The Editor-in-Chief of the “Life Sciences International Journal” is an assistant professor in a Pakistani agricultural extension department, and the editorial board consists predominantly of Pakistani agricultural scientists. All six of the articles published online in the first issue of this journal are crop science papers, three from the same first author, the other three all from another first author at a different institution, all Pakistani. Crop science is my field: the couple of papers I read were not plagiarized as far as I could ascertain, but are poorly written accounts of low grade research that would not be publishable in established international crop science journals. The “Life Sciences International Journal” website also claims this is the “official journal” of Agrihunt, which appears to be an online portal for agricultural research information almost entirely focused on Pakistan.
Nothing wrong with Pakistani agricultural scientists launching their own journal, but based on this first issue the claim to be an international journal covering all life sciences is overblown to say the least. The attempt to establish legitimacy with a spurious British-sounding publisher name and fake U.K. address is also dubious. I’d like to think this is a well-intentioned attempt to launch a new OA journal and not just another scam, but it looks amateurish and does not appear to have an much of an audience beyond Pakistan.
