I hate it when a resource I rely on stops working. First it was igoogle, then Google Reader (necessitating a switch to Feedly, which I don’t like as well). Now it appears that Scholarly Open Access, the website that hosts Beall’s List of predatory open-access publishers, has shut down (I found out about this from Retraction Watch).

This is a serious bummer. Scholarly OA had become my first stop for checking out suspected journal and meeting spam. No, I won’t review your paper. No, I won’t submit one, either. No, I won’t be coming to your chemistry meeting.

It’s worth noting (as some Retraction Watch commenters have) that there are problems with counting on one person to judge whether or not a publisher is legit. Beall’s criteria for inclusion were transparent, though, and a quick search of his blog would usually give enough details about a particular publisher for a somewhat informed decision.

Thank goodness for the Wayback Machine (oh man, I hope that’s not going anywhere). For my convenience and yours, the most recent version of Beall’s List of predatory publishers is here; the list of standalone journals is here. I hope this turns out to be temporary, but the statement Retraction Watch got from CU Denver doesn’t look promising.