I think your decision to decline is a wise one. Note that I haven't directly referred to Frontiers as a predatory publisher; my lists are broader than that. The mission of the lists is to warn researchers that they ought to consider carefully before engaging with one of the publishers on the list. The scientific community has spoken loudly about Frontiers, and here is a collection of some of what they've written:
There are several well-written and very convincing blog posts written by scientists that provide convincing evidence about Frontiers. The evidence has accumulated. I think the scientific community has made this decision for me. I understand that some editors receive honoraria from Frontiers and are arguing against my decision to warn researchers about the publisher because the decision may threaten their income, but such conflicts of interest are common at Frontiers.
Here are some representative blog posts, all written by respected researchers:
(See <a href="http://scienceblogs.com/aetiology/2014/09/26/hiv-denial-live-and-well-in-2014/" rel="nofollow">here</a>, <a href="http://deevybee.blogspot.com.es/2015/06/my-collapse-of-confidence-in-frontiers.html" rel="nofollow">here </a>and <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/failure-frontier-aids-denial-science-publishing-kenneth-witwer" rel="nofollow">here </a>and <a href="http://melissaterras.org/2015/07/21/why-i-do-not-trust-frontiers-journals-especially-not-frontdigitalhum/" rel="nofollow">here</a>).
This blog post was also published recently: <a href="https://forbetterscience.wordpress.com/2015/10/28/is-frontiers-a-potential-predatory-publisher/" rel="nofollow">https://forbetterscience.wordpress.com/2015/10/28/is-frontiers-a-potential-predatory-publisher/</a>
I've also written two blog posts about Frontiers:
<a href="http://scholarlyoa.com/2015/08/11/frontiers-launches-oa-library-science-journal/#more-5776" rel="nofollow">Frontiers Launches OA Library Science Journal</a>
<a href="http://scholarlyoa.com/2013/11/05/i-get-complaints-about-frontiers/" rel="nofollow">I get complaints about Frontiers</a>
Comment on Appeals by Jeffrey Beall
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Comment on Strange Website Claims it is a Respected Citation Index by Ademir
We should not rely on such dubious companies with little contact information and methods of suspicious job. The fact of accessing the site is already a risk.
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Comment on More Junk Science Proudly Published by Chinese Publisher SCIRP by GDWilliams
No. That would simply be “Google” – the generalized search-engine we all know and love. Google Scholar otoh clearly attempts to differentiate itself from the aforementioned specifically on the basis of the amount of scholarship that goes into the articles it links to. Otherwise it would be a pointless exercise, right?
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Comment on More Junk Science Proudly Published by Chinese Publisher SCIRP by GDWilliams
Ptahh! The Reverend Colonel Ignatius Churchward Von Berlitz M.A. (Dom. Sci.) A scholar who towers above all who………..schol???
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Comment on Beall’s List of Predatory Publishers 2015 by Andy
Dear Prof Beall;
Please can you help verify this journal “Journal of Pediatrics and Mother Care”. published by Elyns Group. It seems to be a new journal. Is it predatory or not?
Many thanks
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Comment on Beall’s List of Predatory Publishers 2015 by Jeffrey Beall
I have Elyns Publishing Group on my list <a href="http://scholarlyoa.com/publishers/" rel="nofollow">here </a>and recommend that researchers avoid all their journals. Good luck.
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Comment on Questionable Polish Publisher Targets Scholarly Societies by Majd Bellaaj
Dear Jeffery,
Can you please tell me about the status of the Institute of Electronics, Information and Communication Engineers (IEICE).
Thanks
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Comment on Questionable Polish Publisher Targets Scholarly Societies by Jeffrey Beall
I have not analyzed it. It appears to be a Japanese scholarly or professional society.
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Comment on More Apparent Template-Plagiarism from BioMed Central by herr doktor bimler
Ultimately it is not just the reputation of BMC that’s at stake, but of the Springer empire, now that they have bought the BMC stable.
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Comment on More Apparent Template-Plagiarism from BioMed Central by DRbio
BMC has enough credit to join your list
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Comment on More Apparent Template-Plagiarism from BioMed Central by tekija
Half an hour of detective work suggests that this paper is a scam, albeit a bit more sophisticated than the two that Jeffrey Beall has posted about.
Please check the following two papers published in 2014 and 2015 in the Asian Pacific Journal of Tropical Medicine (APJTM) — why anyone would like to publish on pathology and molecular biology of cancer in a journal dedicated to tropical medicine (” to meet the growing challenges of understanding, preventing and controlling the dramatic global emergence and re-emergence of infectious diseases in the Asia-Pacific)” and why the Editor of this Elsevier journal would like to accept and publish such an apparently off topic papers in this journal is an open question, but perhaps the reason was that the two papers came from China and this journal according to its home page sponsored by the Institute of Tropical Disease, Hainan Medical University, China:
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1995764514601760
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1995764515001030
Compare these two papers to the Diagnostic Pathology (DP) one posted by Beall and you will probably appreciate that many sentences are modified, rather elaborately, from the first and other from the second one. There is quite a bit of “original writing” in this paper but some sentences are still taken as almost direct quotes, e.g.
In APJTM:
“Cancerous tissues and adjacent non-tumor tissues (>3 cm distance to the resection margin) were collected from 68 patients who underwent curative resection of osteosarcoma.”
In DP:
“Cancerous tissues and adjacent non-tumor tissues (>3 cm distance to the resection margin) were obtained from 30 patients who underwent curative resection of osteosarcoma..:”
Most significantly, the part referring to the nonsensical statistical table in DP mentioned above appear rather similar:
In APJTM:
“Clinical association analysis using a Pearson chi-squared test indicated that low miR-218 expression was evidently correlated with large tumor size (x2=5.380, P=0.020), advanced clinical stage (x2=6.692, P=0.010) and distant metastasis (x2=4.180, P=0.041).”
In DP:
“Clinical correlation analysis showed that increased expression of miR- 130b and decreased expression of miR-218 were significantly
associated with advanced tumor stage (x2 =6.285, P < 0.007; x2 = 7.172, P < 0.009), distant metastasis (x2 = 5.528; P < 0.001; x2 = 4.617, P < 0.001) and size of tumor (x2 = 5.01, P = 0.013; x2 = 4.271, P = 0.019),"
Moreover Tables 1 in these two papers, respectively, are essentially identical content-wise.
The big difference is that in the original APJTM paper, the 2 x 2 table numbers, the chi-square statistics and the p-values all match perfectly, and on this basis no need to doubt the data (you can plug them in the calculator through the above link, select Pearson chi-square without continuity correction, and you get exactly the same results) whereas in the DP paper none of the values are correct. As said above, this is evident at a glance to a reader familiar with basic statistical principles.
So I suppose that the authors of the DP paper grabbed these two Chinese ones, mixed, edited and made up a manuscript of them, copied the table and faked the numbers, but they were not competent to produce numbers that give correct statistics. It seems to me that they just made up p values that are close to those in the APJTM paper. This suggests that no laboratory work was done and the journal should request original data.
Time wise, the more recent of the Chinese originals (which contain a lot more experimental work than the DP paper, which only took a small part of them) was published on-line on July 29. The DP paper was submitted on August 1. Quick work! I wonder whether this was to lessen the likelihood of finding the apparent original.
I spite of their seemingly more elaborate scam, the two Chinese originals could be found within minutes with a simple google search.
It is very disappointing and frightening that the flamingly incorrect Table 1 passed peer review and editorial oversight in DP.
As to the copy editing of Diagnostic Pathology, let it speak for itself, the first sentence from the introduction:
"Osteosarcoma (OS) is a primary malignant bone tumor with high morbidity in children and young adults; hat is more common in males than in females [1–4]."
A real hat trick.
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Comment on List of Predatory Publishers 2014 by russellahunt
I’ve just received a call from another one that doesn’t appear on the list, and clearly should: _International Journal of Business, Humanities and Technology_. I find this particularly amusing: “IJBHT is inviting papers for Vol.5 No. 6 which is scheduled to be published on December 31, 2015. Last date of submission: November 15, 2015.” Quick service, that.
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Comment on List of Predatory Publishers 2014 by Jeffrey Beall
This journal is published by the so-called Center for Promoting Ideas, which claims to be based in the U.S. but is really from Bangladesh. I have this publisher included on my list of publishers. Thanks.
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Comment on List of Predatory Publishers 2014 by Jeffrey Beall
I advise you to ignore them. Please see the <a href="http://scholarlyoa.com/2012/11/05/lambert-academic-publishing-a-must-to-avoid/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">blog post</a> I wrote about them some time ago.
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Comment on More Apparent Template-Plagiarism from BioMed Central by David
If BMC has qualified to join the Beal’s List of Dubious Journals, should we not thrash BMC also, and by extension, the Springer Empire?
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Comment on Beall’s List of Predatory Publishers 2013 by Kahsay Tadesse
Jeffery, Good contribution
I could not see the ” International journal of Research-GRANTHAALAYAH “IN THE LIST. is that not? Thank you
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Comment on Beall’s List of Predatory Publishers 2013 by Jeffrey Beall
Yes, actually it is indeed included on <a href="http://scholarlyoa.com/individual-journals/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">this list</a>. Thanks.
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Comment on More Apparent Template-Plagiarism from BioMed Central by Jeffrey Beall
Thank you very much for this extremely valuable comment.
It appears that some of this may be the work of article brokers.
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Comment on Young Assistant Professor Helps Promote Questionable Conferences, Journals by sean lancaster
I just got this one today: The 4th International Symposium on Education, Psychology, Society
(ISEPST 2016)
March 29 to 31 2016 Kyoto, Japan
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Comment on Beall’s List of Predatory Publishers 2015 by Songyut Akkakoson
Dear Dr Jeffrey Beall,
Could you kindly help advise whether the following conferences are predatory? Your kind helping hands is deeply appreciated.
1. International Academic Conference on Teaching, Learning and E-learning in Budapest 2016, Hungary (IAC-TLEl 2016 in Budapest) held by Czech Institute of Academic Institution zs
2. Annual Multi-disciplinary Conference in Vienna, held by International Journal of Arts and Sciences
Looking forward to hearing from you.
Best regards,
Bee
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