Discriminating Between Legitimate and Predatory Open Access Journals: Report from the International Federation for Emergency Medicine Research Committee.
BACKGROUND
Open access (OA) medical publishing is growing rapidly. While subscription-based publishing does not charge the author, OA does. This opens the door for "predatory" publishers who take authors' money but provide no substantial peer review or indexing to truly disseminate research findings. Discriminating between predatory and legitimate OA publishers is difficult.


METHODS
We searched a number of library indexing databases that were available to us through the University of California, Irvine Libraries for journals in the field of emergency medicine (EM). Using criteria from Jeffrey Beall, University of Colorado librarian and an expert on predatory publishing, and the Research Committee of the International Federation for EM, we categorized EM journals as legitimate or likely predatory.


RESULTS
We identified 150 journal titles related to EM from all sources, 55 of which met our criteria for OA (37%, the rest subscription based). Of these 55, 25 (45%) were likely to be predatory. We present lists of clearly legitimate OA journals, and, conversely, likely predatory ones. We present criteria a researcher can use to discriminate between the two. We present the indexing profiles of legitimate EM OA journals, to inform the researcher about degree of dissemination of research findings by journal.


CONCLUSIONS
OA journals are proliferating rapidly. About half in EM are legitimate. The rest take substantial money from unsuspecting, usually junior, researchers and provide no value for true dissemination of findings. Researchers should be educated and aware of scam journals.
Johns Hopkins University, Department of Emergency Medicine, Baltimore, Maryland.
Bhakti
B
Hansoti
University of California, Irvine, Department of Emergency Medicine, Irvine, California.
Mark I
MI
Langdorf
University of California, Irvine Libraries, Reference Department, Irvine, California.
Linda S
LS
Murphy
D022126:Access to Information; D015706:Bibliometrics; D035843:Biomedical Research; D004635:Emergency Medicine; D006801:Humans; D066295:Open Access Publishing / Q000592:standards*; D010380:Peer Review; D010506:Periodicals as Topic / Q000592:standards*; D012108:Research Personnel