A Preliminary Study of Alternative Open Access Journal Indexes
Abstract
This paper examines a group of selected open access journal indexes by non-mainstream index providers. It finds that journals seeking such indexing are mainly “predatory” journals. Most of these so-called alternative indexes have not provided any evidence of employing quality assessment in journal inclusions. They also are not supporting interoperability for online searching across the Web. Comparisons among the alternative indexes yield many overlaps of journals, indicating shared business of these indexes and journals.
Keywords
Open access journals Predatory journals Non-mainstream indexing Unethical practice Alternative publishing marketNotes
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