Beall's List

Beall's List of Predatory Open Access Publishers, shortened to Beall's List, was an annual publication listing publishers who are 'potential, possible, or probable' agents of predatory open-access publishing, an exploitative business model that involves charging publication fees to authors without providing the editorial and publishing services associated with legitimate journals (open access or not). Written by from the University of Colorado in Denver, the list sets criteria for categorizing predatory publications and lists publishers and independent journals that meet those criteria. Newer scholars from developing countries are said to be especially at risk of becoming the victim of these practices.

On January 15, 2017, the list was brought down due to harassment from some predatory publishers who were listed and pressure from his employer, the University of Colorado Denver. Fortunately, the internet has it archived. Go nuts!

Problems with Beall
Beall published an article arguing against the whole of open access publishing and not just predatory open access, claiming it to be an "anti-corporatist" [sic], "collectivist", "cooperative" movement which wishes to "replace a free market with an artificial and highly regulated one". He says as if this is a bad thing. He also plays up the connections to George Soros, describing him as "known for his extreme left-wing views and the financing of their enactment as laws". Oh, and he published this nonsense in an open access journal!

There is also that time Beall described and, two Latin American scholarly digital libraries, as "favelas", the Brazilian-Portuguese derogatory term for slums. Yeah, not racist/classist at all!