This webinar (1 h 22 min), hosted by EIFL and our partner, the Consortium of Academic and Research Libraries in Ghana (CARLIGH), invited librarians and researchers from Ghana to discuss the scholarly publishing landscape and how to identify credible open access journals and avoid predatory ones.

Iryna Kuchma, EIFL Open Access Programme Manager, speaks about using the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), African Journals Online (AJOL), the Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association (OASPA) and Committee on Publication Ethics COPE members lists, and Think.Check.Submit to find open access journals and publishers. 

Dr Tom Olijhoek, DOAJ Editor-in-Chief, shares DOAJ’s definition of a predatory publisher and highlights the differences between predatory / questionable and low-quality journals. Dr Olijhoek also speaks about how predatory publishing is represented in the media, vs what is happening in reality. According to Dr Olijhoek, predatory publishing is not as common as reported in the media, and happens not only in open access journals. The number of low quality open access and low quality subscription journals is similar, but it appears that there are more low quality open access journals because they are more visible. 

A lively Q&A session covers daily practices of researchers and librarians and provides good advice about scholarly journals. 

You can download the PowerPoint presentation here.