Smith, Kevin L.2018-01-162018-01-162017-11-08Smith, K.L., (2017). Examining publishing practices: moving beyond the idea of predatory open access. Insights. 30(3), pp.4–10. DOI: http://doi.org/10.1629/uksg.388https://hdl.handle.net/1808/25696The word ‘predatory’ has become an obstacle to a serious discussion of publishing practices. Its use has been both overinclusive, encompassing practices that, while undesirable, are not malicious, and underinclusive, missing many exploitative practices outside the open access sphere. The article examines different business models for scholarly publishing and considers the potential for abuse with each model. After looking at the problems of both blacklists and so-called ‘whitelists’, the author suggests that the best path forward would be to create tools to capture the real experience of individual authors as they navigate the publishing process with different publishers.© 2017 Kevin L Smith. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Licence, which permits unrestricted use and distribution provided the original author and source are credited.http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Article10.1629/uksg.388openAccess