Predatory open access journals in a performance-based funding model: A comparison of journals in version VI of the VABB-SHW with Beall's list and DOAJ

The current report presents the results of this monitoring exercise in view of VABB-SHW version VI, which will contain publications from the time period 2005–2014. This report provides a detailed comparison of (1) the journals published by publishers listed on Beall’s list of POA publishers and the journals on Beall’s list of stand-alone journals as of 5 November 2015 with (2) the VABB-SHW list of journals as submitted to the GP in July 2015. Furthermore, we also provide details on each potentially predatory journal regarding its inclusion in Web of Science (WoS) and the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) and we list the publishers that are, according to Beall’s list, not to be considered predatory open access anymore. This report is intended to facilitate the GP’s decision making. More generally, the report may raise awareness on the prevalence of predatory open access publishing in the social sciences and humanities in Flanders.A more relaxed approach might consist of taking the whitelisting of a journal in DOAJ as evidence of peer review and hence classify these journals as peer reviewed. However, this approach would raise the question on how the status of journals in other systems (e.g. Italian ANVUR, ERIH) will be handled.