New project led by ISSN US Centre: Assessing Scholarly Journals: Predatory or Just ‘Born’ in the Wrong Country?

The U.S. ISSN Center is hosting three interns who are undertaking this project overseen by director of the U.S. ISSN Center, Regina Romano Reynolds, with the assistance of ISSN senior librarian, Karen Ross. The project’s goal is to explore the risk that characterizing journals as “predatory” might pose to legitimate journals from countries with less-developed publishing practices and to explore the role that the ISSN Network has in determining a journal’s quality. The interns will research scholarly and popular literature, observe U.S. ISSN Center processes and conduct interviews with the ISSN International Centre, as well as with representatives of Open Access stakeholders. The project would include whether and how having an ISSN might play a role in the ranking systems and how some new open access journals from the Global South might suffer the stigma of “predatory” simply based on their location. The report will be made available within the Library of Congress and the ISSN Network and potentially form the basis of a professional article.