Ever wondered what a fake journal in #mathematics looks like? Follow me down the rabbit hole. I'll show you one that slipped on the slippery slope of #goldOA. #openScience #math #fakeJournal #openAccess. 👇🧵
My new paper on Ukrainian researchers’ publishing activity in Gold Open Access journals during the war has just been published. I focused on five major publishers (Elsevier, Springer Nature, Wiley, Taylor & Francis, and SAGE):
https://doi.org/10.2478/jdis-2025-0059
Ukrainian papers in fully Gold OA journals of these publishers grew by more than 50% in 2023, with further growth in 2024.
1/ I'm sympathetic to #NIH-funded authors who want to publish in certain #APC-based #OpenAccess journals and can't find the money to pay the APCs. But it's false to say that they must publish in those journals, in any other APC-based OA journals, or even in OA journals. Shame on _Inside Higher Ed_ for leaving this false impression..
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/faculty-issues/research/2025/12/05/nih-policy-holding-researchers-hostage
PS: I repeat: Compliance with the NIH OA policy is free of charge. Moreover, compliance is all about depositing in a certain repository, not publishing in a certain journal or kind of journal. The NIH has a #GreenOA policy, not a #GoldOA policy. The same is true for all the other federal agencies with OA policies, not just the NIH. When a journal charges NIH-funded authors an APC to publish, the fee is to publish in that particular journal, not to comply with the NIH policy. Don't be fooled by the widespread misunderstanding that compliance with these policies requires paying any kind of fee. Don't be fooled by journals and publishers that cynically spread this myth themselves or leave it uncorrected. You can help by correcting this falsehood wherever you see it. You can also help by working with hiring, promotion, tenure, and funding committees to care more about the quality of research than the journals in which it is published.
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#APCs #NelsonMemo #NIH #OpenAccess #OAintheUSA #PublicAccess #Repositories
My new paper on Ukrainian researchers’ publishing activity in Gold Open Access journals during the war has just been published. I focused on five major publishers (Elsevier, Springer Nature, Wiley, Taylor & Francis, and SAGE):
https://doi.org/10.2478/jdis-2025-0059
Ukrainian papers in fully Gold OA journals of these publishers grew by more than 50% in 2023, with further growth in 2024.
The #NIH just announced that it will "cap how much #publishers can charge NIH-supported scientists to make their research findings publicly accessible."
https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/nih-crack-down-excessive-publisher-fees-publicly-funded-research
We don't yet know the cap or how NIH will calculate or enforce it.
#APCs#DefendResearch#GoldOA#OpenAccess#ScholComm #Trump #TrumpVResearch#USPol#USPolitics
The #NIH just announced that it will "cap how much #publishers can charge NIH-supported scientists to make their research findings publicly accessible."
https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/nih-crack-down-excessive-publisher-fees-publicly-funded-research
We don't yet know the cap or how NIH will calculate or enforce it.
#APCs#DefendResearch#GoldOA#OpenAccess#ScholComm #Trump #TrumpVResearch#USPol#USPolitics
Update. Here's a published article making a cluster of false claims about #OpenAccess journals: "In the OA model…costs are…covered by Article Processing Charges ( #APCs) paid by the authors ( #GoldOA); in relatively rare cases, some funders cover the full costs of a journal ( #DiamondOA) to make it free for readers and authors alike."
https://www.ssph-journal.org/journals/international-journal-of-public-health/articles/10.3389/ijph.2025.1608614/full
1. It claims that most OA journals charge APCs and that diamond OA journals are rare. But most OA journals do NOT charge APCs and diamond OA journals predominate.
Today the #DOAJ ( @DOAJ) lists 21,597 OA journals, of which 13,735 or 63.5% are diamond.
https://doaj.org/
2. It claims that at APC-based OA journals, APCs are (always) paid by authors. But while this tends to be true in the global south, even there it's only a tendency, not a universal truth. In the north, APCs are usually NOT paid by authors but by their funders or employers.
https://suber.pubpub.org/pub/j1jk6hu9
3. There are many ways to fund a diamond or non-APC OA journals, not just by having funders cover their costs.
BTW, this piece is called a "commentary" and might not have been peer-reviewed.
In the rest of the piece, the authors complain about misunderstandings of their journal.
