Black & White Response in a Gray Area: Faculty and Predatory Publishing

This study focuses on faculty knowledge, experiences, and attitudes regarding fraudulent journal operations. Many definitions presented to researchers contain two primary aspects to describe these intentional perpetra­tors: 1) the chief motivation to profit monetarily, and 2) the misleading promise of and failure to deliver on indicators of quality, such as peer review. While this definition is simple on its surface, when put into practice it often expands into discussions of poor or unethical practices by journal publishers. It is common to find lists of grievances clarifying acts that signal predatory or unethical practices, which are used to broadly classify jour­nals as either predatory (“blacklists”) or reputable (“whitelists”). Jeffrey Beall’s lists of “potential, possible, or probably predatory” publishers and standalone journals have been the popular method of combatting predatory journals. Beall relied on 28 indicators of predatory practices and 26 indicators of poor practices. Now, Cabell’s Blacklist Violations include 64 considerations when determining the status of a journal. These manifold criteria are indicative of the impossibility of binary journal evaluation, as many journals are neither black nor white, but somewhere in the gray between. The discussion of predatory journals thus expands from overt scams to include scam-like journals or those with lower provision of quality or service. Therefore, “predatory publishing” encompasses a far broader range of publishing practices than those that are completely fraudulent. The difficulty scholars encounter delineating between reputable and predatory practices, along with their disparate publication practices, prompted the present study to explore what publishing faculty know about the phenomenon and their attitudes toward it. This exploration began with broadly investigating the publishing practices of faculty through interviews, which revealed a benchmark from which to begin conversations with faculty on our campus. With the results from this study, we will develop a survey instrument that more specifically examines faculty interactions with predatory journals

Flipped Library Sessions: Customized Instruction that Prioritizes Applied Information Literacy Learning

Time constraints often restrict the instruction of unique research skills required by a given subject area. By collaborating with instructors, librarians can offer flexible and efficient content that improves student information literacy skills. Meet librarians who have implemented various flipped methods and tools for distinct instructor and course needs

Collaborating on Flipped Library Sessions: 8 Best Practices for Faculty & Librarians

Library instruction varies in format but often manifests in the librarian teaching a single, isolated class session—what librarians refer to as a “one-shot.” Many challenges accompany this traditional format, including time-constraints, disengaged audiences, and little understanding on the part of the student as to how the library instruction integrates with course content. Flipped Learning methods can help counter these challenges even when the overall course is not based on a flipped model. They liberate librarians and faculty from the one-shot model and expand opportunities for library instruction to occur at multiple times in a course, to be delivered virtually or in person, and to invoke a broader range of educational tools. We offer eight best practices for those who are interested in exploring flipped methods for incorporating library content into a course

A Predatory Primer: What Every Librarian Should Know About Problem Publishers

Researchers and faculty are talking about predatory publishers within the academic literature. How scholars come to know about and interact with deceptive publishers has evolved and matured since they first garnered attention a little over a decade ago, and thus, how we as information professionals approach this topic must adapt and mature. The issue of “predatory journals” is deceptively simplistic, but its underlying complexities extend the conversation into a variety of topical concerns in librarianship. Such conversations include questions about the consequences of journal labeling and categorization, the use of pejorative or racially-charged terminology in such labeling, the new challenges for open access and start-up publishers, the relationships between journal reputation and diversity, the unidentified consequences of publishing in low-quality journals, and the overall academic publication system

Millennium development goals: A concern over sub-national variations

Millennium development goals (MDGs) were agreed upon by 192 countries in the year 2000 and are due to be achieved by 2015. This paper highlights that MDGs deal with national averages and their achievement may hide sub-national variation. Sub-national variation in the ability to achieve development goals should be expected because government spending would achieve such goals faster if it were targeted at areas where the required improvements are smaller, as is often the case in city-regions. Rural and dispersed populations may gain little from MDGs, at least in the short run. Data analysis of South African Magisterial Districts highlights this issue

Differences in Presentation and Outcomes between Children with Familial Dilated Cardiomyopathy and Children with Idiopathic Dilated Cardiomyopathy: A Report from the Pediatric Cardiomyopathy Registry Study Group

Research comparing the survival of children with familial dilated cardiomyopathy (FDCM) to that of children with idiopathic dilated cardiomyopathy (IDCM) has produced conflicting results