^ more on the Beall thing

@scaaahu thanks for noticing the cross-post. You seem to be good at catching those, it's a very useful skill :)

@ff524 You're welcome. Partly because of luck this time. When I went there, Hwa la la, did I just see it half an hour ago? I had no idea it would cause that much dust. Glad to see the dust is settled now. Thanks for your moderation. You're so much needed.

Is this NAA? academia.stackexchange.com/a/83514/22013

@Compass Yes, already deleted.

@ff524 @StrongBad I wonder if Beall's list was really influential, as stated by Retraction Watch.

@MassimoOrtolano to an extent I think it was. I think it brought to the fore front what some questionable publishers do.

@StrongBad That's true, but I wonder how many people in academia is actually aware of that. At one end of the spectrum, there are some (many?) people who have a pool of journals in which they usually publish and everything else goes unnoticed or deleted without even bothering. At the other end, there are those who fall into the trap because they don't know anything about predatory journals.

I wonder what percentage of people lies between those two extremes: people trying to publish in a wide range of journals, but aware of predatory journals and who would consult Beall's list.

(my field is fairly narrow, and I'm somehow at the first end of the spectrum)

@MassimoOrtolano I don't think it was the influence of people looking on Beall's list for a particular journal/publisher. I think it help spread the idea that there are some really bad publishers out there.

@MassimoOrtolano I consider the list’s value mostly in providing a quick first or second opinion whether a journal is predatory as well as having some back-up when making such claims.

For example, I once got a request for Arχiv endorsement by somebody who published in a predatory journal. The make-up of the paper looked very fishy at first glance and a look into the list quickly confirmed this. Evaluating the journal’s quality by myself would have taken some time – and I know what to look for.

Raising awareness of predatory publishers is certainly one achievement of Beall, but its not directly due to the list, but due to his other activities.

@Wrzlprmft @StrongBad Yeah, you're probably right. As a curiosity, an Italian writer maintains a similar list about predatory publisher for what concerns common literature. It appears that that list, which was firstly prepared by another website, underwent similar events, because it was first removed from the original website and then republished in the linked one.