Re: U of T checklist to spot deceptive publishers becomes national resource

Interesting.  My advisor Adam Parry published sometimes in journals
produced by friends and likely to have a short shelf life, making things a
bit hard on later scholars who never subscribed to *The Fat Abbot*.  Moses
Finley published in all sorts of non-official journals; I think but cannot
say for sure that Mary Beard did the most thorough run-down of these.

Looking at *Social Text*, a journal that dealt sometimes with theory,
accepted one -- one! -- hoax article and found itself blackballed by many,
I find a splendid piece on neocolonialism by Mary Louise Pratt in an Edward
Said symposium, an extended reflection on the work of Raymond Williams by
David Harvey, a useful critique of Habermas... the list goes on.  And gee,
none of these is obscure or overly theoretical.  But boy, *Social Text
*suddenly
became radioactive...

Yes I read those pieces before writing this.

Dan

On Thu, Feb 14, 2019 at 4:32 PM Ralph Hancock <[email protected]>
wrote:

> I'm uncertain about this.
>
> If I write a novel that no publisher will touch, I can pay to get it put
> out by a 'vanity publisher', and I can do my best to sell it. This seems to
> me a perfectly acceptable practice.
>
> Now if I write an article on the influence of Hesiod on Philo Judaeus, and
> the usual publications consider that it's rubbish, why shouldn't I pay to
> have it published by the grey publishing industry? I know I shall be made
> to pay for it, perhaps quite a lot, but it will appear, and I can do my
> best to get it read and noticed -- probably with some difficulty.
>
> Maybe 90 per cent or more of the stuff that comes out in these dubious
> journals really is rubbish. But surely there are also some decent articles
> that have failed to make the grade because they contain novel ideas
> unacceptable to the herd mentality of academia, or because the author's
> political views have made him or her an unperson, as happens all too often
> in these censorious times.
>
> These pariah journals should at least be watched in case something
> worthwhile emerges. There is always the chance of a new _De revolutionibus
> orbium coelestium_.
>
> RH
>