Mistaken as predatory

Is Frelsi one of those publishers you should avoid? On the contrary, read to learn why.

A concern with new journals or publishing platforms that are different or not driven by the community core is that they may be predatory. The same applies to Frelsi - a publishing platform for electrical engineering sciences with post-publication & open peer review, providing a fair, quick, and open publishing model. I understand the concern - unknown platform, new on the scene, no editorial board deciding on the paper acceptance, etc. Let us check what constitutes a predatory medium and see how Frelsi stands against those.

Predatory journal

Much has been written about predatory journals already, so I will merely list the most alarming characteristics of such:

1. Lack of transparency - often unclear or hidden editorial boards.
2. Unclear publication process.
3. Low quality / no peer review - often minimal or non-existent peer review.
4. High publication fees.
5. Poor metrics - claiming to have a high impact factor (IF), often fake or manipulated.
6. Quick publication - sometimes within a few days.

Frelsi vs. Predators

Going point by point, let us have a look at how we compare to the (mostly) fake money gauging media:

1. Lack of transparency - there is no editorial board in Frelsi to decide on acceptance of papers. Frelsi has a management board facilitating the peer review and providing authors with quality services like inviting reviewers, paper formatting, etc., making it purely technical. 
2. Frelsi also has an advisory board providing valuable feedback on the platform functioning and suggesting changes if need be. Advisors are academics from all over the world and represent the community served.
3. Unclear publication process - Frelsi uses an open, post-publication peer review model described in detail on our pages for everyone to view. This publishing model is fully transparent. In fact, more so than with most mainstream journals.
4. Low quality / no peer review - an open, post publication peer review dictates that identities of reviewers and content of the reviews are public. Reviews are done by academics and industry experts with background in the topic, like this one. A paper is accepted when at least two (out of three) reviewers mark paper ‘Accepted’ or when one ‘Accepted’ and two ‘Accepted with restrictions’ verdicts are given.
5. High publication fees - to publish a paper in Frelsi you pay less than in any household electrical engineering open access journal. In Frelsi, we utilize gold open access under CC-BY 4.0 Creative Commons licensing. The authors keep all the rights to their work, unlike mainstream journals.
6. Poor metrics - Frelsi refuses IF as a measure of quality. We are here to empower authors. Help them communicate their findings efficiently, openly, and fairly. We believe journals are merely facilitators of the publishing process who do not need an active role in publication decision-making. IF serves only publishers in propelling their own prominence. Which is self-serving and futile. Authors are the creators here. They should have the decisive power of waht to publish and review rounds refine and improve papers. Read more here.
7. Quick publication - Ferlsi publishes papers within approximately two weeks, during which we ensure a submitted paper is legitimate science and authors are real scientists. Read more about Pre-publication screening. This ensures that the work into which authors put considerable time and effort gets published as soon as completed - protecting them from being scooped. As the paper goes through review rounds, each version review status is clearly marked and given a new DOI. This way, the credit is always with the original authors of an idea and rigorous review is done as well.

This is shortly to address any concerns about Frelsi being a predatory medium. If you are not convinced about something, we would love to know what you think - let us know in the comments.

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