Admin - page 30

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.

Two unrelated publishers with the word “Nova” in their name have been bothering researchers with spam emails recently. One is an open-access publisher based in a dwelling in Ontario called Nova Explore Publications. The other one is an old book publisher called Nova Science Publishers, based in New York State. Researchers should avoid them both.

First, Nova Explore Publications.

This operation is a typical, small, one-man predatory publisher operation. It offers five broad journals, one of which, the Nova Journal of Sufism and Spirituality, covers a topic not normally treated by open-access publishers, so perhaps it’s a reflection of the owner’s background.

A spam email signed by “Dr. Rose Hill” (likely a fake name) lists the “advantages” for authors publishing with Nova Explore Publications:

Benefits to publish with NOVA:

1. Easy submission and fast evaluation process
2. Expert review who strive to give authors fair decisions and advice
3. The highest standards followed to improve accepted manuscripts

In other words, they will accept and publish just about anything, as long as the publishing fee is paid, which Nova Explore says is $75.

It lists its address as 67 Abitibi Avenue in Toronto. Here’s a picture of their headquarters, courtesy of Google Maps, and it’s really in North York:

Second: Nova Science Publishers.

If you haven’t already, you may receive a spam email from the company’s president, Nadya Gotsiridze-Columbus.

Their spam will invite you to edit a book with chapters contributed by your friends and colleagues, or it will invite you to contribute a chapter to such a volume.

Nova Science Publishers is not a predatory publisher, but it is a bottom-tier one, in my opinion. The Wikipedia article about the publisher gives additional information about it, but the article has been somewhat sanitized by the publisher’s supporters.

If you’re an assistant professor, I strongly recommend you resist the temptation to write for this publisher; it could be damaging to your career.

In conclusion, both of these Nova publishers are “no-goes.”

Appendix: List of Nova Explore Publications journals as of 2015-04-18:

Nova Journal of Medical and Biological Sciences (NJMBS)
Nova Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences (NJHS)
Nova Journal of Engineering and Applied Sciences (NJEAS)
Nova Journal of Arabic Studies (NJAS)
Nova Journal of Sufism and Spirituality (NJSS)

*Visitor submitted article. The views, opinions, and/or reviews expressed are not necessarily the views of the Emerald City Journal. The Emerald City Journal is an non-commercial opinion based newspaper (that may include criticism) located in Seattle, Washington. This newspaper is for the People and by the People.

Most all high-quality scholarly publishers assign DOIs (digital object identifiers) to the articles and other digital objects they publish. These unique identifiers benefit scholarly authors by making their work more discoverable, accessible, and citable.

One Luddite publisher that refuses to use DOIs is the Clute Institute. In fact, one of the “Institute’s” editors-in-chief has even badmouthed the international standard.

Timothy F Slater, Ph.D. is a professor at the University of Wyoming and Editor-in-Chief of the Clute Institute’s Journal of Astronomy & Earth Sciences Education (JAESE).

Here’s what he said in the context of his journal not supplying DOIs:

One specific criticism of JAESE is that we currently do not use DOI numbers to specify permanent URLs for archived articles. The DOI system was created in the 1990s to solve the problem of unstable URLs when using Netscape and Mosaic to find online resources. Many publishers think that the DOI system has outlived the problem it was trying to solve, especially as membership in the DOI system is expensive for small publishers and, it seems to me, largely unnecessary these days. The Editorial Board is currently reconsidering DOIs, but members are understandably reluctant to pass more costs on to authors, if it is unnecessary.

Slater’s comment was posted to the Geoscience Education Research Interest Group email list hosted by Michigan State University on March 19, 2015. I don’t think Slater’s description is accurate.

DOI’s first started to appear in the 2000s, and they serve to provide unique and persistent identifiers for scholarly articles and other digital objects, identifiers that enable precise and unambiguous identification of scholarly works, along with many citation-based services.

Also, I’ve never heard any publisher say anything even close to Slater’s silly claim that “Many publishers think that the DOI system has outlived the problem it was trying to solve …”.

It is shameful that such a statement would come from a professor of education. He may be confusing the DOI with PURLs.

I recommend that researchers stay away from the Journal of Astronomy & Earth Sciences Education. It charges both submission and publishing fees, and it does not assign DOIs to the articles it publishes, leaving its published authors at a disadvantage.

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

Comments:

Blazeyastic says:

May 8, 2015 at 4:44 PM

Jeff are you saying every journal with DOI are suitable for publication than those without it? Remember, there some of your listed predatory journals with DOI, thanks.

Jeffrey Beall says:

May 8, 2015 at 4:48 PM

No, I am not saying that.

Sudesh Kumar says:

May 9, 2015 at 2:30 AM

what Jeffrey is saying that the editor does not know what he is talking about…as the editor says “…especially as membership in the DOI system is expensive for small publishers…”
the charges for a small publisher comes to be about $500-800 per year. either the journal wants to save this amount using excuses or the journal is not earning enough to pay this amount…both of which are bad scenarios…

Robert says:

May 10, 2015 at 8:01 AM

CrossRef normally charges 280$ as an annual fee plus one dollar per paper for assigning doi. This fee is associated with small publishers. The fee is nothing compares with advantage people get. Another point is that the managers of some well known indexes such as Scopus only index journals with valid doi. In other words, if a publisher does not cooperate with CrossRef, it is getting difficult to receive valuable index. I believe escaping from DOI membership is a good sign of a predatory activity. This publisher probably knows sooner or later they will have to close their operations so they do not bother to get involved with doi operations.
However, many well known small OA publishers take advantage of doi system and scholars benefit from it.
I believe all Librarians must help scholars know more about the advantages of a journals with valid DOI. I am glad to see that when a publisher tries to receive Scopus index for its journals there is a link to keep track of (See http://suggestor.step.scopus.com/progressTracker). ISI index also provides a link to get the status of journals, but the link often does not give feedback. Here is the link:
http://ip-science.thomsonreuters.com/info/jrneval-status/
It seems that ISI people are very busy, disregard offering any feedback to scholars and I think within the next few years, Scimago index, which is based on Scopus will break the monopoly of ISI, completely and most universities around the world will depend only on Scimago index.

Robert says:

May 10, 2015 at 11:49 AM

CrossRef normally charges 280$ as an annual fee plus one dollar per paper for assigning doi. This fee is associated with small publishers. The fee is nothing compares with advantage people get. Another point is that the managers of some well known indexes such as Scopus only index journals with valid doi. In other words, if a publisher does not cooperate with CrossRef, it is getting difficult to receive valuable index. I believe escaping from DOI membership is a good sign of a predatory activity. This publisher probably knows sooner or later they will have to close their operations so they do not bother to get involved with doi operations.

David says:

May 10, 2015 at 3:44 PM

DOI has nothig to do with quality of a publication. It is not essential to assign DOIs to articles as it is a value added service. So don’t mix DOI assignment with quality of publication. If publishers don’t want to get registered with CrossRef…….it’s their choice…….Actually many people are working to support the corporate agenda…..Now see DOIs also become a corporate product…….These corporate people just want to fill their pockets………….by sucking our blood…….like bats……

Ken Lanfear says:

May 11, 2015 at 6:21 AM

Jeff, I feel not having a DOI may be a dumb choice, but it is not illegitimate and does not imply bad faith. The EIC is up front about this, so there’s no more deception than a journal that, say, chooses to publish only in paper.

You do your list a disservice by including a journal for this reason. There are plenty of genuine bad actors to worry about.

Jeffrey Beall says:

May 11, 2015 at 8:03 AM

Ken,
Nowhere in my blog post did I mention anything about deception, so I don’t understand why you are arguing against something I did not say or imply. Why are you putting words into my mouth? Moreover, you imply that I put Clute Institute on my list for a single reason, which is also untrue. I find your comment irresponsible and unfair.
Jeffrey Beall

Ken Lanfear says:

May 11, 2015 at 5:36 PM

Sorry, Jeff. I didn’t mean to imply you were alleging bad faith. However, “I recommend that researchers stay away from the Journal of …” seems a pretty harsh sentence for a journal just exercising its business judgement.

geocognition says:

May 11, 2015 at 11:50 AM

I am in the field this “journal” covers, and we need more reputable publication options. I am concerned that young scholars will mistakenly publish here, and their work will be tarnished.

The lack of DOI is troubling – papers will be lost to oblivion. Even more so is the concern I have that the journal is not actually peer-reviewed – although cryptic, it seems that the “advisory board” of the journal also serve as reviewers for papers. This is not legitimate peer-review.

Stephanie Slater says:

May 18, 2015 at 3:48 PM

Upon reflection, this conversation seems a bit too removed from reality, and it might be helpful to bring it back to earth. …. It should be noted that there are real people who have published their work in some of these journals, and that should factor into the equation here. We are not talking about the work of faceless minions. When you besmirch the reputation of a journal, you are by extension, casting shadow on the scholarly work published therein, and to a certain extent, questioning the value of the work these individuals have done. That should be done with more care than is being demonstrated here… In the case of JAESE, the journal has taken on the specific mission of creating a publishing space for those who are traditionally marginalized in the patriarchal academic system. The first four articles were all written by American women, who have their PhDs from American institutions. In the case of three of the articles, these works are the publications of their dissertations, and represent over a decade of research overseen by well-respected scholars in their fields. In the case of the fourth paper, I am the author. My published article is a piece of research that I saved back for the specific purpose of starting this journal off on a strong foot. It is a description of the development of a research instrument that has been used in over 20 studies in the US, including four dissertations, conducted at R1, American universities under the supervision of well-respected scholars…. The fifth piece is a retrospective written by a very-well respected astronomy educator in the United States, who himself served as the editor of a journal for over a decade. …. The editor of JAESE is a full-professor, an Endowed Chair of Excellence in Science Education, has won an extraordinary number of awards in his field, who has graduated more PhDs in his field than any other person in its history….so it’s possible that he knows a thing or two about what constitutes real research in his field. … And the Editorial Board is really quite amazing. ….None of those features of this journal have been discussed in determining whether or not the journal is legitimate, which is quite disturbing. …. Before labeling a journal as predatory or a scam, it seems that reading the journal, contacting the editor, or authors, or members of the editorial board, are the minimum acts of due diligence. … Without taking such measures, it seems that negatively labeling the journal is an act taken to silence the respected voices who have chosen to publish there, which in this case could very easily be read as sexism in the academic workplace. I’m not sure what else one would call such unsubstantiated slander against a journal that purposefully chose to feature four, solo female scholars. ….Until such time as Mr. Beall conducts due diligence, academic integrity would demand that he retract the statements that he has made regarding the quality of this journal, of its board, it’s editor, and the work published by its authors.

Concerned Commentator says:

July 6, 2015 at 3:06 PM

Do you think it matters that you are married to the editor of the journal under which you were published? Do you think it matters that you two have a financial arrangement with the publishers? Are you willing to disclose what that arrangement is since the authors are charged page fees? How much money will you and your husband make from running this journal?

Anirud says:

March 28, 2016 at 10:27 AM

Came to this late but I find it a little puzzling how doctoral theses works were published here ( see Stephanie Slater comment above). Clearly, ppl want it in an A or B. If not of that quality, generally such theses are not seen as worth the paper. If JAESE were really of B or higher standing, it would not need such vigorous, spirited defence, would it? And not many buy into this patriarchal claptrap any longer. It is just another excuse. That said, DOI or payment alone should not be the criterion for blacklisting. In the case of Clute, I think there are more indicators than that, making it look highly questionable.

The journal Agrociencia, published by the Colegio de Postgraduados in Mexico, demands that submitting authors subscribe to the journal before their submissions will be considered for peer-review. A subscription costs $160, and there are additional fees once the paper is accepted.

These hidden fees, resembling a type of mordida, are not mentioned in the author guidelines. The text below is copied from an email sent by Agrociencia in response to a prospective author’s inquiry:

“Time for publication: 8-10 months, depending upon writing in fluent English and scientific value of the manuscript.

Articles are published only in English and Spanish.

After an official reception letter is issued and in order to start the peer-review process, the corresponding author must pay a one-time annual subscription to Agrociencia (US$ 160.00); this payment does not imply that the manuscript will be published.

If the manuscript is approved for publication, the corresponding author must pay the translation (US$ 200-300) from English into Spanish, directly to a translator assigned by Agrociencia.”

The journal’s website states that subscriptions cost $150, not $160. Also, the journal is open-access, so subscriptions are not needed to access the published content.

As indicated, the journal also requires submitting authors to fund a translation of the article, an additional $200-$300 cost.

The journal is also called Revista Agrociencia. The mandatory subscription and translation charges are non-standard in scholarly publishing and perhaps unethical. The journal needs to be more transparent about the fees it imposes on its authors.

Researchers in the agricultural sciences submitting papers to this journal will be taking a risk; there may be additional charges beyond those mentioned here. For authors considering submitting here, I recommend finding a better journal.

The journal has an impact factor of 0.049 according to Thomson Reuters’ Journal Citation Reports.

Hat tip: Dr. Jaime Teixeira da Silva

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

Comments:

Keith Fraser says:

April 21, 2015 at 9:13 AM

Publication time 8-10 months? That seems terribly long to me, on top of all the fee unpleasantness.

Neuroskeptic (@Neuro_Skeptic) says:

April 21, 2015 at 9:40 AM

“The journal has an impact factor of 0.049 according to Thomson Reuters’ Journal Citation Reports.”

Statistically significant!

shirley ainsworth says:

April 21, 2015 at 10:55 AM

Although seen from another angle an APC of $150 plus a complimentary print subscription is hardly outrageous, and also the equivalent of ‘society members’ (academics and students from the Colegio de Posgraduados) do receive a discount on this price.
I understand this policy has been in force for Agrociencia since 1997, and it is unusual for a Latin American journal to charge for publishing there. They are usually free to publish in and free to access.

The conditions should be mentioned clearly in the author instructions, I quite agree.

Rodrigo Paredes says:

April 21, 2015 at 12:51 PM

This is not an article processing charge. In my experience, APCs are only charged after acceptance. Here “this payment does not imply that the manuscript will be published.” I do not know of any other Journal that charges the complete fee regardless of acceptance (maybe they’re a few, but it is very uncommon and does seem risky for authors.)

Mike Fainzilber says:

April 22, 2015 at 12:49 PM

Jeff – I have no idea about this specific journal, but fees for submission of a manuscript are charged by other reputable journals published by large scholarly societies. For example the Journal of Neuroscience charges $ 130 for submission, regardless of the eventual fate of the manuscript, and this is separate from publication fees charged if the manuscript is accepted for publication- see http://www.jneurosci.org/site/misc/ifa_fee.xhtml

Jeffrey Beall says:

April 22, 2015 at 8:18 PM

Agreed, but the point I was trying to make is that the fees are not mentioned on the website. Authors find out about them the hard way, after they’ve submitted a paper.

Reinaldo Pire says:

May 1, 2015 at 10:33 AM

Dear Prof. Beall, it is clear that your comment was dealing with fees that were not mentioned on the website of the journal. However, you used the term “mordida”, a word that may be considered offensive for Spanish speaking people.
I believe that this unusual word in scientific communication triggered several opinions from readers who added more attacks to the journal.
Moreover, I visited the journal website and observed that the charges are mentioned on its main page.
Knowing that you are a fair scientific critic, I think a clarification would be needed

Jeffrey Beall says:

May 1, 2015 at 11:33 AM

You are late to the party. The charges were not stated previously. My use of the term was appropriate and reflected only the offensiveness of the hidden and exploitative charges.

Sergio González says:

May 7, 2015 at 1:18 PM

On April 21, Mr. A. Teixeira da Silva uploaded on the Scholarly Open Access site, a libel pointing out that Revista Agrociencia charges “MORDIDAS” (sic) for publishing articles. Although we knew about the apparent anger of Mr. Teixeira da Silva, we did not answer because his statements are worthless and uncalled for and, most probably, no reply is needed. However, some outstanding members of the national and international scientific community have let us know their disagreement and anger about the libelous statement published by Mr. Teixeira da Silva. Therefore, we feel an answer is called for.

First, we will show some relevant information about Agrociencia. In 2016, the journal will reach 50 years of publishing, and it is successfully consolidated with about 400 reviewers from 12 Ibero-American countries. Two reviewers and one editor evaluate each manuscript, and they will approve or reject it. Every year, about 100 articles are published according to the Guidelines, which are in effect since 2004; thus, about 1000 have already been published and none of the authors have complained about subscription fees or payment to translators.

Mr. Teixeira da Silva pointed out just one true statement: Agrociencia is an open journal, its access is free in the Internet, and no subscription is required in order to read, copy or print any article. Thus, the only purpose of requiring a subscription is to help paying some of the publication costs of the journal. If an author declares that he cannot pay the subscription, due to lack of funds or not being able to obtain support from his country, this requirement is forfeited. Please, take into account that the one time annual subscription requirement is included in the Authors Guide and in a letter sent to the Corresponding Author. Hence, Mr. Teixeira lies again.

But we do declare ourselves guilty of not being able to find excellent translators who do not demand payment for his work. Since translators are not employees of the Colegio de Postgraduados, neither of the Editorial or Agrociencia, every payment for translating a manuscript is a direct agreement between the Corresponding Author and the translator.

Finally, we strongly point out that no further words or efforts will be wasted about this trivial incident, which stem from faulty judgment or wicked intentions from Mr. Teixera da Silva. A final comment: as is often the case, Mr. Teixeira writing in English is very poor. That is why professional translators are required. The rest is silence.

El Editor General del Colegio de Postgraduados
Said Infante Gil

El Director de Agrociencia
Sergio S. González Muñoz