Predators and bloodsuckers in academic publishing

On the local use and usefulness of Beall’s list of predatory publishing

On the occasion of Jeffrey Beall’s list of possible predatory publishers being shut down for reasons presently unknown, our short text considers the wider context of the story of “academic, researcher, and consultant” Dr. Wadim Strielkowski, which has been debated and disputed in Czech academia since 2015 and led to the organization of a conference in Prague in June 2016. At this conference, Beall gave a keynote speech on how predatory publishers corrupt scholarly communication. This text aims to show the use and usefulness of Beall’s list in a local context and, more generally, to contribute to the discussion about the global quest for meaningful and responsible academic publishing in today’s audit- and productivity-driven culture.