Comments for Scholarly Open Access

I’d like to pass on the question, then.

Thank you for doing the legwork. I got the spam today, and the sciepub site is giving a 502 error.

[…] “Beall’s list“, created by University of Colorado metadata librarian Jeffrey Beall, lists the academic journals which he regards as questionable. His work on outing journals whose business and academic practices are less than reputable has caught the eye of one of the publishers he named and shamed, and now he’s being sued. […]

I have reviewed for and published with MDPI, and while I think there is always room for improvement, I agree with Jeffrey Beall that they are “putting in much effort to operate professionally.” In my experience, editors and staff were responsive, and the review process was rigorous. On the other hand, I once reviewed a submission to an MDPI journal and found that it was almost entirely plagiarized, indicating that at least some authors consider MDPI to be a potential venue for peddling such wares. Use of anti-plagiarism software prior to review is something I would strongly recommend to MDPI or any other publisher.

I don’t think JB is suggesting with this statement that all OA journals are bad, just that it’s wise to examine all OA journals before submitting. Similarly, I tell my students to be suspicious of all email attachments and links before deciding whether to open them or not.

[…] Da Jeffrey Beale, un caso sul quale m’informo meglio, semmai ne scrivo su Oggi scienza o qui, e la storia […]

[…] sul quale m’informo meglio, semmai ne scrivo su Oggi scienza o qui, e la storia dell’editore predone che gli chiede di includere una propria rivista nella Beale’s List delle riviste da […]

[…] writes here about one such email, wherein a correspondent who describes himself as “a internee for […]

They appear to be registered as a company in the USA:

http://www.bizapedia.com/ca/HORIZON-RESEARCH-PUBLISHING-CO-LTD.html

I would never consider sending an article there, but apart from the terrible grammar on their website and emails, what else is there to make you feel this is a scam rather than simply another (as if we need one) new publisher?

The reason I became aware of this company is because a colleague is apparently on the editorial board of one of the journals.

[…] the degree to which it is viewed as giving a fair assessment of publishers. And Beall’s (lengthy) criteria for determining whether or not a journal is questionable are easily accessible on his […]

This is the worst blog post on the topic I have ever read, for reasons well explained by others above. Please tell me it was satire, or there is a medical explanation, or someone has hacked into your account. I thought that despite a few methodological issues, the list of predatory publishers was serving a purpose. Now I wonder about exactly what purpose. Perhaps The Scholarly Kitchen will have a place for a regular JB column now.

[…] http://scholarlyoa.com/individual-journals/ […]

Glad you aren’t backing down and exposing OMICS for what it is!

This type of plagiarism (in the US) has led to universities using software like Turnitin to catch students doing this type of “cut-and-paste” plagiarism. At my university, a student who turned in work like Gedela’s might receive a failing grade for academic dishonesty and a reference to the dean of students for possible further disciplinary action. (A student in one of my own classes would probably first receive a zero grade on the work, along with a lengthy tutorial by me on “academic dishonesty” and scholarship; the failing grade and further discipline would occur on the second occurrence.)

It is a shame that intelligent people stoop to this. I would suggest that Gedela needs an introductory lesson on scholarship, but given his billion dollar threat, I doubt if it would do any good….

Does Springer know about this?

No, I haven’t informed Springer. Can a publisher retract a book?

I suspect Springer would be interested in trying to prevent further occurrences. Retracting an entire book might be a bit difficult, but an editor might wish to leave out the chapter in any later editions and also make sure the culprit is not invited to be an author in future works.

I suspect that Gedela wishes to appear to be a scholarly leader churning out lots of articles. Thus the plagiarism. If I were a Springer editor working in this field, I would at least want to be alerted to this.

There may even be a legal requirement to do so (or at least to stop publishing it). I’m not a legal expert, but this type of plagarism isn’t exactly in line with copyright law. This is obviously assuming there is no exception for the original text — which seems unusual, as there is no reason to ask authors for the rights to verbosely copy their text into new works. Looking at the ACM copyright statement I signed recently, that’s not the usual case.
In addition, at least by European law, the ownership rights of the original authors may allow them to prevent (further) publication or dissemination (unless permission has been obtained).

Beyond that, of course, it would be at least “the right thing to do” for the editor of the book series (which, by the way, is called “Methods in Molecular Biology” — this may be a case of republication to a completely new audience, which is acceptable at least in some circles). The link you provided specifies Bernd Mayer as the editor for this particular edition.

On a side-note, the link under ‘chapter’ is broken (you seem to have put the title of the article as URL). Here is the link to the official springer chapter page.

It’s a good idea to present a comparison of original and plagiarized material in table form. This procedure is much used by the german web site Vroniplag, which is dedicated to anayzing plagiarism in PhD theses. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VroniPlag_Wiki

In a recent email solicitation for manuscripts an OMICS journal listed a California fax number and said that the editorial office was in Henderson, Nevada. The only problem was that the suite listed for Incorporation Services, a company that acts as the registering agent for thousands of companies. The person I spoke with has never heard of OMICS.

…I’m delighted to fulfill their requests, carefully archiving a copy of each email so that in a possible future lawsuit, I can say, “Hey, you ASKED to be placed on my list.” Here, you sound like someone who is afraid. Are you afraid for any reason?

Latest Images