publishing in an OA manner is great, lying about the benefits of OA is not a good thing. ...
[Bentham suggests that] the crappiest, most boring, most idiotic article in an OA journal will receive "massive international exposure" and "high citations." ...
... On Thursday, a professor of mine received a solicitation to have him serve as Editor-in-Chief of The Open Communication Journal. For a professor in a department of communication, the first sentence should have been a clue that this publisher should hire a copy-editor. But if you read on, the financial ties between the new post and the publisher should raise some serious concerns about Bentham’s ability to separate editorial decision-making with their business model:
In recognition of your outstanding reputation and contribution in the field of Biology. We are pleased to propose your name as the Editor-in-Chief of “The Open Communication Journal”. After the selection your role as the journal’s Editor-in-Chief will be to solicit and submit a minimum number of ten manuscripts to the journal each year [...] For all the manuscripts that you submit to the journal, for the first ten that are published, we will pay you an annual royalty of 5% of all fees received on these manuscripts.
The editorial board boasts an astounding 169 names, with the expectation that board members will publish regularly in the journal. And to provide an incentive for their contributions, Bentham promises to waive their article processing fees:
We expect that Editor-in-Chief, Associate Editors, Co-Editors in an Open Access Journal will submit at least one article per year which will be published ABSOLUTELY FREE OF CHARGE. Beside, each and every submission from Editor-in-Chief will be published free of cost. ...
Posted by
Gavin Baker at 11/24/2009 11:40:00 AM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
I recommend the OA tracking project (OATP) as the best way to stay on top of new OA developments. You can read the OATP feed on a blog-like web page or subscribe to it by RSS, email, or Twitter. You can also help build the feed by tagging new developments you encounter.
