Six New Vanity Presses — One with an Unbelievable Name

Today we present six new (or newly discovered) vanity presses that we have added to the list of predatory publishers.

Intellectual Archive

This site is an “institutional repository” for people who ought to be institutionalized. They accept anything, so this makes for very interesting reading; some very wacky ideas are presented here. Also included, surprisingly, are many legitimate offprints (some violating copyright). The site boasts that it sends abstracts of all submissions to major libraries via its Intellectual Archive Bulletin (ISSN 1929-1329), but it may not really exist yet– it’s not cataloged. I wrote and requested a copy. They told me that my library could subscribe to the bulletin for $200 (electronic) or $400 (print). This is misleading — the language implied that the bulletin was sent to libraries, implying that it was sent for free.

For an additional fee you can have your submission published in their print journal, Intellectual Archive Journal (ISSN 1929-4700). To publish, you must pay a fee ranging from $20-$50 depending on length. You can also pay to get a certificate that says your deposit was made into the repository. Online-only deposits are free. Subscriptions to this journal are $700 (electronic) and $1,400 (print).

The only real value of this site is the entertainment value that the crazy articles provide. It’s worth a look, just for the laughs. This is a true scholarly vanity press.

Wudpecker Research Journals

I could hardly believe the name either. This is a brand-new operation based in India. It has half a dozen journals, but they have little content. Why the name? I’m not sure, but maybe it’s to make this start-up publisher stand out among the increasingly-crowed open-access publishing industry.

Academy & Industry Research Collaboration Center (AIRCC)

This mega-site offers dozens of journals and even more conferences. It’s based in India, but the conferences take place all over Asia. You get to pay for attending the conference and also for having your paper printed in the corresponding journal. Almost all its journal titles begin with “International journal of … ” but in most cases the authors are from India. If you need a couple publications to meet your yearly minimum, this is a good place to send something you can write in a couple days; I have a feeling they will accept it.

MASAUM Network (website down)

The “contact us” page for this bogus publisher lists addresses in the US and the UK, but it’s really based in Pakistan. The publisher states,

“MASAUM Network is an international, independent publishers [sic] for high quality journals, proceedings, books, e-books from all areas of science, engineering, technology, humanities, social sciences, management science and medical sciences etc.”

They charge £200 for accepted papers.

Centre For Info Bio Technology (CIBTech)

Each week, we discover at least one, new open-access publisher from India. This one offers 16 journals and promises a quick turnaround time for article submissions.

The publisher states, “CIBTech is always committed to maintain highest standard of workings whatever project it undertakes and work with never to compromise attitude.” Too bad their commitment to high standards doesn’t apply to the text on their website.

Pelagia Research Library

I cannot tell where this publisher is based; their “contact us” page only gives email addresses (but the author fees are stated in dollars and rupees, so it’s probably Indian). It lists five journals. The website has a sloppy yet bare appearance; this site was probably set up in a matter of hours. The journals all started in 2010 or 2011. One of the journals is the European Journal of Experimental Biology. I think it’s deceptive and unethical to name a journal after a region that it’s not published in.

By: Jeffrey Beall
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Source: Scholarly Open Access

Comments:

L says:

June 19, 2012 at 7:22 AM

Hi there,

I’m leaving a comment to thank you for your work. I’m a graduate student in Montreal (Canada) and two days ago, I stumbled upon your blog searching for informations about the Center for Promoting Ideas.

My departement sent a call for papers yesterday for one of their journal and it looked like something I could eventually publish in. Plus, it was open access, which I support. After a quick search, your blog came up with other blogs and emails telling people NOT to do businness with them. I wasn’t even aware that fake publishers or open access journals were out there.

So I wrote back to my departement telling them about your blog and other sources and told them to warn students about this publisher. Turns out two students in my grad school were thinking about publishing with them but had small problems that felt weird. One of them was a few hours away from sending a payment to Pakistan!

So thank you very much for your work, keep it up! You “saved” at least three student yesterday from days of pain with this publisher. We then found out that a professor we know was on the editorial board. Turns out, he was not. It was also fake.

P.S. Please forget all the errors in the text, english is not my first language.

L

abhaga says:

June 28, 2012 at 9:02 PM

http://whois.domaintools.com/pelagiaresearchlibrary.com shows that Pelagia Research Library is likely based out of India.

Morgaine Dinova says:

June 29, 2012 at 10:25 AM

I can’t seem to find a list of *good* open access publishers here.

The headline link to “List of Publishers” would be expected to link to a page of reasonable OA publishers, given the name of this site. Instead it links to “Beall’s List of **Predatory** Open-Access Publishers”, which is the opposite. It’s confusing.

Likewise, the side-link “Scholarly Open-Access Publishers” just leads back to the whole blog (which is mostly dedicated to predatory ones), instead of to selected articles about good or reasonable OA publishers. Perhaps the Categories aren’t being used properly? I would expect them to categorize articles.

I came here looking for a list of publishers to recommend because of their good policies on open access. Isn’t there such a list?

Jeffrey Beall says:

June 29, 2012 at 12:31 PM

The UC Berkeley Library maintains such a list here: http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/scholarlycommunication/oa_fees.html

Morgaine Dinova says:

June 29, 2012 at 2:46 PM

Thanks Jeffrey. 🙂

Luis Murrell says:

February 12, 2013 at 2:15 PM

Hello,

I’m doing my PhD from Ontario and i’m thinking about publishing my dissertation with a reputed org. Some of my colleagues suggested me to use sciedu resources for the same, since they are all benefited with the same, but i’m confused. Please suggest me some well accepted and honered press, I would be really grateful.

Jeffrey Beall says:

February 12, 2013 at 2:17 PM

I recommend this list prepared by the UCB libraries:

http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/scholarlycommunication/oa_fees.html

Luis Murrell says:

February 19, 2013 at 5:37 AM

Thanks for the help Mr. Jeffrey. I am looking for more resources for my anthropology research papers, is there any online library having a lot of sciedu press releases or unique sciedu resources? Please advise.

Andy says:

September 6, 2015 at 9:50 AM

Surely, as you were doing your research and writing your paper, you used published work from several to many sources. You can look through the list, and choose whichever journals you cited most often?

Sheikh says:

October 6, 2015 at 9:48 PM

Thanks for the information about predatory publishing. People in the third world don’t have the luxury of choice in where to publish. I do not think The Journal of Finance will accept submissions from a Nigerian, a Kenyan or an Indian graduate student trying to finish up a PhD.
I agree these online publishers cut corners, are expensive and have crazy practices like asking the authors to send $200 fees to Bangladesh through Western Union, but what choice do the Non-Europeans of the world have?.
While I agree with you that some practices are unethical, I think you should be careful not to sound condescending in fighting predatory publishing. The way to go is to provide a list of Journals accessible to students from far corners of the world that will understand their unique circumstances.