Hi there. I am John Bond from Riverwinds Consulting and this is Publishing Defined. Today I am going to talk about Cabell’s Whitelist and Blacklist services. Cabell’s International is a privately-owned company founded in 1978 that serves the scholarly or academic library and publishing industries. Two products they offer for subscription are their Whitelist and the Blacklist directories. The Whitelist is “an independent, curated database of scholarly journals that guides researchers, publishers, librarians, academics, and administrators to the publications they need. The Whitelist provides complete contact and publication information, multiple quality metrics, submission experience data, and peer review indicators for over 11,000 verified journals across 18 academic disciplines.” The Whitelist in addition provides tools and metrics to help researchers with the decisions on which journal to submit a paper or to evaluate a publication. They also provide Journal Impact Factors, Altmetrics Reports, and a full range of Scopus citation-backed metrics. The journals are selected by Cabell’s and reviewed at least once a year. Some of the information presented is publicly available while a small amount is self-reported by the publication. The Whitelist is an invaluable service that institutions and researchers can rely on for accurate information on the important publications in a market. On the opposite side of the coin is the Blacklist which is a searchable database of deceptive and predatory academic journals. Jeffrey Beall, an academic librarian from Colorado has been closely associated with the beginning efforts to identify predatory publications. He had compiled a famous list of these publications, but it recently has been taken down, although lives on at many sites, it is just not being updated. Cabell’s Blacklist takes Beall’s concept into a more concrete and fact filled realm. Cabell’s say its employees “analyze suspected publications against behavioral indicators. Subscribers have access to a database of detailed reports for every journal that their specialists have evaluated and flagged as a probable threat.

Each report provides ways to identify the journal and enumerates the specific predatory behaviors that the evaluation revealed. Specialists analyze over 60 behavioral indicators to keep the community aware of the growing threats and to keep academia protected from exploitative operations.” The Blacklist has defined criteria its uses including: Integrity, the Peer Review Process, the journal’s website, the publication’s practices, Indices and metrics, its business practices and fees, and copyright. The Blacklist as of this date lists 5,900 plus publications Both services offer a search function with multiple variables, and Cabell’s is continuing to make updates to the search function. Both are subscription services geared toward institutions versus individuals. A subscription to the full Whitelist and the to the Blacklist for a small to medium public university for IP access might run a few thousand dollars, but they are many variables. Both lists and the site, as with all large endeavors, are a work in progress. There are usually a never-ending list of IT fixes or improvements to address, as well as the ever-changing publishing world that makes changes to the criteria and adding new journals and disciplines necessary. Small points for improvement at the website include adding autofill to all appropriate search functions, fixing the back button which sometimes gives wonky results, and a robust Help feature would be much appreciated. On the content side, Cabell’s has clearly made a huge effort to cover much of the academic publishing world. But it is a big world and they haven’t cover everything. Notably they don’t cover engineering. They also are sparse on medicine and health care and other areas. I am sure Cabell’s will expand and round out their offerings in the future. In addition, their criteria are spelled out very well and their transparency is admirable.

But some of the criteria are subjective and the weighted nature of the items in the Blacklist adds to the subjectivity. I know Cabell’s is working on the Blacklists criteria to post new, more detailed selection criteria so that new or low-quality journals do not appear on the list, but that it focuses on deceptive or dishonest journals. Despite these small points, Cabell’s Whitelists and Blacklists are welcomed and valued services that researchers and appropriate institutions should have access to. I suggest all scholarly publishers review whether their journals are on either list and confirm all the information presented. Well that’s it. I’ve released a eBook called, “The Request for Proposal in Publishing: Managing the RFP Process.” It is a short, focused guide to this essential business task that associations or societies use to find potential publishing partners. See the link in the notes below for more information on the book or how to purchase it. Hit the Like button below if you enjoyed this video. Please subscribe to my YouTube channel or click on the playlist to see more videos about Cabell’s and their lists. And make comments below or email me with questions. Thank so much and take care.