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I’ve received inquiries about the International Journal of Simulation Modelling. It’s not on my list, but it is borderline, at best. Let me show you what I mean.

The journal uses the delayed open-access model. This means that the published content is accessible only to subscribers for a fixed time period (in this case a year), and then is open-access after that.

Generally, this is a fine model because it combines some of the best features of both the open-access and subscription models. Usually, with delayed open-access, the publishing is free to authors, and the journal expenses are covered by library subscriptions. The delayed OA model spreads out the publishing costs among subscribers, providing sufficient funding for the journal to operate smoothly and professionally.

However, in the case of this journal, the model operates differently: both authors and subscribers are charged. Authors pay €690 per paper accepted, a high amount given the overall amateurish appearance of the journal. A quarterly that began publishing in 2002, the journal sells annual print subscriptions for €200.

It appears that for the first year after they’re published, online access to articles in the International Journal of Simulation Modelling is only available through library vendors at subscribing libraries. So the journal efficiently profits by licensing its content to one or two jobbers who themselves re-license the online content to libraries.

The journal is published by a company called DAAAM International, which claims to be based in Vienna. It may really operate out of Maribor, Slovenia, which is where the Editor-in-Chief, Borut Buchmeister, is based.

The editorial board members are listed without any affiliations, an omission that always makes me wonder whether the names are just made up.

The journal has an impact factor of 2.083, and to me, this serves as a reminder that the impact factor is not a measure of quality.

The journal sells “sponsorships.”. Your university can be a co-sponsor for €1,200 or a general sponsor for €3,600. It appears that Beijing Jiaotong University has paid to be a general sponsor, for its name appears at the top of the website. A link on the website advertises for additional sponsors and states the terms of sponsorship.

Overall, I find the International Journal of Simulation Modelling to be a medium- to low-quality — but not exactly predatory — journal that is probably making a lot of money for its owners. It earns money from library vendors, from authors, and from “sponsors.” It may have additional sources of revenue.

By: Jeffrey Beall
Follow on Twitter
Source: Scholarly Open Access

Comments:

Damien Kuffler says:

December 1, 2015 at 10:20 AM

Dear Jeffrey Beall, I greatly appreciate your efforts to expose journals that are predatory and unscrupulous. I am writing to comment about a journal called Regenerative Medicine published by a group called Future Medicine. I was initially invited to be an editor of the journal when it was initiated. rapidly it published some good quality papers and its impact factor started to rise. However, it turned out that this increase was determined to be because of excessive self referencing and it lost its formal impact factor rating. The journal description clearly states that it is both open access and one can select not to be open access and therefore not pay the open access fee, which is $1,800. Since the journal still has a good readership, I recently submitted a review to the journal. The paper was accepted for publication and I reiterated that that I did not want open access because I could not, and would not pay that amount of money for such a journal. Recently when one of the editors wrote to me in association with gallies requiring editing, I was told I was required to pay the $1,800 open access fee. I wrote back appropriately documenting the journals statements about the author selecting how they wanted papers to be published, with or without a fee. They were adamant about me paying the $1,800, which I have absolutely said no to. I am waiting to see what response I get. I think this is completely inappropriate because the journal places pressure on authors by claiming that the paper will be published as open access and attempts to place guild on the author to pressure them to accept paying the fee. Again thank you for the service you are providing all of us who want to assure that published papers are legitimate and we are not being had by predatory or otherwise unscrupulous journal editors. Damien Kuffler, Ph.D. Professor

Damien Kuffler, Ph.D. Professor Institute of Neurobiology Univ. of Puerto Rico 201 Blvd. del Valle San Juan, PR 00901 tel: 787-721-1235

e-mail: dkuffler@hotmail.com

Date: Tue, 1 Dec 2015 16:02:31 +0000 To: dkuffler@hotmail.com

Juan Camilo Oviedo Lopera says:

December 1, 2015 at 12:13 PM

Good Afternoon:

What do you think about this web open access?: https://www.ijntr.org/

Thanks and I stay tuned to your answer.

Ph.D. Juan C. Oviedo Lopera, Mg. I de A. | Docente-Investigador| Universidad Pontificia Bolivariana |

Jeffrey Beall says:

December 1, 2015 at 5:03 PM

I think it’s a predatory publisher. It prominently displays an impact factor, but it is fake. I have this journal included on my list. Please do not submit any papers to this journal.

Rocket Scientist, ScientificSpam DNSBL says:

December 1, 2015 at 2:41 PM

Future Medicine is one of the Scientific Spammers that Adestra / MessageFocus refuses to ditch. SciSpam DNSBL recommends not dealing with spammers.

Klaas van Dijk says:

December 1, 2015 at 4:01 PM

The list with Editorial Board Members of the International Journal of Simulation Modelling mentions ‘Dr. Victor F. Nicola, Twente, Netherlands’. Twente ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twente ) is not the name of a city or a village in The Netherlands.
.
Twente University ( https://www.utwente.nl/en/contact/ ) is situated in a city called Enschede. The name of Dr. Nicola is not listed in http://webapps.utwente.nl/telefoongids/en/telgidsservlet
.
The researchgate profile of Dr Nicola ( https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Victor_Nicola ) lists many papers. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/246700529 lists Dr Nicola as “Visiting professor from the University of Twente, Nederlands”. This paper is dated ‘May 26, 2004’. A conference paper of Dr Nicola (https://www.researchgate.net/publication/221143276 ) refers to a symposium held in the US in May 1983.

Guido Berens says:

December 2, 2015 at 1:36 AM

OK, so the person does seem to exist. The same holds for the first person on the list, Dr. Peter Ball: https://www.cranfield.ac.uk/About/People-and-Resources/academic-profiles/satm-ac-profile/dr-peter-pd-bal. Also, their areas of expertise match with that of the journal. So it seems that the editor names are not made up.

Tell lie says:

December 2, 2015 at 8:22 AM

If this journal is published by a University of a major publisher or without fee, I think it is totally a good journal

Sudesh Kumar says:

December 2, 2015 at 8:32 AM

Can you please see what this is:
a journal names – DORIANA – very weird sounding name
http://www.revistas-academicas.com/doriana/index.html

AIM – aiming to promote and enhance research in all fields of sciences, including Art and humanities, engineering, medical sciences and basic and applied sciences.

also if the first issue is still to be published, how come it is indexed in:
Zoological Record (Thomson Reuters-ISI)
* BIOSIS Previews (Thomson Reuters-ISI)
* EMBASE, Ulrich, Compendex

Archive is protected: http://www.revistas-academicas.com/doriana/archive.html
Current issue is vol 48 in 2014 so it started publishing in 1966.
http://www.revistas-academicas.com/doriana/current.php

South Korean prodigy Yoo-geun Song is 17 years-old and about to complete his Ph.D. in astrophysics. The boy genius, along with his dissertation adviser Seok Jae Park, co-authored an article published last month in The Astrophysical Journal, but regrettably, the article closely matches a book chapter published in 2002. The chapter is not cited in the new article.

The recently-published article is entitled “Axisymmetric, Nonstationary Black Hole Magnetospheres: Revisited,” and it was published in October 2015 (vol. 812.1) in The Astrophysical Journal. Here’s evidence of the matching text:

The first image above shows the recent article. The second image is copied from a book chapter entitled “Stationary versus Nonstationary Force-Free Black Hole Magnetospheres.” The chapter appears in a book called Black Hole Astrophysics 2002, published by World Scientific. The chapter’s sole author is Song’s adviser, Seok Jae Park.

Here’s additional evidence:

I note that the title of the article published last month has the word “Revisited” at the end. However, the article does not cite the 2002 book chapter, and the text and equations in the new article are presented as original.

The author instructions for the American Astronomical Society, publisher of The Astrophysical Journal, state, “Articles published in the journals of the American Astronomical Society (AAS) present the results of significant original research that have not been published previously.”

The new article has updated references and an additional conclusion. There are additional, minor changes, but the bulk of the text and equations in the 2015 article appear to duplicate the 2002 work.

I have emailed the AAS and requested an investigation. The journal has not yet had sufficient time to investigate the case, and I’m sure AAS will handle it properly. My concern is not with the journal but with the paper’s authors. An additional complication is that the editor of The Astrophysical Journal, Ethan Vishniac, has co-authored at least one paper with the boy’s dissertation adviser, Seok Jae Park.

Song — who according to Wikipedia started university at age eight — is set to begin work as a post-doc after he graduates with his astrophysics Ph.D. in February. Let’s hope he gets some better advising.

By: Jeffrey Beall
Follow on Twitter
Source: Scholarly Open Access

The system of payments from authors is spurring the creation of many new companies seeking researchers’ money, especially grant-funded researchers. Many of these new companies are pay-to-publish scholarly publishers, including these two, SciRes Literature and Gavin Publishers.

SciRes Literature

Let’s start with SciRes Literature, which — apparently — is short for Scientific Research Literature. Its tagline is “Profound source of knowledge.” None of its journals has any published articles yet, so at the present time, this publisher is a profound source of nothing.

SciRes Literature launched with 28 journals, all in the biomedical sciences, and all in fields already super-saturated with existing subscription and open-access journals, fields like cardiology and surgery. None of the journals fills any gap.

The “Contact” links on the website don’t work, and I cannot determine where this publisher is based. The domain-name data shows a Salinas, California address, possibly making this Monterey County’s first predatory publisher, but in fact it’s probably not really based there.

I suspect the publisher is really based in South Asia, and the owner likely has dreams of quick and easy riches from the gold OA publishing business. Good luck with that.

Gavin Journals

This publisher uses Open Journal Systems, the open-source journal management software from the British Columbia-based, collectivist organization called Public Knowledge Project. Open Journal Systems is a predatory publisher favorite.

Gavin Journals is a particular shabby and dull implementation of the open-source software. It’s minimalist and uninspired, likely using all the default settings. It has some of the very worst journal cover images I’ve ever seen. Here’s a particularly dumb one:

What emergency medicine researcher would want to submit his or her work to such an amateurish-looking journal? Probably none, and I suspect Gavin Publishers was set up by someone who is following an open-access publisher recipe, quickly setting up a site, eager to start spamming for articles and processing credit card payments.

They don’t explain the “Gavin” in Gavin Publishers. The publisher lists its contact address [exactly] like this:

5911 Oakridge way,
Lisle,
Illinois – 60532

That’s not how we format addresses in the U.S. This location is in a residential neighborhood, making this yet another Illinois-based questionable publisher based on a tree-lined, residential street. Gavin is now spamming for editorial board members, the spam emails signed by “Keisha Snyder.”

In the coming weeks, many thousands of researchers around the world will probably receive spam emails from SciRes Literature and Gavin Publishers. When yours arrive, I recommend you delete them.

Appendix 1: List of SciRes Literature journals as of 2015-10-17
1.SRL Alzheimer’s & Parkinson’s Disease
2.SRL Anesthesia
3.SRL Biotechnology & Bioengineering
4.SRL Cancer & Cellular Biology
5.SRL Cardiology (SRL Cardiology Therapeutics)
6.SRL Cardiovascular Diseases & Diagnosis
7.SRL Case Reports & Short Reviews
8.SRL Dermatology: Clinical Research
9.SRL Diabetes & Metabolism
10.SRL Gastroenterology & Hepatology
11.SRL Immunology & Immunotherapy
12.SRL Nephrology and Therapeutics
13.SRL Neurological Disorders
14.SRL Neurology & Neurosurgery
15.SRL Nutrition & Food Science
16.SRL Oncology & Hematology
17.SRL Ophthalmology
18.SRL Pathology
19.SRL Pediatrics & Neonatal Care
20.SRL Pharmacology & Therapeutics
21.SRL Proteomics & Bioinformatics
22.SRL Reproductive Medicine & Gynecology
23.SRL Stem Cell & Research
24.SRL Surgery
25.SRL Urology
26.SRL Vaccines & Vaccinations
27.SRL Vascular Medicine
28.SRL Virology & Infectious Diseases

Appendix 2: List of Gavin Publishers journals as of 2015-10-17
http://gavinpublishers.com/
1.Gavin Journal of Addiction Research and Therapy
2.Gavin Journal of Anesthesiology
3.Gavin Journal of Cardiology and Cardiovascular Diseases
4.Gavin Journal of Case Reports
5.Gavin Journal of Cell Biology & Tissue Biology
6.Gavin Journal of Dental Sciences
7.Gavin Journal of Dermatology Research and Therapy
8.Gavin Journal of Diabetes and Metabolic Disorders
9.Gavin Journal of Emergency Medicine
10.Gavin Journal of Food and Nutritional Science
11.Gavin Journal of Nanomedicine & Nanotechnology
12.Gavin Journal of Oncology Research and Therapy
13.Gavin Journal of Ophthalmology
14.Gavin Journal of Orthopedic Research & Therapy
15.Gavin Journal of Pediatrics
16.Gavin Journal of Stem Cell Research and Therapy

By: Jeffrey Beall
Follow on Twitter
Source: Scholarly Open Access

Comments:

Keith Fraser says:

October 22, 2015 at 9:13 AM

“Profound source of knowledge” – LOL. You’d think that people trying to make money by looking like a real scientific journal would put some level of effort into not looking like a crank echo chamber, paper mill or vanity press.

In related news, I found someone spamming links to a “press release” on a couple of LinkedIn groups. Close examination revealed the announcing institution (that’s supposedly discovered a miracle cure for all disabilities including “Down Syndrome, mental retardation, inability to learn, dyslexia, dystrophy, slow development, poor growth, hormonal imbalance, Autism, ADHD, genetic problems and many others”) to be almost certainly non-existent. Its website is an information-lite shambles with no list of staff or publications, an address that shows no signs of any institution of the sort, sections inexplicably written in Latin, and a picture of their building (supposedly in Kerala, India) that turns out to in fact be of a newspaper office in Manchester, England.

https://www.linkedin.com/grp/post/56601-6062148054964789248?trk=groups-post-b-title
https://www.linkedin.com/grp/post/2938223-6062145680623816708?trk=groups-post-b-all-cmnts

L_C says:

October 22, 2015 at 12:39 PM

Currently, SciRes Literature has also been diligently spamming for editorial board members. I believe that the founder for a site titled ‘Leaders in Pharmaceutical Business Intelligence’ (LPBI) copied the contents of such an email at the bottom of a post/site tab titled: ‘Praising LPBI’ (I suppose they saw this invitation as a positive?) This was the email’s signature:

SASHA Sims
Editorial Office, SciRes Literature
SRL Immunology & Immunotherapy
1692 Coastal Highway
Delaware 19958, USA
Email: immunology@scireslit.com

Praising LPBI

Also, I like that the full Salinas address of SciRes Lit, 200 Lincoln Ave, is actually the site of the Salinas town hall.

The DE address listed above, 1692 Coastal highway, is probably just nonexistent (plugging it into a GPS will land you in the middle of the road.) Several companies have claimed this dot of highway though, including Medicomat, a company that markets alternative health care devices (e.g., they offer stone therapy, phytotherapy, meta therapy, etc.), ships from China, and has a director (Nikola Anastasov) based in Novi Sad. It is possible that the SciRes Literature spammer confused this address with the more prestigious sounding Harvard Business Services address (which is 16192 Coastal Highway). I’m not sure if there is any connection to the publisher, but it does lead me to believe that someone overseas would be the most likely perp or person to make such an error.

Rocket Scientist, ScientificSpam DNSBL says:

October 22, 2015 at 1:47 PM

W.r.t. Scireslit’s whereabouts: the spams all came from a domestic Internet connection in Hyderabad, and the dude named his computer “PrasanthiPC”. We listed the IP and the domains.

Fake journals: ‘Make in India’ gone wrong
The Hindu – October 25, 2015
http://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/fake-journals-make-in-india-gone-wrong/article7800231.ece

“A scam of the most scholarly kind on the Internet — publishing “scientific papers” in fake open access journals (also called as predatory journals) — has become more insidious and grown tremendously in size. And tragically, India has singularly contributed to the cancerous growth of pseudo-science.”

“Even if science done in India has not grown much in the last few years, India has successfully played a vital role in polluting the scientific literature with trash.”

“The number of fake journal publishers based in the country has grown several-fold in the last 4-5 years. Today, as much as 27 per cent of fake journal publishers are based in India! And India has the dubious distinction of being home to 42 per cent of fake single-journal publishers.”

“Indian researchers publishing in predatory journals could be willing or ignorant participants. Either way, fake journals provide the best medium to publish sub-standard and even highly unethical work — plagiarised content with falsified and/or fabricated data and manipulated images.”

NB: The Hindu is the second most circulated English-language newspaper in India (Wikipedia).

mkoulikov says:

October 25, 2015 at 10:36 PM

Open Journal Systems is a predatory publisher favorite.

For what it’s worth, OJS is also used by plenty of non-predatory publishers, across many different areas/fields, so in of itself, use of this software does not mean anything and should not be a cause for any concern. Hell, I’d rather see a new journal use OJS than try to build a custom website from scratch!

billwilliams says:

October 26, 2015 at 6:01 AM

Good point, mkoulikov – OJS has been abused by predators but has also been a valuable platform for small but important specialist journals starting out in various fields I am aware of.

James says:

January 28, 2016 at 8:25 AM

Thanks for doing this diligent work to point out predatory OA publishers. I just received an email requesting that I consider joining the Gavin Journal of Food and Nutritional Science as an editorial board member. The journal still has not published a single article, and while address line is fixed to look more appropriate given its supposed origin, it’s still a residential street in suburban Chicago, albeit right next door to Benedictine University. The email is signed by “Chelsea Stone”. So they have tried to upgrade their look but it remains an outfit I wouldn’t want my name associated with.

b00kreader says:

July 6, 2016 at 7:51 AM

Thank you! Yes the Gavin journal covers are terrible and still no articles published both dead giveaways, however I did not think to look at the address (good call). I just got the “be an editor” email through my institution. DELETE

Myron Pulier, MD says:

August 7, 2016 at 6:32 AM

Gavin Publishers has cleaned up… not its act, but its address. Now the formatting is closer to US Postal Service standards, and they have a new representative (Emily Cooper). Apparently Keisha Snyder has moved on, or up, or whatever.

Nkosana Motsitsi says:

August 15, 2016 at 1:55 AM

It is shocking! I was asked to publish my case with them and I did. I refused to pay the U$500.00 THEY requested. My argument was that any fee payable for publication is stated upfront. I outsmarted them on that aspect.
thank you for the advice.

CrankyProf says:

October 27, 2016 at 7:37 AM

Yesterday I was solicited to join the editorial board of Gavin’s “Educational Research Applications,” http://gavinpublishers.com/journal-of-educational-research-applications/. The link to the editorial board returns a 404 error and most other pages say they “will be updated soon.” Then I came here and found your entry. Thanks.

Jonathan Perreault says:

November 28, 2016 at 8:44 AM

Dear Jeffrey, you can add:
Journal of Microbiology and Genetics
to the list of Journals from Gavin Publisher.

Here is the email I got:
Dear Doctor,

Christmas Greetings from Journal of Microbiology and Genetics

On behalf of our Editorial office we take privilege to inform you that we are in the process of releasing a Christmas Issue by the month of December, as we are releasing an Issue for special occasion we would like to invite you to contribute your valuable articles towards our journal.
Reviews/Research/ Review/ Case Reports/ Short Communication/ Rapid Communications/ Commentaries/ Editorials/ Image Article etc., are welcome for possible publication in this issue.
Related Topics: Microbial Genetics, Genetic Engineering, DNA Sequencing and Genomics, Virology, Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy, Nano Microbiology. Food microbiology, Eugenics, Microbiology, Molecular Factories, Pathogenesis.

If you are interested to join in our Editorial Board, kindly let us know your thoughts.

We look forward to your quick response for the good scientific approach and study.

With Kind Regards,
Faith Stephen,
Editorial Assistant
Journal of Microbiology and Genetics.

Fiona McQuarrie says:

December 1, 2016 at 7:05 PM

I got an email from Gavin Publishers today. I haven’t had any prior contact with them. The email came with an article manuscript that had been embellished with the heading “Gavin Publishers – Journal of Education and Research”. The manuscript was an unlocked Word document that still included the author’s identifying information in the properties.

Here’s the text of the email:

“We are glad to invite you to review the article entitled [name]. We found you are the appropriate person to review the attached manuscript.

Kindly review the manuscript and give your comments accordingly whether to revise with major comments and minor comments or accepted the manuscript without changes.

We request you to give your comments on the manuscript within 3days from the acceptance.

Until and unless we get your comments we are not supposed to go with the further process of the manuscript, as your comments are very crucial for the processing of the manuscript.

Note: If you are interested to join in our Reviewer Board, kindly let us know your thoughts.

Hope to have a positive response.

Please do not hesitate to ask any further queries.

Looking forward for long lasting Scientific Relationship.

Best Regards,

Florance”

CT says:

December 10, 2016 at 4:28 AM

Same here, just got an invitation to review a paper for the “Journal of Nursing and Women’s Healthcare”, published by Gavin Publishers (although no published articles are found on their website)

The publisher Open Access Text (OAT) follows several of the same, questionable business practices as Hyderabad, India-based OMICS Group, leading me to suspect that it may have been acquired by OMICS. Currently in the middle of a massive spamming campaign, OAT uses the “my previous email” ploy, using emails to bait researchers with the promise of a fast peer review process.

Open Access Text claims it is headquartered in London — specifically at 36-40 Copperfield Road — but examining that address on Google Maps, one merely sees a block of apartments, an unlikely location for a real medical publisher.

By my count, OAT publishes 24 broad-scoped journals in the bio-medical sciences (list below). Here’s a transcript of a recent spam from OAT:

From: Global Surgery
Reply-To: “robert@surgeryopen.com”
Date: Monday, September 28, 2015 at 11:17 AM
To: Norman Sleep
Subject: Global Surgery

Dear Colleague,

Hoping that you might be busy and could not reply to my previous e-mail, I hereby make a follow-up. We would like to invite an article for the publication in Global Surgery (GOS-(ISSN: 2396-7307). Prof. J. Michael Millis is the Founding Editor for this journal and we have started this journal with help of eminent scientists from all over the world.

All submitted articles will be reviewed by Founding Editor-in-Chief, and we have a Rapid Review Process and Publication Facility which allows submission to be published in just over 7-10 days. Based on your recent contributions, it is a great pleasure for me to invite you to contribute an article to GOS.

I welcome you to submit the articles to robert@surgeryopen.com
Thank you for your time and consideration.
Regards
Amanda Venis
Managing Editor

supporting
Dr. J. Michael Millis
Editor in Chief

The journal’s editor-in-chief, Dr. Millis, holds impressive appointments. His email signature lists them as:

Michael Millis, M.D.
Professor of Surgery
Vice Chair for Global Surgery
Director, University of Chicago Transplant Center Chief, Section of Transplantation Liver Transplantation and Hepatobiliary Surgery
University of Chicago

Why is someone with such impressive credentials the editor-in-chief of a journal that advertises “a Rapid Review Process and Publication Facility which allows submission [sic] to be published in just over 7-10 days”?

The spam email, which solicits manuscripts for a surgery journal, was emailed to a professor of geophysics, a seismologist.

Dr. Millis’ amanuensis is Amanda Venis. I searched this name in Google and found some evidence “she” might be associated with OMICS Group:

While I cannot conclude for certain that Open Access Text was acquired (or originally launched) by OMICS Group, I can report that some evidence points to a connection between the two imprints.

Open Access Text is included on my list of questionable publishers, and it’s a massive spammer. It may be associated with or owned by OMICS Group. I recommend that researchers not submit manuscripts to its journals.

Hat tip: Dr. Norman H. Sleep

Appendix: List of Open Access Text (OAT) journals as of 2015-10-01
1.Clinical Case Reports and Reviews (CCRR)
2.Clinical Obstetrics, Gynecology and Reproductive Medicine (COGRM)
3.Clinical Proteomics and Bioinformatics (CPB)
4.Clinical Research and Trials (CRT)
5.Contemporary Behavioral Health Care (CBHC)
6.Dental, Oral and Craniofacial Research (DOCR)
7.Fractal Geometry and Nonlinear Analysis in Medicine and Biology (FGNAMB)
8.Frontiers in Nanoscience and Nanotechnology (FNN)
9.General Internal Medicine and Clinical Innovations (GIMCI)
10.Global Anesthesia and Perioperative Medicine (GAPM)
11.Global Dermatology (GOD)
12.Global Hormonal Health (GHH)
13.Global Surgery (GOS)
14.Global Vaccines and Immunology (GVI)
15.Integrative Cancer Science and Therapeutics (ICST)
16.Integrative Food, Nutrition and Metabolism (IFNM)
17.Integrative Molecular Medicine (IMM)
18.Integrative Obesity and Diabetes (IOD)
19.Integrative Pharmacology, Toxicology and Genotoxicology (IPTG)
20.Journal of Integrative Cardiology (JIC)
21.Journal of Systems and Integrative Neuroscience (JSIN)
22.Journal of Translational Science (JTS)
23.New Frontiers in Ophthalmology (NFO)
24.Pediatric Dimensions (PD)

By: Jeffrey Beall
Follow on Twitter
Source: Scholarly Open Access

OMICS Group recently launched a new open-access journal called Diagnostic Pathology: Open Access. The title closely matches that of the BioMed Central (BMC) journal Diagnostic Pathology. It also matches the scope of The Diagnostic Pathology Journal, a new open-access journal launched by the former editor-in-chief of the BMC journal.

OMICS Group has a track record of launching journals whose titles match or closely match those of established and respected journals. OMICS then proceeds to trade on the ambiguity, tricking some paying authors into thinking its journal is the real one. It does the same thing for many of the hundreds of academic conferences it organizes.

OMICS Group is now spamming authors, seeking papers for the new copycat journal’s “inaugural issue.” The spam email misrepresents the true headquarters location of OMICS Group, declaring a Foster City, California address, instead of its true location, Hyderabad, India.

The former editor-in-chief of BMC’s Diagnostic Pathology recently launched his own journal, The Diagnostic Pathology Journal. Apparently fed up with the status quo of scholarly publishing, Dr. Klaus Kayser of Humboldt University, Berlin, took matters into his own hands.

Dr. Kayser apparently became upset that gold open-access journals with higher prestige are able to charge authors more to publish in them. In his opening editorial in the new journal, Dr. Kayser asks,

“Some of the publishers adjust their publication fee to the citation index (CI) of the corresponding journal. Why?”

[Kayser refers to the impact factor as the “citation index.”]

Dr. Kayser’s new journal is not a predatory journal and is not on my list.

According to the BMC journal’s website, the current author fee is “£1370/$2145/€1745,” a high price indeed. BioMed Central journals are very expensive to publish in. Many are unable to afford to publish in BMC journals.

Clearly, OMICS Group sees the money to be made by publishing articles in the field of diagnostic pathology and seeks to profit as well.

The system of payments from authors has greatly damaged scholarly communication. To level the playing field, scholarly publishing needs a system that publishes research based on its quality, novelty, scientific soundness, and importance, and not merely on the author’s ability to purchase the publishing in a pay-to-play journal.

By: Jeffrey Beall
Follow on Twitter
Source: Scholarly Open Access

Comments:

L_C says:

September 15, 2015 at 10:14 AM

They weren’t especially subtle about copying other aspects of the original BMC title either. Even their description is comprised of text copied (and slightly rearranged to hide the fact) right out of Diagnostic Pathology. For example, these are from their “About the Journal” sections:

Diagnostic Pathology: Open Access (copycat)-

“The journal of Diagnostic Pathology considers research in surgical and clinical pathology, immunology, and biology, with a special focus on cutting-edge approaches in diagnostic pathology and tissue-based therapy.”

“Diagnostic Pathology will provide an integrative journal for molecular pathology (biology) and digital pathology (virtual pathology), creating an open case discussion platform to be used during daily diagnostic work.”

Diagnostic Pathology (Original)-

“Diagnostic Pathology is an open access, peer-reviewed, online journal that considers research in surgical and clinical pathology, immunology, and biology, with a special focus on cutting-edge approaches in diagnostic pathology and tissue-based therapy.”

“Diagnostic Pathology will provide an integrative journal for molecular pathology and digital pathology ,creating an open case discussion platform to be used during daily diagnostic work.”

Note: The comma is out of place on that last section, so even their attempt to copy the phrase and erase the “virtual pathology” (that was in parentheses) from the original is sloppy.

Bobo says:

September 15, 2015 at 10:59 AM

You have the copycat and the original reversed.

L_C says:

September 15, 2015 at 3:30 PM

Right. Thanks 🙂

herr doktor bimler says:

September 15, 2015 at 2:33 PM

The latest spam from Omics in my in-tray is for a “Journal of Pharmacovigilance”. What?? Is this a thing?

Keith Fraser says:

September 16, 2015 at 5:13 AM

I guess stringing random words/concepts together is a good way to keep coming up with new journal titles.

“Journal of Post-Crystallographic Existentialism”
“Progress in Temporal Ergonomics”
“Nano-anthropology Letters”
“Bulletin of the American Pornocopian Society”
“First World Journal of Imitative Spectroscopy”

herr doktor bimler says:

September 16, 2015 at 5:35 AM

I would contribute to ALL THOSE.

Keith Fraser says:

September 17, 2015 at 7:35 AM

“I would contribute to ALL THOSE.”

Beware, I hear their peer review processes can be very exacting. Why, some issues have no articles in them at all because they piously rejected all those that weren’t absolutely perfect!

The Philosopher says:

September 21, 2015 at 2:53 AM

HI jeffry lookout for this site “http://www.revistas-academicas.com/”

Thank you for your service

Jeffrey Beall says:

September 21, 2015 at 4:48 AM

I agree. This site aggregates several hijacked journals.

Anomalia Klimatyczna says:

September 22, 2015 at 4:21 AM

Isn’t “Oceanography: Open Access” a similar case? Even the page looks similar:
http://www.esciencecentral.org/journals/oceanography.php

I ask because I see a paper by someone I know published in this paper. I’m afraid this guy mistook it for the real thing:
http://www.tos.org/oceanography/

The Philosopher says:

September 24, 2015 at 8:06 AM

Hi jeffrey lookout for this site “http://ciencia-e-tecnica.org”

Thank You for your service

Jeffrey Beall says:

September 24, 2015 at 8:25 AM

Agreed, this is the hijacked version of a legitimate journal. I have it included on my list here. Thanks.

There is no slowdown in the creation and launching of new open-access journals and publishers. Here I briefly describe the recent launches of two questionable open-access publishers — Cresco Online Publishing (36 journals) and Juniper Publishers (36 journals).

First, Juniper Publishers. This publisher lists the following two addresses:

Juniper Publishing Group
Inext Ventures Inc.
3200 E Guasti Road #100
Ontario, CA 91761
United States

Juniper Publishers
Al Fardan building no 2
7th Floor, Flat no: 702
Land mark: Al Ghubaiba busstation
Burdubai, Dubai, UAE

The first address is that of a company called Mailbox Plus Virtual Office, a mail forwarding service. The strategy here is to make the publisher appear U.S.-based, when in fact it is not.

I think Juniper’s real address is the one in Dubai. This address is likely that of an apartment, meaning thirty-six science journals are being published by one man out of a flat in Dubai.

When I examined this publisher, no editorial boards were established, yet the publisher was accepting article submissions.

In fact, I learned about Juniper because someone forwarded me a spam email from the publisher soliciting editorial board service. Here’s a selection from the spam:

Greetings from Juniper Publishers!!

It’s our honor to collaborate with eminent people like you, after going through your profile I take the pleasure of inviting you to serve as an Editor for our JOJ Ophthalmology. We request you to kindly support us by accepting our proposal for being an Editor of our Journal.

The spam was signed “Christina Edwards, Assistant Managing Editor,” a name and title I think are contrived.

Next, Cresco Online Publishing.

This publisher launched before it was ready. That is to say, the website is unfinished and still contains Latin filler text. Also, its telephone number is given as “(123) 123 123.”

I also learned about this publisher through a spam email soliciting editorial board membership:

Greetings from Cresco Online Publishing.
Cresco is the open access platform for publishing scientific content online. The Journal under the open access platform publishes latest research content happening all over the world. The Journal Trends and Advancements in Biochemistry (TAB) accounts for the research in the field of Biochemistry and Biochemical Techniques.
All the articles published in the journal are peer-reviewed by our editorial team. Our editorial team forms with the combination of editors and reviewers in the fields of Biochemistry and Biochemical Techniques. We are in the process of forming the editorial board for our journal.

This one is signed “Emily, Editorial Manager,” yet another fake persona. The publisher purports to be based in New York, but it’s really based in South Asia.

The journals from both publishers are broad in scope and cover fields already over-saturated with open-access journals.

I recommend that scholars completely avoid associating with all 72 journals from both Juniper Publishing Group and Cresco Online Publishing.

Appendix A: List of Juniper Publishers journals as of 2015-09-04:
1.Academic Journal of Pediatrics & Neonatology
2.Advanced Research in Gastroenterology & Hepatology
3.Advances in Biotechnology & Microbiology
4.Advances in Dentistry & Oral Health
5.Aeronautics & Aerospace International Journal
6.Agricultural Research & Technology: Open Access Journal
7.Anatomy Physiology & Biochemistry International Journal
8.Cancer Therapy & Oncology International Journal
9.Civil Engineering Research Journal
10.Current Research in Diabetes & Obesity Journal
11.Global Journal of Nanomedicine
12.Global Journal of Otolaryngology
13.Global Journal of Pharmacy & Pharmaceutical Sciences
14.International Journal of Cell Science & Molecular Biology
15.International Journal of Environmental Sciences & Natural Resources
16.International Journal of Pulmonary & Respiratory Sciences
17.JOJ Biosensors & Bioelectronics
18.JOJ Ophthalmology
19.JOJ Public Health
20.JOJ Urology & Nephrology
21.Journal of Anesthesia & Intensive Care Medicine
22.Journal of Cardiology & Cardiovascular Therapy
23.Journal of Dairy & Veterinary Sciences
24.Journal of Electronics & Embedded Engineering
25.Journal of Forensic Sciences & Criminal Investigation
26.Journal of Gynecology and Women’s Health
27.Journal of Pharmacology & Clinical Research
28.Journal of Virology and Current Research
29.Journal of Yoga and Physiotherapy
30.Nutrition and Food Science International Journal
31.Open Access Journal of Neurology & Neurosurgery
32.Open Access Journal of Toxicology
33.Organic & Medicinal Chemistry International Journal
34.Orthopedics and Rheumatology Open Access Journal
35.Psychology and Behavioral Science International Journal
36.Robotics & Automation Engineering Journal

Appendix B: List of Cresco Online Publishing journals as of 2015-09-04:
1.Advancements in Electrical and Electronics Technology
2.Journal of Applied and Advanced Physics
3.Journal of Buddhism and Living
4.Journal of Business and Human Resource Management
5.Journal of Civil and Architectural Engineering
6.Journal of Computer Science and Software Development
7.Journal of Etiology and Animal Health
8.Journal of Information Technology and Telecommunications
9.Journal of Mechanical and Automobile Engineering
10.Journal of Pharmacology and Pharmacovigilance
11.Journal of Plant Health and Technology
12.Trends and Advancements of Biochemistry
13.Annals of Chemistry
14.Annals of Surgery International
15.Arts, Literature and Linguistics
16.Astronomy and Space Science Astronomy and Space Science
17.Advances in Clinical and Medical Microbiology
18.Cancer Research and Oncology
19.Cell and Molecular Biology Cell and Molecular Biology
20.Diabetes Research and Metabolism
21.Education and E-learning Education and E-learning
22.Genetic Engineering and Gene Cloning
23.Heart and Cardiology
24.Infectious Diseases and Vaccines
25.Journal of Food Technology and Nutrition Sciences
26.Kidney and Urological Research
27.Mathematics and Statistics
28.Obesity, Overweight and Bariatric Surgery
29.Neurology, Brain and Psychiatry
30.Oral Health and Dentistry Research
31.Plant Science and Biotechnology
32.Research in HIV and Retroviral Infections
33.Social Sciences & Psychology
34.Trends in Biotechnology
35.Trends in Clinical Research
36.Trends in Gastroenterology

By: Jeffrey Beall
Follow on Twitter
Source: Scholarly Open Access

Scholarly open-access publishing has little value when it’s effectively hidden and almost no one reads the published research. It’s possible for a scholarly article to be open-access but largely hidden from the world. Here’s how.

Commercial publisher platforms effectively help expose and promote published research. Publishers maintain close connections with libraries and very effectively distribute their content— both subscription journals and open-access journals — to actual library users, including faculty, students, and postdocs. Commercial publishers work with databases to ensure their published content is indexed. They add value to published articles by making it easy for citation management metadata to be easily exportable. The make available alerting services so researchers know when a new article relevant to their research appears.

Thus, commercial publisher platforms are nice neighborhoods for scholarly publications. On the other hand, some open-access platforms are more like publication favelas.

SciELO and Redalyc

Meta-publishers such as SciELO and Redalyc aggregate scholarly content but do a poor job of distributing it or increasing its visibility, despite the fact that both services are open-access. Many North American scholars have never even heard of these meta-publishers or the journals they aggregate. Their content is largely hidden, the neighborhood remote and unfamiliar.

The Brazilian government is aware of this, and last year it invited representatives from six of the world’s top scholarly publishers to give presentations and bid on taking over the management of some Brazilian open-access journals.

The government knows that commercial publishers would do a much better job of exposing Brazilian research, and it wanted to take advantage of this, for the benefit of Brazilians. The effort was halted, however, when excluding Brazilian companies from the bidding process was determined to be illegal, a major setback for the better promotion and exposure of Brazilian science.

Thomson Reuters is making a new product available called the SciELO Citation Index. It may give greater exposure to content aggregated in SciELO, but how many libraries will license the product?

Conclusion

So, what’s the best neighborhood for one’s published work? There are thousands of unaffiliated, unknown open-access journals published all over the world that are very effectively hiding the research they publish, despite being OA. Their content is not indexed (except perhaps in Google Scholar, a database poisoned by fringe science), and it’s just sitting there with little value added to it. Much of it will disappear over time. Because copyright of the articles is retained by authors, there may be little future interest in maintaining, publishing, and promoting the content.

By: Jeffrey Beall
Follow on Twitter
Source: Scholarly Open Access

Comments:

Michael Bragg says:

July 30, 2015 at 10:33 AM

SciELO is available on the Web of Science platform to support for search and discovery of this content

Shirley Ainsworth says:

July 30, 2015 at 11:54 AM

I am not at all convinced that the inclusion of Brazilian and other Latin American journals on ‘top scholarly publisher sites’ is any panacea. This year has seen a significant migration of them to Elsevier and to a lesser extent Springer, mostly maintaining their OA status whilst paying large dollar amounts for the privilege and services rendered. It is noticeable the number of Arab and Chinese journals that are employing the same ‘get rich quick’ techniques.

However their inclusion in important databases like Pubmed is indeed crucial.

For those interested, a new OA book “Hecho en Latinoamérica. Acceso abierto, revistas académicas e innovaciones regionales” edited by Juan Pablo Alperin and Gustavo Fischman was published this month by CLACSO
http://www.clacso.org.ar/libreria-latinoamericana/libro_detalle.php?orden=&id_libro=988&pageNum_rs_libros=0&totalRows_rs_libros=954

Anderson says:

July 30, 2015 at 12:07 PM

Could you please explain better your concept of Favela? Thank you…

Andre Serradas says:

July 30, 2015 at 12:52 PM

Maybe your post is useful to publicize SciELO and Redalyc to american researchers!

dzrlib says:

July 30, 2015 at 1:19 PM

As an aside, the SciELO concept is expanding:

“It is with great pleasure that I divulge the new Brazilian Portal of
Scientific Publications in Open Access (oasisbr), completely reworked. This is an important initiative of the Brazilian Institute of Information in Science and Technology (IBICT), and aims at gathering the Brazilian scientific publications in open access in a single search portal. Are scientific articles, books, book chapters, theses, dissertations and papers published in scientific events available in open access on the internet.

It’s almost 1,000,000 of Brazilian scientific publications in open access. The oasisbr has, today, in total, more than 1,200,000 documents because it brings together scientific production also present in Open Access Scientific Repository of Portugal (RCAAP)

lpanebr says:

July 30, 2015 at 1:55 PM

Scielo is currently undertaking the final steps in a major refactoring of all its platform. They now got all journals to send them near-JATS XML of the articles fulltext. Aggregating more value and promoting visibility is in the work and will come eventually.

Major international journals (eLife, plos and others) are already leaving the copyright of the articles with authors. What is the relationship of the copyright been retained by authors with the future interest in maintaining them.

Vitor Duarte Teodoro says:

July 30, 2015 at 3:50 PM

This a very controversial issue!
“Commercial publisher platforms effectively help expose and promote published research. Publishers maintain close connections with libraries and very effectively distribute their content— both subscription journals and open-access journals — to actual library users, including faculty, students, and postdocs.”

janerikfrantsvag says:

July 31, 2015 at 12:34 AM

I think you are pointing to an important problem with small, stand-alone journals here. Lack of publishing (not scholarly) competence results in low-visibility research, often of a quality that would merit better visibility.

Pero Šipka says:

July 31, 2015 at 8:43 AM

What about non-commercial OA meta-publishers, such as national citation databases providers in small, developing countries?

One of those, CEON/CEES that publishes the Serbian Citation Index (scindeks.ceon.rs), adds more value to the papers than commercial publishers/aggregators: by providing standard visibility, searchability and downlodability, plus by normalizing author names and affiliations, by linking references both internally and externally, by checking legitimacy of references in all and plagiarism in some papers, and more. Journals are monitored, evaluated and ranked. Those violating ethical codes are suppressed or suspended more strictly and transparently than done by Web of Science.
CEON/CEES is a non-for-profit organization, and SCIndeks is an OA service. Journals pay the average amount equivalent to 300 USD a year for the whole job. Would any commercial aggregator do it?
I would say that the question of “publication favelas” (raised for good reason and quite properly labeled) is a matter of public responsibility, academic virtue, and business ethics, rather than commercial vs. non-commercial, or OA vs. subscription-based dichotomy.

Jeffrey Beall says:

July 31, 2015 at 8:48 AM

Few people in North America have ever heard of it.
I imagine it’s subsidized by the government, so of course the price will be lower.