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

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.