with all good intentions, the result is not very useful: "Predatory journals and publishers are entities that prioritize self-interest at the expense of scholarship and .. 1/

... are characterized by false or misleading information, deviation from best editorial and publication practices, a lack of transparency, and/or the use of aggressive and indiscriminate solicitation practices.” 2/
one of mistakes I think the consensus model made is that it has too much circular bootstrapping. Something is predatory because what we do not find predatory is not. E.g. the point about transparency. Just check how "transparent" some major publishers are in @RetractionWatch. 3/
@RetractionWatch the "best editorial and publication practices" turns out to focus on same basic agreements, mostly among publishers, and not really about doing quality science. It's an administrative rule. 4/
@RetractionWatch "Aggressive, indiscriminate solicitation" is also a rule really hard to apply. Elsevier repeatedly breaks this rule, and other more traditional publishers do too, tho at a lower frequency. Do the authors want to claim Elsevier is a predatory publisher? 5/
@RetractionWatch defining criteria of what a predatory publisher is, is hard. Some of the "lists" before them have tried (and failed). Will this list do better? I do not know. But either you make crystal clear objective rules instead of subjective, or go subjective all the way. 6/
@RetractionWatch the latter is not too hard to implement: just ask many authors multiple times to rank two journals. Like ranked voting. Caveat: you'll find may orthogonal reasons why the ranking was made ("I know the editor", "it's my society's journal", etc). 7/
@RetractionWatch but hey, any attempt to collapse this complex behavior into a single "predatory journal" list suffers from this too. https://t.co/r4XOLc7WZQ 8/8
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OK I am going to be tackling this as surveillance/open source intel gathering exercise, because that is my background. I blew away 3 years of my life doing site acquisition/reconnaissance for a certain industry that shall remain unnamed and believe there is significant carryover.


This is NOT going to be zillow "here is how to google school districts and find walmart" we are not concerned with this malarkey, we are homeschooling and planting victory gardens and having gigantic happy families.

With that said, for my frog and frog-adjacent bros and sisters:

CHOICE SITES:

Zillow is obvious one, but there are many good sites like Billy Land, Classic Country Land, Landwatch, etc. and many of these specialize in owner financing (more on that later.) Do NOT treat these as authoritative sources - trust plat maps and parcel viewers.

TARGET IDENTIFICATION AND EVALUATION:

Okay, everyone knows how to google "raw land in x state" but there are other resources out there, including state Departments of Natural Resources, foreclosure auctions, etc. Finding the land you like is the easy part. Let's do a case study.

I'm going to target using an "off-grid but not" algorithm. This is a good piece in my book - middle of nowhere but still trekkable to civilization.

Note: visible power, power/fiber pedestal, utility corridor, nearby commercial enterprise(s), and utility pole shadows visible.

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