Monica Berger, Associate Professor, Instruction and Scholarly Communications Librarian, recently published a book chapter “Teaching Authors about Predatory Journals in the One-on-One Consultation” in The Scholarly Communications Cookbook, edited by Brianna Buljung and Emily Bongiovanni (Association of College and Research Libraries). The chapter is licensed CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 to encourage adaption and reuse.
In 2-3 sentences, describe your scholarship or creative work to someone unfamiliar with the field.
This book chapter provides guidance to academic librarians so they can effectively help colleagues with questions about predatory or questionable publishers. It emphasizes the importance of reading and use of tools like Think. Check. Submit. that encourage critical thinking about evaluating publishing choices, a scholarly information literacy skill. A fun part of writing the chapter was the “Allergy Warnings” section where I tackle many of the sensitive aspects of these discussions and remind librarians that their role is not to determine if a publisher or journal is predatory.
What makes you particularly proud of this work?
It’s always exciting to share applied knowledge.
Anything else you’d like the reader of our blog to know about your work?
I am continuing to critique how the discourse on predatory publishing is saddled by notions of quality that are determined by publishers and other stakeholders in high income countries. That doesn’t mean there aren’t publishers who are unethical or who ignore fundamental best practices for scholarly publishing. It’s been quite challenging to work on a subject that is so ambiguous and continues to evolve.
