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Comment on Open-Access Publisher Launches with 355 New Journals by A Khan

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I am sorry that I am re-posting some of my thoughts again from previous thread (http://scholarlyoa.com/2012/12/19/publisher-charges-authors-for-retractions/#comments).

Basically, I believe that always competition is healthy. At least some of the new publishers (Hindawai, Co-action, Frontiers, etc) started to break the monopoly of the giants. It is a good sign for all of us. But I also strongly agree that these new publishers (which are mainly small start-up), are showing immaturity by launching so many journals (50,100,150…or so on). (in this case 355!!!!) If they really want to manage all the related journal operations ethically and rightly, then they should start with small numbers. They should make successful the first lot (3-6 only. Not more that that). Initial days, they are bound to do some mistakes. But if the number of journal is small, then amount of error will be less and then if you are sincere, you can correct those errors. Then apply those learning to launch next lot of journals (again not more that 3-6). Progressive learning and application of those learning makes things easier. This is the science. A big development can not come overnight. Whenever I see that a new publisher comes up with a fleet of journals, I imagine that this is going to again populate Beall’s list. Anyone related to journal publication, knows how difficult to manage religiously even the peer review formalities of 5 journals. Then for a serious publisher starting with 50/100 journals, will be nightmare. I think this trend started with Benatham Open, when they started 200/300 journal at a time some years ago. Too many journals mean too many errors. Then rectifying those errors will be next to impossible. Ten the publisher will slowly enter inside the darkness of academic criminal publishing.

Regarding allotment of ISSN: I am very much aware that from 2012 (June onwards), HQ of ISSN (Paris) advised all national centers to be alerted about low quality unethical journals. They requested to all centres to make some preliminary checks (valid editorial board, repeated papers from same author in the first issue, etc) before allotting ISSN. But I don’t know that whether you agree or not that Basic Principle of ISSN (According to the basic ISSN rules, all the publications which comply with the definition of a serial (i.e “continuing resource issued in a succession of discrete issues or parts, usually bearing numbering, that has no predetermined conclusion” [iii]) are eligible for ISSN assignment whatever their physical medium. Reference: http://www.issn.org/2-22635-What-is-an-ISSN.php).

Therefore, the basic goal of ISSN is something different than stopping these predatory publishers. But I also agree that rules can be changed as per the changed scenario.


Comment on Open-Access Publisher Launches with 355 New Journals by dianabuja

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Most amazing. What (apparent) greed will spawn…

Comment on Open-Access Publisher Launches with 355 New Journals by Raj

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Hi Jeff
Thanks for providing this information to the scientific society, but I have one doubt. Academic and Scientific Publishing just now started their Journals even they have not published a single Issue of any Journals. I contacted the office of Academic and Scientific Publishing and they said that still they are waiting for ISSN registration and most of the software work is still under construction. Than how can you say that Academic and Scientific Publishing is the fake publisher. Ok on the basis of quality of the article and related material once we can say that this kind of publishers are fake but Academic and Scientific Publishing still they are in preliminary step

Comment on Open-Access Publisher Launches with 355 New Journals by Shawn

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I don’t know why the subject of ISSN keeps coming up.

1. ISSN assignment have NEVER been about content or quality. As long as it is serials, it can get an ISSN.

2. It is not even physically possible to review every entry. Some ISSNs are assigned before first issue published.

Vanity journals and books have always existed. It used to be in the humanities (There are many pay to publish poetry journals and monographs for literary rejects). Now it is in the sci & eng because of the OA movement. …And they always had ISSNs and ISBNs.

If there’s any chatter about reviewing each journal that request an ISSN, that is definitely news to me.

Comment on Open-Access Publisher Launches with 355 New Journals by Jeffrey Beall

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I never used the term “fake publisher.” I have listed this publisher on my list of predatory publishers, so it’s fair to say I’ve called it predatory. It clear that the mission of this publisher is to make money off of scientists, and that’s why they started with so many journals. The people handling the operation apparently have no experience in scholarly publishing. There is also some confusion over branding, as there are at least two distinct brands represented in the website, but without explanation. If the publisher is waiting for the ISSNs to be approved, then they should have waited before publishing all the empty templates. I know that they are spamming scientists with invitations to join their editorial boards, the same method used by other predatory publishers. The name of the publisher, “Academic and Scientific Publishing” is very close to the name of another publisher, “Scientific and Academic Publishing” and may be an attempt to confuse scientists. Anyone who knows anything about scholarly publishing knows that starting with 354 journals is a very poor business decision. I’ve seen enough scam operations to know that this one is just another attempt to exploit the gold open-access model. I recommend against having any contact with this publisher.

Comment on Open-Access Publisher Launches with 355 New Journals by Chris Leonard (@hooHar)

Comment on Open-Access Publisher Launches with 355 New Journals by naser

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I believe this publisher even did not bother to do a simple search on whether the journals listed above had already been registered by others or not. For example International Journal of Civil Engineering
has already been registered by other people. Here is the link:

ijce.iust.ac.ir

The words are the same, nothing more, nothing less. We may now officially call this guy, a noive predatory publisher.

I am sure if some one download a PDF format published paper, change it to word, put a new fake author name and submit it to this publisher, it will be getting accepted. They may even publish it with no charge just to encourge for another submission.

I think this guy was not even worth for investigation.

Naser

Comment on Scholarly Indexes are Unwittingly “Legitimizing” Corrupt Publishers by Robin Hood

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For comapnies like EBSCO and Elsevier, there is only one way to spell quality: PROFIT. Unfortunately, 95% of the academic community is having their hood pulled over their eyes. Fancy web-sites and snazzy technology, backed by robust legal teams. This is the new face of the mega-predators who legitimize the lower-level predators. There is only one word for this: collusion. If Elsevier and EBSCO have been formally informed about the fraudulent activities and unscholarly and poor academic quality of many journals on this blog and other sites, and they continue to “index” and “abstract” and provide full text services, at a cost, of course, then nothing differentiates the moral standing of EBSCO, Elsevier and the predators on Jeff’s blog. Unfortunately, and this is the correct use of the word unfortunately in this context, the scientific community continues to sleep with the enemy, partially because there are few honest choices. If you observe the 9 Mb Excel file of journals indexed by Scopus, you will find so many corrupt, fraudulent and academically pathetic journals, you will begin to wonder, is Scopus a measure of quality, or a measure of power? The same rationale applies to Thomson Reuters Impact Factor. For years, I have been critical of Elsevier and EBSCO precisely for this reason (and others) and I have always been ridiculed and criticised, even by Jeff, for pointing out the obvious truth. Due recognition of the truth is always too late. The damage is already done. Only oen solution now: boycott Elsevier and EBSCO. And do you know why this won’t work now? Because they have accumulated too much power. Many of my blog entries on this blog were cut because I was critical of Elsevier for valid reasons such as this one, but there is this fear of the all-powerful publishing giants. This blind protection of corporations needs to stop and those who are supporting the real fraudstsres need to be exposed. This is the calssical exmaple of crony capitalism, where fraud is the base of profits. This is not a conspiracy theory. The proof lies right before your eyes.


Comment on Open-Access Publisher Launches with 355 New Journals by Robin Hood

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Raj, you sound like you are part of Academic and Scientific Publishing by defending it so strongly. You see, this is EXACTLY the problem. This publisher has the responsibility to wait for the assignment of ISSN numbers before it starts to spam and post information online. The fact that it is rushing the process, trying to shove its contentless, unregistered void down scientists’ throats is evidence that it is a predator. Kudos for listing this irresponsible publisher.

Comment on Scholarly Indexes are Unwittingly “Legitimizing” Corrupt Publishers by Shawn

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Ebsco full-text databases will include just about anything. As far as I know, the A&Is (Not the abstract databass but the actual A&Is) are fairly exclusive.

Comment on Open-Access Publisher Launches with 355 New Journals by Robin Hood

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Naser, I am not sure if we should be applauding you, or criticising you. You have just given a brilliant idea to to-be fraudsters who are willing to try anything now. That is why I have always advocated the inclusion of Adobe security on PDF files to avoid the abuse, manipulation and loss of information from the PDF itself. Do you know why so many publishers do not include security on their PDFs? Because Google, Yahoo and other spiders, trawlers and bots cannot read key words and thus those papers don’t appear high up on Google or Yahoo searches. I am sorry, but thumbs down for your ideas, because you use the term “I am sure”, suggesting that you might be doing just what you are advocating against. Proof of the predatory nature (or hill-billy ignorance and sloppiness) is entry No. 315 (multiple journals within one journal)?

Comment on Scholarly Indexes are Unwittingly “Legitimizing” Corrupt Publishers by naser

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The link for World Journal of Science and Technology
worldjournalofscience.com/ does not work. May be this site has become down for copyright violation. I do believe cheaters will face much trouble in long term doing business as Open Text Publisher.

Even if Scopus index them, scientific society can take a look at the figures like h-index, g-index or highest index and when these numbers become insignificant, people simply could call them predatory publiser.

African Journal of Business Management is a good example for this case where it was actually listed on Scopus and ISI a couple of years ago and when they acted as pay-me-publish, they lost their indexation in both. Even Scopus did not show any trace of this publisher when some one tried the name of journal using “all field” and placing the name of journal in qutations.

One of our colleague had actual experience when his PhD student wanted to publish his paper where it had been published somewhere else. The publisher could easily figure this issue even using a simple search, but it seemed that thet preferred to receive the 550$ and published the paper, which did not have even a good quality. My colleage stoped this guy and asked him to make significant contribution and re-submit the paper.

The problem, as jeff specified in other posting, is that most of predatory publishers make false statements about their journals being listed on ISI, Scopus, etc. I sincerely encourage Jeffry to create a page for these publishers and call them criminal!

Best
Naser

Comment on Scholarly Indexes are Unwittingly “Legitimizing” Corrupt Publishers by Wil

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EBSCO also has a substantial chunk of content by Icon Group International (http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=ntt_athr_dp_sr_1?_encoding=UTF8&field-author=Icon%20Group%20International&ie=UTF8&search-alias=books&sort=relevancerank) in one of their premium business databases. Amazon link is relevant–they have 550k items listed there.

They’re listed in EBSCO under Philip M.Parker, who was in the New York times and the Guardian for using software algorithms to compile books automatically from publically available web content (Example: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/14/business/media/14link.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0).

There are 238,854 Results for Boolean/Phrase: AR “Parker, Philip M.”

Hopefully those links work.

Comment on Scholarly Indexes are Unwittingly “Legitimizing” Corrupt Publishers by A Khan

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I second the opinion of Shawn. EBSCO, PROQUEST, CABI etc still maintain good evaluation criteria and it is not easy to be included. OK, I do agree that some low quality journals are there. But still the overall quality is OK. Exception is not the rule. For some exceptions, you can not blame the entire system. These low quality journals can be from Open access journals or from subscription based journal. Therefore, if you are speaking about the faults of EBSCO, you should discuss both OA as well as subscription based journals. It will complete the discussion.
I expect more patience when talking about others’ small error. Please refer to the entirety of the criterion/error from both side. It will give you more credibility. You should remember that nobody is perfect. And your list is also not perfect and your evaluation criteria are also not perfect (Reference you have deleted many silly or laughable reasons from your version 1 criteria (http://scholarlyoa.com/2012/08/04/criteria-for-determining-predatory-open-access-publishers/) and improved it in version 2 (http://scholarlyoa.com/2012/11/30/criteria-for-determining-predatory-open-access-publishers-2nd-edition/)). Therefore, it will not be justified to cancel all your hard work by showing 4-5 borderline publishers, who were dropped previously from your version 1 list or in future some more names may be dropped if they show improvement in publishing practice.

As Elsevier published 6-8 fake journals, you can not blame that total Elsevier quality went down or Elsevier is promoting fake journals (Reference: Elsevier published 6 fake journals: Source: http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/27383/title/Elsevier-published-6-fake-journals/ or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elsevier). Most of these AI agencies are good and maintain quality.

Comment on Scholarly Indexes are Unwittingly “Legitimizing” Corrupt Publishers by Robin Hood

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Mr Khan, Shawn was actually criticising EBSCO, but seems your poor understanding of the English language has prevented you from understanding the former part of his comment. Rather than spewing out what Wikipedia feeds you, you need to spend more time sending e-mails to people in top places and challenging the status quo. It’s exactly because there are exceptions to the rule that there should be boycotts and severe penalties. Let’s remember what rank Elsevier has in the world in terms of science journal publishing. Just in case you don’t know. No. 1. And let’s remember who the parent company of Elsevier is: Reed-Elsevier. Ans let’s also remember that there was a strong campaign against Elsevier last year that turned into a boycott for its predatory pricing policies. This is because we should demand nothing less than perfection from the No. 1. Have you seen EBSCO pull fraudulent journals or journals where scientific quality, fake editors, or a host of other problems exist? Of course not. Same for Elsevier. Same for Thomson Reuters. It is for this reason that DOAJ has panicked and established external quality control teams to monitor who is included. However, what is DOAJ doing about those predators that are already included? They should throw them out. Because, as I indicated above, profits come first and pseudo-quality second. The predation in OA is relevant to Elsevier because Elsevier also publishes OA journals, but its operations, like those of Springer, are out of India, so Elsevier and Springer are monitoring this blog carefully because the association of OA predators with India could tarnish their reputation as they seek greater profits for their shareholders while paying lower costs for labor. Not unlike Walmart. So try to be more neutral in your blind love towards Elsevier. CABI is a non-profit organization with a 20 million US$ profit margin! Don’t be fooled by what their web-sites and marketing managers spew at you: that’s all PR meant to be a smoke screen. How much fraud, abuse, irregularities and other serious problems in Elsevier journals are reported to the public, either by Elsevier or by the scientific public? Almost nothing. Because the masses have been silenced. So, in the same way in which Jeff’s blog represents a vocal and powerful complaint against the OA predators, they share the publishing stage with Elsevier, EBSCO, and the rest and thus those companies deserve equally critical scrutiny. Faults, errors, or frauds that are detected should be publically disclosed, without fear of retribution. As equally as we are critical of the OA publishers, we should also be balanced in our criticisms of the established publishers and how they may have reached such positions of power. There are no coincidences or destiny, only pre-determined choices. If enough voices demand change in EBSCO, Elsevier and others, as we are doing here for OA journals, then maybe we could see change and the fraudsters might start to fear the voice of the masses. As for WJST, that fraudulent publisher is still there: http://worldjournalofscience.com/index.php/wjst/, alive and kicking. Remember, fraud is the active will to deceive someone, and is a criminal activity in most countries, so, I don’t see why the tender-hearted on this blog seem to object to the word criminal.


Comment on Scholarly Indexes are Unwittingly “Legitimizing” Corrupt Publishers by Nils

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The only use I can see in these scholarly indexes is to help finding articles on a given subject. Being included doesn’t say anything on a journal’s quality. To some extent, bibliometric indices such as impact factors can give a measure of quality. However, they can be easily manipulated, as has been shown by Douglas Arnold in his article “Nefarious Numbers” available here:
http://www.ima.umn.edu/~arnold/integrity.html
An alternative are services that review the already published papers, such as MathSciNet and Zentralblatt Math. This is only possible, however, with the help of the whole research community who are willing to provide these reviews free of charge. The system isn’t perfect, peer review never is, but it works far better than any other system I have seen.

Comment on Documenting Plagiarism in Ashdin Publications’ Journals by Sylvain Bernès

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Erratum: the reviews I cited analyze articles in periods 1966-2008 and 1966-2009, respectively. Sorry.

Comment on A Publisher with no Website: Science and Engineering Publishing Company by Ron Roy

Comment on Lambert Academic Publishing: A Must to Avoid by Chaya Zipori

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What distinguishes a reputable publisher from a non-reputable publisher?

Comment on Lambert Academic Publishing: A Must to Avoid by Jeffrey Beall

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Please see <a href="http://scholarlyoa.com/2012/08/04/criteria-for-determining-predatory-open-access-publishers/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Criteria for Determining Predatory Open-Access Publishers</a>.
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