On predatory publishing : a reply to Maistry

Date
2019
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
University of KwaZulu-Natal
Abstract
I reply to an article by Murthee Maistry entitled “You f*uck one goat!” Counting the cost of predatory publishing. In his article Maistry confesses his ‘wrong-doing’ of having published articles in ‘predatory’ journals. He argues that he is alone to blame for his ‘trangressions’ because academia is necessarily a critical space that demands astuteness and constant vigilance, which he failed to uphold. Through showing remorse he hopes to restore his academic reputation, which he believes has been lost. In my reply I point out that Maistry’s loss of academic reputation is imagined rather than real. Moreover, I point out that his confession and works of those who he cites such as Beall and well as Mouton and Valentine are based on flawed assumptions which cause then to commit a category mistake by focusing on the ‘containers’ that information is in, instead of the quality of the information itself. I point out that Maistry as well as Beall are trapped in the domain of morality which makes them blind to the importance of being an ethical researcher in the academy. Instead of focusing on issues of moral decline (Beall) and moral failings (Maistry) I suggest that in a digital age we should use the opportunities that open access (QA) publishing provide for democratising academic publishing and to make it as affordable to as possible to as many people as possible. This requires, as Willinsky and Alperin (2011) argue, treating the ethical domain as a realm of positive action where one goes out of one’s ways to help others instead of focusing on issues such as exam cheating and research fudging, in this instance ‘predatory’ publishing.
Description
CITATION: Le Grange, L. 2019. On predatory publishing : a reply to Maistry. Journal of Education, 75:20-32, doi:10.17159/2520-9868/i75a02.
The original publication is available at https://journals.ukzn.ac.za/index.php/joe/
Keywords
Open access publishing, Scholarly publishing -- Corrupt practices, Publishers and publishing, Communication in learning and scholarship -- Moral and ethical aspects, Suriamurthee Moonsamy Maistry, -- Corrupt practices, Predatory publishing, Maistry, Suriamurthee Moonsamy -- Corrupt practices, Communication in learning and scholarship -- Moral and ethical aspects, Publishers and publishing
Citation
Le Grange, L. 2019. On predatory publishing : a reply to Maistry. Journal of Education, 75:20-32, doi:10.17159/2520-9868/i75a02