Jeffrey Beall’s List of (Allegedly) Predatory Publishers: What happened to scholarlyoa.com

So what really happened to scholarlyoa.com? Jeffrey Beall’s list of (allegedly) predatory publishers has gone dark. When you visit the site, there is nothing on it but just the website header. All categories have somehow disappeared.

Many scientists have been dependent on Beall’s list for confirmation if a scientific journal is a scam/predatory or not.

This was how Beall described his list:

Potential, possible, or probable predatory scholarly open-access publishers

This is a list of questionable, scholarly open-access publishers. We recommend that scholars read the available reviews, assessments and descriptions provided here, and then decide for themselves whether they want to submit articles, serve as editors or on editorial boards. In a few cases, non-open access publishers whose practices match those of predatory publishers have been added to the list as well. The criteria for determining predatory publishers are here.

We hope that tenure and promotion committees can also decide for themselves how importantly or not to rate articles published in these journals in the context of their own institutional standards and/or geocultural locus. We emphasize that journal publishers and journals change in their business and editorial practices over time. This list is kept up-to-date to the best extent possible but may not reflect sudden, unreported, or unknown enhancements.

The University of Colorado Denver, where Beall is currently a tenured associate professor, released this statement:

Jeffrey Beall, associate professor and librarian at the University of Colorado Denver, has decided to no longer maintain or publish his research or blog on open access journals and “predatory publishers.” CU Denver supports and recognizes the important work Professor Beall has contributed to the field and to scholars worldwide. CU Denver also understands and respects his decision to take down his website scholarlyoa.com at this time. Professor Beall remains on the faculty at the university and will be pursuing new areas of research.

For those still wanting to see Beall’s list of (allegedly) predatory publishers, fortunately, the list has been archived. The last snapshot was December 30, 2016:

http://web.archive.org/web/20161222020349/https://scholarlyoa.com/publishers/

For the criteria in determining predatory publishers, check this document.