Open access publications can be viewed as a partial way to ease library serial budget woes. There are many high quality open access publications, but predatory open-access publishers present a continuing issue. Predatory open access journals are defined as journals that exist for the sole purpose of profit. They can misrepresent their review process/board, location and/or affiliations.
Jeffery Beall, a librarian at the University of Colorado-Denver, maintains a blacklist of predatory publishers ("Beall's List"). The Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) maintains a "white-list" of OA journals meeting base line criteria, such as being chiefly scholarly, providing quality control through an editor, editorial board or peer review, and having a registered ISSN. Another organization maintaining a white-list is the Open Access Scholarly Publisher's Association. Publishers must apply and pledge to adhere to a code of conduct to become members.
As librarians, we can take an advisory role, assisting our patrons as they navigate the OA landscape.
The following articles provide a more detailed, but still quick, overview of the issues surrounding OA publishing.
Berger, Monica and Cirasella, Jill, Beyond Beall's list: better understanding predatory publishers. College and research libraries news 76, no. 3 (March 2015)
Directory of Open Access Journals introduces new standards to help community address quality concerns. SPARC blog, March 5, 2015
Heller, Margaret, Educating your campus about predatory publishers. ACRL TechConnect, April 13, 2013
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