Examples
Worked examples
- Is an instance
A librarian fielding a 2015-era question about an unfamiliar open-access journal checking the publisher's name against Beall's List as one input, alongside other checks, before advising a researcher on where to submit.
- Is an instance
A research-integrity investigation, years later, citing the frozen 2017 snapshot of Beall's List as historical evidence that a specific now-defunct publisher had already been flagged as predatory at the time an article was submitted to it.
Counter-examples
Looks similar, but isn't
- Not an instance
Cabells' Predatory Reports — often called Beall's List's closest successor, but it is a paid, continuously updated, multi-criteria subscription database maintained by a company, not a revival of Beall's own list or methodology.
- Not an instance
DOAJ (Directory of Open Access Journals) — a positive-listing directory of journals that meet published transparency criteria; structurally the opposite of a blacklist and not a Beall's List substitute.
Editorial commentary
Beall’s List was a self-published blacklist of “potential, possible, or probable predatory” open-access publishers and standalone journals, compiled by University of Colorado Denver librarian Jeffrey Beall on his blog Scholarly Open Access from 2008 until he removed the entire site on January 15, 2017. It is now a historical resource rather than an actively maintained checklist. For current, live tools to evaluate a specific journal, see CASRAI’s guide on How to Identify Predatory Journals and Publishers; this entry covers Beall’s List itself, as a specific named resource.
What it was
Beall started the list in 2008 after receiving what he judged to be dubious, high-volume journal solicitations, and grew it into a running compilation of publishers and, separately, individual standalone journals he assessed against his own published criteria — including fake, absent, or implausibly fast peer review; fabricated or unverifiable editorial boards; false claims of indexing in legitimate databases; opaque article-processing-charge disclosure; and journal names deliberately similar to established titles. The list grew substantially over its lifetime, from a small handful of publishers in its early years to several hundred by the time it was taken down. It was the work of one person, evaluated against his own evolving judgment — not a consensus standard, and not run by a publisher coalition, library association, or standards body.
Why it was discontinued
Beall removed the entire Scholarly Open Access site, including the list, on January 15, 2017. He has since described sustained institutional pressure at his university, including a research-misconduct investigation (closed without findings of misconduct) and what he characterized as harassment from a supervisor, as factors in the decision; the University of Colorado Denver disputed elements of that account. Separately, the list’s operation had also drawn threatened legal action from at least one publisher named on it. The list has not been updated since January 2017.
Criticism and limitations, then and now
Beall’s List was also the subject of real, substantive criticism while it was active, independent of the circumstances of its removal:
- Accuracy. Independent review of listed publishers found a meaningful error rate — some publishers Beall listed did not, on closer evaluation, meet predatory criteria.
- Bias concerns. Multiple scholars and librarians argued the list disproportionately flagged journals and publishers based in the Global South, or with imperfect English-language editorial copy, in ways that risked conflating unfamiliarity or regional origin with actual predatory practice — a concern CASRAI’s broader predatory-journal guidance addresses directly (see “what ‘predatory’ actually means — and what it doesn’t” in the linked guide above).
- Single-evaluator risk. Because Beall’s List reflected one person’s ongoing judgment rather than a documented, auditable, multi-reviewer methodology, a listed publisher had limited recourse to contest or appeal a determination, and criteria could shift without a formal changelog.
Because it has been frozen since January 2017, an additional and increasingly important limitation applies regardless of the criticism above: a publisher added to, or notably absent from, any authoritative index or evaluation since 2017 simply isn’t reflected in it at all.
What’s used instead now
No single free list has replaced Beall’s List as an actively maintained public resource. The tools researchers, librarians, and research offices use today serve a similar screening purpose through different structures:
- Cabells’ Predatory Reports — a paid subscription database, commonly available through an institutional library, that evaluates journals against dozens of specific, documented criteria on an ongoing basis. It is the closest thing to a continuously updated successor, though it reflects a commercial, criteria-based evaluation rather than a revival of Beall’s own list.
- DOAJ and COPE membership — positive-listing directories: rather than naming bad actors, they certify that a journal currently meets published transparency and editorial-practice criteria, and both continuously review their own listings.
- Think.Check.Submit. — a free checklist a researcher can run against any specific journal directly, rather than consulting a static list at all.
- Unofficial mirrors of the frozen 2017 list snapshot, and at least one anonymously maintained continuation effort, exist and are sometimes cited — but none of these carry Beall’s own ongoing endorsement or evaluation, since he stopped maintaining the underlying list in January 2017.
See CASRAI’s How to Identify Predatory Journals and Publishers for the full current workflow, including the red flags to check on a specific journal and how to use these tools together.
Related terms
Machine-readable encodings
Use in your systems
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