Comment on New Japanese OA Publisher Tempts Authors with Cash Prizes by Mr. Brown

It is highly likely that this operation is in fact not run by a Japanese, who would not have the scrupples to do this. I would fathom a guess that this is an operation by a foreign scientist or group of foreign scientists, who are abusing their stay in Japan to extract funds from Japanese. Currently, in a bid to win hearts over minds in Japan, MEXT is favoring the financing of MSc and PhD from SE Asian countries, and has been doing so for years now. Buying their forgiveness for WWII sex-crimes in SE Asia is also now inviting a wave of SE Asian-styled value systems. There are numerous cases where Japanese professors have been fooled by SE Asian students, and are now paying the price. So, I suspect that the “owners” of this operation are NOT Japanese. Maybe Jeffrey could try to contact them to get to the bottom of this. This gambling mentality sounds very much like something a Chinese, Indian, Iranian or Pakistani might do, but not a Japanese. Why does Dr. Beall not contact the Japanese authorities about this scam? They would take quite swift action, no doubt against the company and the management. Unlike In India, where the Government turns a blind eye to the wave of predatory OA publishers, even encouraging them to pursue their pseudo-academic goals, in Japan, an iron fist is still maintained against fraud and corruption, at least in academics, so we need someone to make a formal report to Japanese authorities about this.