I don’t really follow your reasoning about white and black lists being complete and incomplete, respectively, or journals being listed “after the factâ€.

In my opinion, a list, black or white, of XXXX scientific / scholarly journals (XXXX being a suitable qualifier attributed through a criteria-based evaluation) would be complete if all existing journals had been evaluated, which is impossible. Mere estimates of the number of journals vary by a factor of at least two. There is also the issue of timeliness: some journals are too new to have been evaluated, others may have changed since they were included or rejected. This can become problematic if insufficient resources are allocated to evaluation or revision, and if there’s no built-in regular revision process.

The effect of incomplete lists (according to my definition) is the same for both types of lists: honest journals may be ignored, while fraudulent (or highly questionable) ones may seep through the cracks.

By the way, DOAJ does maintain what I view as black lists: (1) a list of journals displaying false DOAJ inclusion, which you mention; (2) a list of journals removed after reapplication, along with the reason (http://bit.ly/2kOPZbE). That DOAJ doesn’t display them much overtly and “does not then propose that these journals should be cast into outer darkness, [but] merely notes the infractionâ€ is irrelevant in this respect.

A more appropriate criterion to distinguish lists, be they black or white, is how potential entries are identified / selected. This can be done by crowdsourcing (Beall used that a lot), by professionals (Cabell’s), or by an invitation to apply (DOAJ, OASPA). Both black and white lists may use these models, which are not mutually exclusive.

More important is the quality of a list. It depends on its criteria and its transparency, as you suggest, but also on the robustness and efficiency of its evaluation process. If I were to rate Beall’s and DOAJ lists on these dimensions, I’d say that Beall’s was strong as to criteria and efficiency (due to crowdsourcing), but quite low as to transparency and robustness. In comparison, DOAJ is high on criteria, transparency, and robustness (see https://doaj.org/publishers), but less on efficiency (they carry a significant backlog, partly because they have to treat 300 new applications each month on top of thousands of reapplications).

My judgment of the robustness of DOAJ’s evaluation process is also based on my experience as associate editor of a small OA journal that had to reapply. They did a really thorough and helpful job. For instance, when required information was erroneous or missing, instead of flatly rejecting the application (which they could have done), they wrote to ask questions and, more generally, to help us making the small adjustments needed to comply with their criteria.

Are white lists inherently superior? I don’t think so. But DOAJ’s is certainly far better than Beall’s was and, as I agree with your other arguments (susceptibility to legal challenge, stifling of innovation), I definitely prefer, and recommend them.