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30 AMWA Journal / V36 N1 / 2021 / amwa.org 

Because of the significance this topic poses for medical writers 

and editors, I am pleased to continue our planned series of arti-

cles about predatory publishing for the AMWA Journal. 

INTERVIEW WITH AMWA
We welcome Simon Linacre, an expert on predatory publishing 

and the Director of International Marketing & Development 

at Cabells Scholarly Analytics (see Box). Simon had previ-

ously spent 15 years at Emerald Publishing specializing in 

journal acquisitions, Open Access, and business develop-

ment. He holds a diploma in journalism and master’s degrees 

in Philosophy and International Business. In 2020, he was co-

opted to serve his first term as a trustee for the Committee on 

Publication Ethics. 

AMWA: From 2003 to 2018, you worked at Emerald Publishing, 

which held a unique portfolio of journals related to librarian-

ship, as they prepared to move toward providing Open Access. 

How did you connect with Cabells during that period?  

Linacre: During my career at Emerald Publishing, I was the 

contact for citation, journal rankings, and indexing for Cabells’ 

lists of journals related to library titles. Like other commercial 

publishers at that time, Emerald also faced the difficulties of 

trying to move from a subscription-based model to the Open 

Access free-to-read model. In 2015, I oversaw this launch in 

response to what the United Kingdom mandated for all com-

mercial publishers. In the transition to an Open Access route, all 

sorts of technical issues can arise for publishers. For example, a 

few discovered that one of their journals had been hijacked by a 

predatory publisher who had copied and pasted the publisher’s 

website using a slightly different URL. No link worked except 

the “pay here” button that led directly to the predator’s site. 

Such examples highlight the tactics of predatory publishers. 

One must be extremely careful and remain on the lookout. 

AMWA: For background, can you describe Cabells’ initial  

concept of creating a list that would help critically assess  

scholarly journals? 

Linacre: In 1978, Management Professor David Cabell had the 

idea to establish a verified and verifiable list of journal infor-

mation that would serve as a time-saving guide for researchers, 

tenure committees, and doctoral students who were search-

ing to find the right journal to publish their scholarly business 

research. The first list included important factors for tenure, 

such as times to review, accept, and publish in a reputable 

journal in the management field. This original directory of rec-

ommended business journals expanded in the early 2000s to 

include journals from the fields of social sciences and com-

puter sciences. This would later evolve into what was then 

called the Whitelist (renamed now as Journalytics), which 

indexed across all areas except medical, engineering, and some 

humanities. Within the next few months, Journalytics will add 

a new medical list that indexes data and analytics for more 

than 5,000 more journals. 

AMWA: As Open Access began to gain momentum in the early 

2000s, a group of predatory publishers emerged who would 

exploit the Gold Open Access model with aims to collect article 

processing charges (APCs) at the expense of quality. Tell us  

about Cabells’ transition in expanding the directory to add  

predatory journals. 

Cabells Scholarly Analytics Is a Force of 
Knowledge Against Predatory Publishing—
An Interview With Simon Linacre

Mary Kemper, BS / Medical Writer, Mayfield Clinic, Cincinnati, OH

Background on Cabells
For more than 40 years, Cabells Scholarly Analytics  

(https://noaa.cabells.com/) has achieved an exemplary repu-

tation for analytics across 18 disciplines in more than 11,000 

international journals. In 2015, Cabells began their work to vet 

predatory journals by establishing analytics for this group of 

Open Access journals. In 2017, they launched a multidisciplinary 

journal blacklist of an initial 4,000 predatory journals that met 

60 “behavioral indicators” that identified violations related to 

integrity, peer review, metrics (eg, impact factor), and publication 

and business practices. Today, Cabells offers subscriptions to its 

Predatory Reports (formerly the Blacklist) with 14,000 titles and to 

its Journalytics (formerly the Whitelist) with 11,000 titles—soon to 

expand with the addition of more than 5,000 medical journal titles.

https://noaa.cabells.com/


AMWA Journal / V36 N1 / 2021 / amwa.org    31

Linacre: By 2015, Cabells began their product development to 

vet predatory journals and create a new list using a unique set 

of analytics judged by an internal review team. As part of this 

effort, they convened a conference panel in Boston in 2017 

on the subject of predatory publishing; I was part of the panel 

of experts that also included Jeffrey Beall (see Sidebar). It was 

sheer coincidence that Beall removed his list early in 2017 and 

Cabells launched their Whitelist and Blacklist several months 

later, with an initial listing of 4,000 journals. 

AMWA: The specific criteria are clearly defined in Predatory 

Report Criteria v1.1, with violations rated from minor to moder-

ate or severe. Can you explain how these criteria are valuable in 

helping researchers and medical writers avoid predatory jour-

nals and in understanding the depth of Cabells’ undertaking?   

Linacre: The initial multidisciplinary journal Blacklist 

(renamed now as Predatory Reports) included predatory jour-

nals that violated more than 60 criteria, called “behavioral 

indicators,” used to ascertain the legitimacy of a publication. 

These metrics indicate violations in issues of integrity, website, 

publication and business practices, and indexing and metrics. 

Today, Cabells’ Journalytics indexes 11,000 scholarly titles, and 

its Predatory Reports lists nearly 14,000 predatory journals 

from all academic disciplines, with medical biological sciences 

and medicine forming a large proportion of the total. 

 Predatory Reports is a searchable database that identifies 

the specific types of predatory behaviors that Cabells special-

ists identify and analyze among the behavioral indicators. Like 

Journalytics, Predatory Reports provides basic background on 

the journals, such as publisher, website, and geographic origin, 

but it uniquely provides a misconduct report about specific 

violations. Cabells also tracks new trends in deception or other 

predatory practices and welcomes researchers to alert them on 

any new suspect journal.

AMWA: From your studies at university to your focus in Open 

Access at Emerald Publishing and your initial connection with 

Cabells, how did your talents and experience coalesce toward 

2018 when you joined Cabells’ global effort against predatory 

publishing? 

Linacre: At university, I developed my critical faculties, some-

times being extremely cynical and doubtful. However, today, 

I use this experience to identify what’s legit and what’s not in 

helping researchers navigate through this period when pub-

lisher launches are almost exclusively Open Access.  

 Given my positive 15-year relationship with Cabells, I 

reached out to them when I left Emerald Publishing. The 

timing was right. Cabells was a North American-focused orga-

nization with most of its customers based in the United States. 

However, they were looking to internationalize, creating more 

business in the United Kingdom, Europe, and elsewhere. We 

began our product development initiatives and a thought lead-

ership program, such as our educational blog, The Source, and 

educational seminars for researchers. 

AMWA: Your blog post, “Cabells’ top 7 palpable points about 

predatory publishing practices,” highlights the gravity of the 

issue: “Over 4,300 journals claim to publish articles in the medi-

cal field (this includes multidisciplinary journals) – that’s a 

third of the journals in Predatory Reports.” What are some of the 

strategies in 2021?  

Linacre: Cabells started at the other end of the spectrum in 

business. Until recently, the Journalytics database did not 

cover medical journals, although they have always been a sig-

nificant part of the Predatory Reports list. Medical journals 

were not initially included because medical areas are huge 

and dynamic: they have the most journals and a rapid, high 

churn of journal articles. Customers had great demand for us 

to create a biomedical product that would list medical jour-

nals; they had many questions, especially if a particular journal 

was on a list. Finally, Cabells was ready to tackle the daunting 

field of medicine: it would necessitate its own team of experts, 

creation of its unique database, and its own unique set of cri-

teria and analytics. Toward this aim, in 2018, we assembled our 

team of auditors to annually review all titles in Journalytics and 

to guide our product development in the field of medicine. 

 For Journalytics, publishers push their titles to Cabells 

for review and listing. However, we are very judicious before 

assigning a title to one list or the other. A common reason for a 

journal not to make it into Journalytics is that the journal has 

not been publishing long enough or is too niche. At least 1 or 2 

years of citation data, robust peer review, and a minimal level 

of activity are needed for our team to ensure the title legiti-

The term “predatory publisher” was coined by University of 

Denver, Colorado, Librarian Jeffrey Beall in 2010 to describe 

this academic publishing model that exploited the Gold Open 

Access model. In 2012, he began Beall’s List, which provided 

free lists and reports of potential or probable predatory jour-

nals and publishers; it was based on an initial set of 26 crite-

ria that he used to define predatory behaviors (eg, deceptive 

business practices, lack of ethics and integrity, corruption to 

the scholarly literature). When Beall removed his blog in 2017, 

he was an expert on the explosive growth of these predatory 

publishers and tirelessly devoted to protecting the research 

community while working full-time as a librarian. He was 

controversial for his criticisms of the social Open Access 

movement and for shortcomings of his blacklist approach. 

Nonetheless, his blog’s absence left a huge gap in scientific 

communication. There is only one legitimate archived Beall’s 

List (https://beallslist.net/ accessed October 12, 2020).

https://beallslist.net/


32    AMWA Journal / V36 N1 / 2021 / amwa.org        

mately belongs in Journalytics (https://www2.cabells.com/

selection-policy2). With low citation, niche journals may never 

be listed on the Web of Science.    

AMWA: What about a Greylist? 

Linacre: Many of our customers have asked about this possibil-

ity. Given that most journals do fall into this in-between area, a 

Greylist would be larger than the combination of Journalytics 

and Predatory Reports. Therefore, more than 30,000 journal 

titles would not meet criteria for being either scholarly or pred-

atory and would fall into this grey zone! 

AMWA: The medical area is more likely to attract predatory 

publishers. What global innovations are on Cabells’ horizon? 

Linacre: For predatory publishers, the fields of medicine and 

biological sciences are the most fertile areas because they can 

charge higher APCs and take advantage of the publish-or-per-

ish, high-churn culture. For Cabells, these fields are also the 

most difficult to characterize. Therefore, we are working on 

new products that use complex design technologies to bring 

radical changes in safeguarding scholarly publishing. For 

example, rather than a list analogue, a university system might 

red flag any author interacting with a predatory journal for 

research or submission. 

AMWA: Simon, thank you for sharing your perspective and 

expertise on Cabells’ commitment. Any final points that you 

would like to make? 

Linacre: Compared with scholarly biomedical journals, preda-

tory journals often include a country or origin in their title, 

advertise as a generic multidisciplinary field, and take advan-

tage of the publish-or-perish culture. They especially target 

post-doctoral students or faculty seeking tenure. I always advise 

authors to do their own research and weigh each journal against 

a set of selection criteria, such as those from our lists. Cabells is 

working toward developing other products that may someday 

cover a portion of the costs related to producing these scholarly 

analytics so that they can become more widely available. 

IN CLOSING
Research your research. Researchers face the need to publish 

their research, and increasingly, these publications will be in 

Open Access format, as promoted by national and interna-

tional initiatives such as Plan S. Researchers must dig deep, 

and they have all the skills to do it.

Author declaration and disclosures: The author notes no commercial 
associations that may pose a conflict of interest in relation to this article.

Author contact: mkemper@mayfieldclinic.com

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https://www2.cabells.com/selection-policy2
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mailto:mkemper@mayfieldclinic.com



