We at EEB & Flow periodically post about trends and issues in scholarly publishing, and one issue that we keep coming back to is the existence of predatory Open Access journals. These are journals that abuse a valid publishing model to make a quick buck and use standards that are clearly substandard and are meant to subvert the normal scholarly publishing pipeline (for example, see: here, here and here). In identifying those journals that, though their publishing model and activities, are predatory, we have relied heavily on Beall's list of predatory journals. This list was created by Jeffrey Beall, with the goal of providing scholars with the necessary information needed to make informed decisions about which journals to publish in and to avoid those that likely take advantage of authors.
As of a few days ago, the predatory journal list has been taken down and is no longer available online. Rumour has it that Jeffrey Beall removed the list in response to threats of lawsuits. This is really unfortunate, and I hope that someone who is dedicated to scholarly publishing will assume the mantle.
However, for those who still wish to consult the list, an archive of the list still exists online -found here.
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