Cabells is a scholarly analytics company based in
Beaumont, Texas
Beaumont is a city in the U.S. state of Texas. It is the county seat of Jefferson County, Texas, Jefferson County, within the Beaumont–Port Arthur metropolitan area, located in Southeast Texas on the Neches River about east of Houston (city ...
. Established in 1978 by management professor David Cabell, it originally maintained only a directory of verified business
academic journals
An academic journal (or scholarly journal or scientific journal) is a periodical publication in which scholarship relating to a particular academic discipline is published. They serve as permanent and transparent forums for the dissemination, scr ...
. Since then, it has grown to include Journalytics, a database with analytics on reputable journals, Predatory Reports, a database of
predatory journals with violation reports,
journal metrics
Journal ranking is widely used in academic circles in the evaluation of an academic journal's impact and quality. Journal rankings are intended to reflect the place of a journal within its field, the relative difficulty of being published in that ...
, and
manuscript
A manuscript (abbreviated MS for singular and MSS for plural) was, traditionally, any document written by hand or typewritten, as opposed to mechanically printed or reproduced in some indirect or automated way. More recently, the term has ...
preparation tools. Journalytics has been expanded to include many types of information about the included journals, such as article acceptance rates and average review times.
As of 2017, the company's Journalytics platform contains over 11,000 journals. In June 2020, Cabells changed the name of its whitelist and blacklist to Journalytics and Predatory Reports, respectively.
In May 2023, Cabells reduced their workforce by a third in a round of unannounced and instant layoffs.
Predatory Reports
In 2015, Cabells began working with
Jeffrey Beall
Jeffrey Beall is an American librarian and library scientist who drew attention to "predatory open access publishing", a term he coined, and
created Beall's list, a list of potentially predatory open-access publishers. He is a critic of the o ...
, the creator of
Beall's list, on developing a new list of predatory journals. In early 2017, Beall's list was abruptly taken offline, leading to speculation that Cabells was involved in the list's removal; the company denied any involvement. On June 15, 2017, Cabells launched its own database of academic journals it considers predatory. In June 2020, Cabells changed the name of its blacklist to Predatory Reports.
In February 2020, Predatory Reports exceeded 13,000 deceptive journals listed. Like their original whitelist they have maintained since 1978, Predatory Reports is subscription-only.
Reception
With regard to Journalytics,
Manhattan College librarian William H. Walters noted that "Cabell’s maintains minimum standards for inclusion but is not comprehensive in its coverage of good journals."
A ''
Charleston Advisor'' reviewer wrote that "Cabell’s takes complaints about journals in their database seriously, and they will conduct a review and decide if it’s necessary to remove the offending publication." But they also noted, "Inclusion in Cabell’s is not an automatic stamp of quality. Users should realize that while Cabell’s prohibits journals that their staff deems predatory, publications of low quality will not necessarily be excluded."
References
External links
*
{{Authority control
American companies established in 2000
Companies based in Beaumont, Texas
Analytics companies