Trouble in paradise.

I recently learned of an abysmally low-quality open-access publisher with the name “South Pacific Journals.” . There’s no website for the publisher itself, just websites for each of the two crummy journals.

Here are the two journals:

• South Pacific Journal of Technology and Science (SPJTS)
• South Pacific Journal of Pharma and Bio Sciences (SPJPBS)

The journals both give this location information:

Jhon Mathews‚
Publisher, South Pacific Journals
Suva‚FIJI.
ceo.spj@gmail.com

I don’t know if the first name is a misspelling of “John.” Regardless, the internet domain name data tells a different story about the location:

Registry Registrant ID:
Registrant Name: Publisher Publisher
Registrant Organization: Hetero publications
Registrant Street: Hyderabad
Registrant City: hyderabad
Registrant State/Province: NA
Registrant Postal Code: 500082
Registrant Country: IN
Registrant Phone: +91.04023404033

The data indicates, that Hyderabad, India is the headquarters location. Hyderabad is a notorious Indian city, infamous as the headquarters of many predatory journals and publishers such as OMICS International and JSciMed Central. I think the Fiji location given on the journals’ websites is completely fake.

I don’t understand the strange name of the “Registrant organization” (publisher) in the domain name data.

Both journals have assigned themselves fake impact factors:

Don’t believe it.

I’d be surprised to learn that any of the articles in the two journals has ever been cited by anyone other than the authors themselves.

Their other journal.

Looking at the journals’ websites, I cannot find how much they charge for author fees. The websites are extremely amateurish, and I am surprised that each has published several issues over the past two years.

I am certain that most everyone will agree that these two journals are an affront to scholarly communication and should be avoided by all researchers.

Scientific spammer.

JoVE, the Journal of Visualized Experiments, is an innovative video journal. However, the journal is mercenary and demonstrating at least a couple characteristics of predatory journals.

JoVE — which is not on my list — is a subscription journal, and it’s expensive. However, the publication uses the “delayed open-access” model, so its videos are made open access and re-published by the United States Government in PubMed Central after two years.

It also uses the “hybrid open-access” model, in which authors are given the opportunity to pay extra and have the content made open-access immediately upon publication. This option, however, costs the authors $4200. Like some predatory journals, JoVE charges both authors and subscribers.

Like most predatory journals, JoVE sends unwarranted spam emails. Here’s one that was forwarded to me recently:

From: Indrani Mukherjee Ph.D. [indrani_mukherjee@jove.com]
Sent: Monday, June 20, 2016
To: [Redacted]
Subject: Publication Inquiry

Dear Dr. [Redacted],

I recently came across your paper, [Redacted]. As a Science Editor with JoVE, the Journal of Visualized Experiments, I am interested in speaking with you about the possibility of publishing your methods as a peer-reviewed video article.

JoVE is the leading peer-reviewed video methods journal. Authors submit a traditional text manuscript, and we take care of the entire process of filming and producing your video. The JoVE video article below by the Orkin lab at Harvard Medical School is an example of the high quality video articles we produce.

Is there a time Wednesday or Thursday that we could have a brief conversation?

Sincerely,

Indrani Mukherjee Ph.D.

Indrani Mukherjee Ph.D.
Science Editor
JoVE
One Alewife Center, Suite 200, Cambridge, MA 02140

This spam email was sent to a researcher in North America whose research does not fall into the scope of JoVE. The researcher is at a business school and the paper is a case study that does not use any lab-based or experimental methodology.

I am also concerned that the spam email is signed by someone who identifies herself as a “Science Editor.” Given the facts surrounding the communication, I think “sales representative” is a more appropriate term.

Indrani Mukherjee, who signed the spam. We’re on the fence here too.

Summary: JoVE, the Journal of Visualized Experiments, charges both subscribers and authors and is expensive. It sends inappropriate spam emails to researchers, following the practice of many predatory publishers and journals.

Victimizing researchers since 2008.

Greetings for the day! I am writing this blog post as yet another reminder that the open-access publisher OMICS International completely sucks. The stark language here is justified, I believe, by the abusive, exploitative, and unethical actions that OMICS International has engaged in against honest researchers. Here are more stories that give evidence of the nature of this publisher.

I want to draw attention to the abusive practices of the Hyderabad, India-based publisher OMICS International (former name: OMICS Group) in order to alert researchers to avoid this publisher. Each week, I receive emails from researchers who have been victimized by this exploitative publisher. Below is a selection of five recent emails I received from both the Global South and the Global North. I’d say that OMICS International is a global parasite.

1.

Hi Sir, Hope you are doing well.

I am From Algeria and I have a question concerning OMICS group.

I submit my research article in journal from OMICS.

In the first time they do not ask me about fees, it means : it is free.

After two revision required from them, they send me an e-mail : “I am pleased to tell you that your work has now been accepted for publication in Journal of Fundamentals of Renewable Energy and Applications. It was accepted on Jun 18, 2016”

Then after few hours the send me a SPAM e-mail, and they ask me about payment it is about 1590 dollar USD.

Sir I feel very bad.

I ask them, about that I don`t want a hard copy, just online publication, but they always ask me about payment.

Sir can I submit my paper in another journal??.

Thank you

2.

Hello Jeffrey Beall,

I hope your doing well. My name is [Redacted], I’m an undergraduate student studying at the University of [Redacted] in Canada. Last year, I’ve started an independent research in hopes to be published one day. My independent research looks at the [Redacted].

Fast forwarding a year (a couple of weeks ago in fact), I have finished my manuscript in which I was planning to submit it to an open access journal called Journal of Emerging Infectious Disease with OMICS. At the time, I did not know that OMICS was a predatory journal (after seeing your list) and I’m at the final stages before it get published. To clarify, my manuscript has been accepted for publishing BUT during that time, I found out that it was a predatory journal and requested that I retract my manuscript from this journal. They advised me that they have made the DOI and it is impossible for them to retract. At this point, I did advise them that I will not approve anything going forward and that they appreciate my request to retract from the journal.

Given the story that was mentioned above, I was wondering if you have any advise on going forward and if possible, see if there is a possibility that my manuscript will not be published in this predatory journal? I was extremely shocked that these type of practices by journals existed and extremely glad I caught this before accepting anything to be published. I greatly appreciate any advise you will give and hope to hear from you soon.

Best,

[Redacted]

3.

Hello Mr. Beall,

After many months of issues trying to get a manuscript published with the Journal of Primatology (published by OMICS International), just today I found your Nature column and blog about the predatory publishers, on which OMICS International was included. It is quite disheartening to have our fears confirmed – but in hindsight, it seems obvious that we’ve likely been scammed. We’re all kicking ourselves now thinking back about the red flags…

Is there a recourse that other authors have taken or reports to file someplace? Any thoughts our suggestions would be appreciated.

Thanks for your efforts on this issue as a means to warn fellow researchers.

Sincerely,

4.

Dear Mr. Beall,

My name is [Redacted] and I am writing to you to ask you about a problem with a predatory journal. I am in the situation that I submitted a paper in a journal of the omics group and then discovered the true nature of them. After they accepted the paper very fast, we saw it was not correct and decided to withdraw the paper. After seven days we have not get an answer from them. We would like to publish our paper in another journal but we don’t know how to proceed because our paper is still cited as “in press” in their website. What do you think one can do in such a situation? Should I just go and publish somewhere else? use another paper name?  Ignore their emails (if they answer some day) and don’t pay anything?

Thanks in advance!

5.

Dear Jeffrey,

First, thanks for your fight against predatory publishers, I wish I had read about it before…
I am yet another countless victim of the OMICs scam.. and I know you must get regular similar emails, but I’d really like to seek your advice.

I am a medical doctor from [Redacted], Switzerland. I have been requested a case report by one of OMICs journals. Rather flattered, I sent them a paper they have “peer-reviewed” and sent me an invoice for (1200 USD).

I have asked them to withdraw my publication and have not payed them a single dollar, and waiting for their answer.

What happens if I dont pay? can they take any legal action?

Thank you very much for your help, I admit I feel really foolish to have been scamed.

Best Regards,

[Redacted]

 Conclusion

I call on the Indian Government to take action against OMICS International and all India-based publishers who exploit and victimize researchers. Not carrying out a bona fide peer review in journals claiming to be peer reviewed is an act of publishing misconduct, a breach of publishing ethics.

A complete fake.

Peertechz is another Hyderabad, India-based open-access publisher that is completely counterfeit. It’s a massive spammer, and although it has journals in various fields, it chiefly targets researchers in the bio-medical sciences. Like most publishers based in Hyderabad, this one seeks only to make quick and easy profit and could care less about science or research integrity.

I added Peertechz to my list in August, 2014, almost two years ago. Since then, it has grown from a dozen journals to 102. The firm’s name — Peertechz — is a failed attempt to cleverly combine the terms peer and teach. It sounds dumb in English, and probably other languages as well.

According to the famous blog Riddled,

The skeezy little grifter behind PeerTechz, Rajesh Varma Datla, is Hyderabad-based and presumably an alumnus of the OMICS juggernautical clown-car. However, he seems to have learned his English and his spam template (as well as his business model) from the family of scammers who run the Austin Publishing Group, for the typical spamwaves from Austin begin with the same “Greetings for the day!” and end with the same unconvincing assurance that the spam you are reading is, in fact, not a spam.

Here’s what the blog is talking about, an illiterate spam email from Peertechz that says it’s not a spam:

From: Archives of Nursing Practice and Care [mailto:mail.nursing@peertechz.net]
Sent: Thursday, June 30, 2016
To: Redacted]
Subject: Join the group of eminent writers: ANPC

Dear [Redacted],

Nursing Practice and Care journal asking you to send manuscript to publish under a single roof with Peertechz. You are free to gain the below features:

Express review process

• Get processing confirmation (accept or reject by quality team) from Editorial Office within 24-48 hours when the time of submission
• Review process within 3 weeks of time frame.
• Article published instantly with Editor final acceptance.

Indexing
Cite Factor, Research Bib, SHERPA/ROMEO, ISI and more….

Find more information: http://www.peertechz.com/Nursing-Practice-Care/cfp.php

You can send an article by the reply to this email or submit at below link:

http://www.peertechz.com/submit.php

I strongly believe that I could have a submission from you within the deadline: July 15^th 2016.

Best regards,

Anvi Naicker
Journal Managing Editor
Editorial Office-Peertechz.com
Tel: +91 40 23833479
Email: mail.nursing@peertechz.com; nursing.peertechz@gmail.com

#202, NVS Central, Hi-tech City, R.R District, Hyderabad-500018, TS, India

This is not a spam message and has been sent to you because you are expert in this field. This email and any attachments may contain private and confidential information. If you have received this message in error, please notify the sender and delete the email and any attachment.

If you do not want to hear from us please unsubscribe at: http://peertechz.com/unsubscribe.php

One of their duplicative and unneeded journals.

The publisher brags about being a CrossRef member; CrossRef is the firm that supplies DOIs and ironically has no standards — it accepts all publishers that apply.

Peertechz also brags about its articles being indexed in Google Scholar, another scholarly publishing industry institution that accepts almost anything without concern for quality.

You probably already have received spam emails from this junk science publisher, and if you haven’t, you soon will. I strongly recommend that all researchers avoid any association with Peertechz. It’s a bogus scholarly publisher that only wants your money.

Hat tip: Everyone who’s forwarded me a spam from Peertechz and Riddled.

Appendix: List of Peertechz journals as of 2016-07-01:

1. Annals of Alzheimers and Dementia Care (AADC)
2. Annals of Antivirals and Antiretrovirals (AAA)
3. Annals of Bone Marrow Research (ABMR)
4. Annals of Circulation (AC)
5. Annals of Marine Science (Ann Mar Sci)
6. Annals of Molecular and Genetic Medicine (AMGM)
7. Annals of Musculoskeletal Medicine (AMM)
8. Annals of Pancreatic Disorders and Treatment (APDT)
9. Annals of Phytopathology (AP)
10. Annals of Psychiatry and Treatment (APT)
11. Annals of Robotics and Automation (ARA)
12. Annals of Systems Biology (ASB)
13. Archives of Anatomy and Physiology (AAP)
14. Archives of Clinical Gastroenterology (ACG)
15. Archives of Clinical Hypertension (ACH)
16. Archives of Clinical Nephrology (ACN)
17. Archives of Community Medicine and Public Health (ACMPH)
18. Archives of Depression and Anxiety (ADA)
19. Archives of Hematology Case Reports and Reviews (AHCRR)
20. Archives of Hepatitis Research (AHR)
21. Archives of Nursing Practice and Care (ANPC)
22. Archives of Organ Transplantation (AOT)
23. Archives of Otolaryngology and Rhinology (AOR)
24. Archives of Preventive Medicine (APM)
25. Archives of Pulmonology and Respiratory Care (APRC)
26. Archives of Renal Diseases and Management (ARDM)
27. Archives of Sports Medicine and Physiotherapy (ASMP)
28. Allergy Global Journal of Allergy (Allergy)
29. Global Journal of Anesthesiology (GJA)
30. Global Journal of Biotechnology and Biomaterial Science (GJBBS)
31. Global Journal of Cancer Therapy (GJCT)
32. Global Journal of Clinical Virology (GJCV)
33. Global Journal of Crop Science (GJCS)
34. Global Journal of Ecology (GJE)
35. Global Journal of Fertility and Research (GJFR)
36. Global Journal of Infectious Diseases and Clinical Research (GJIDCR)
37. Global Journal of Medical and Clinical Case Reports (GJMCCR)
38. Global Journal of Obesity, Diabetes and Metabolic Syndrome (GJODMS)
39. Global Journal of Perioperative Medicine (GJPM)
40. Global Journal of Rare Diseases (GJRD)
41. Global Journal of Stem Cell Biology and Transplantation (GJSCBT)
42. Global Journal of Zoology (GJZ)
43. Imaging Journal of Clinical and Medical Sciences (IJCMS)
44. International Journal of Agriculture Science and Food Technology (IJASFT)
45. International Journal of Aquaculture and Fishery Sciences (IJAFS)
46. International Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism (IJCEM)
47. International Journal of Dermatology and Clinical Research (IJDCR)
48. International Journal of Immunotherapy and Cancer Research (IJICR)
49. International Journal of Nanomaterials, Nanotechnology and Nanomedicine (IJNNN)
50. International Journal of Oral and Craniofacial Science (IJOCS)
51. International Journal of Pharmaceutical Sciences and Developmental Research (IJPSDR)
52. International Journal of Radiology and Radiation Oncology (IJRRO)
53. International Journal of Vascular Surgery and Medicine (IJVSM)
54. International Journal of Veterinary Science and Research (IJVSR)
55. Journal of Addiction Medicine and Therapeutic Science (JAMTS)
56. Journal of Biology and Medicine (JBM)
57. Journal of Cardiovascular Medicine and Cardiology (JCMC)
58. Journal of Civil Engineering and Environmental Sciences (JCEES)
59. Journal of Clinical Microbiology and Biochemical Technology (JCMBT)
60. Journal of Clinical Research and Ophthalmology (JCRO)
61. Journal of Dental Problems and Solutions (JDPS)
62. Journal of Food Science and Nutrition Therapy (JFSNT)
63. Journal of Gynecological Research and Obstetrics (JGRO)
64. Journal of HIV for Clinical and Scientific Research (JHCSR)
65. Journal of Neurology, Neurological Science and Disorders (JNNSD)
66. Journal of Novel Physiotherapy and Physical Rehabilitation (JNPPR)
67. Journal of Surgery and Surgical Research (JSSR)
68. Journal of Tobacco Diseases (JTD)
69. Journal of Vaccines and Immunology (JVI)
70. Open Journal of Trauma (OJT)
71. Open Journal of Analytical and Bioanalytical Chemistry (OJABC)
72. Open Journal of Asthma (OJA)
73. Open Journal of Bacteriology (OJB)
74. Open Journal of Cell and Protein Science (OJCPS)
75. Open Journal of Clinical Toxicology (OJCT)
76. Open Journal of Environmental Biology (OJEB)
77. Open Journal of Genome Biology (OJGB)
78. Open Journal of Influenza (OJI)
79. Open Journal of Materials Science (OJMS)
80. Open Journal of Oceanography (OJO)
81. Open Journal of Pain Medicine (OJPM)
82. Open Journal of Parkinsons Disease and Treatment (OJPDT)
83. Open Journal of Plant Science (OJPS)
84. Open Journal of Proteomics (OJP)
85. Open Journal of Thyroid Research (OJTR)
86. Open Journal of Tropical Medicine (OJTM)
87. Peertechz Journal of Bioinformatics and Biostatistics (PJBB)
88. Peertechz Journal of Biological Research and Development (PJBRD)
89. Peertechz Journal of Biomedical Engineering (PJBE)
90. Peertechz Journal of Clinical Pharmacology and Clinical Pharmacokinetics (PJCPCP)
91. Peertechz Journal of Computer Science and Engineering (PJCSE)
92. Peertechz Journal of Cytology and Pathology (PJCP)
93. Peertechz Journal of Environmental Science and Toxicology (PJEST)
94. Peertechz Journal of Forensic Science and Technology (PJFST)
95. Peertechz Journal of Gerontology and Geriatric Research (PJGGR)
96. Peertechz Journal of Health Community and Family Medicine (PJHCFM)
97. Peertechz Journal of Medicinal Chemistry and Research (PJMCR)
98. Peertechz Journal of Orthopedics and Rheumatology (PJOR)
99. Peertechz Journal of Pediatric Therapy (PJPT)
100. Peertechz Journal of Transplantation and Research (PJTR)
101. Rheumatica Acta: Open Access (RAOA)
102. Scientific Journal of Genetics and Gene Therapy (SJGGT)

Another bogus organization that wants your money.

The International Organization of Scientific Research and Development (IOSRD) launched recently with 3.94 x 10² journals. It’s a bogus organization that only wants to make easy money from scholarly authors.

It’s based in Madras … er, Chennai, India, a place where things tend to multiply a lot. It tries to present itself as a scholarly society (thus the term “Organization” in its name), but it is probably just one guy with a lot of free time to copy or make up journal titles.

When I added this “Organization” to my list on July 5th, it had 382 journals — now it has 394, so it is growing as we speak. You can see a full list of the journals here.

The journals are all broad in scope (for example, Journal of Housing), and many of the journals have titles that are near matches to existing journals.

The publisher uses the open-source Open Journal Systems software to manage all the journals.

Cracked.

The publisher has prepared a formal journal cover image for each of the journals, apparently lifting a picture from the internet every time. Here (above) is the cover image for International Journal of Ceramic [sic].

None of the journals I looked at had editorial boards or published articles, but I admit to not examining each and every one.

This publisher stands out for its audacity. I found no information on how much it costs to publish in the IOSRD journals, and it will be interesting to see if anyone actually does submit an article to any of them.

Appendix: List of International Organization of Scientific Research and Development journals as of 2016-07-09:

1. Global Journal of Acoustical Engineering
2. Global Journal of Aerospace Engineering
3. Global Journal of Aesthetics
4. Global Journal of African Studies
5. Global Journal of Algebra
6. Global Journal of American Studies
7. Global Journal of Analytical Chemistry
8. Global Journal of Approximation Theory
9. Global Journal of Asian History
10. Global Journal of Asian Studies
11. Global Journal of Astronomy
12. Global Journal of Automotive Engineering
13. Global Journal of Biomedical Engineering
14. Global Journal of Biostatistics
15. Global Journal of Business Ethics
16. Global Journal of Business Law
17. Global Journal of Cell Biology
18. Global Journal of Chemical Biology
19. Global Journal of Chemical Engineering
20. Global Journal of Chronobiology
21. Global Journal of Communication Studies
22. Global Journal of Comparative law
23. Global Journal of Competition law
24. Global Journal of Computational Biology
25. Global Journal of Continuum Mechanics
26. Global Journal of Cooperative Learning
27. Global Journal of Criminal Justice
28. Global Journal of Cultural Policy
29. Global Journal of Cultural Studies
30. Global Journal of Dentistry
31. Global Journal of Developmental Biology
32. Global Journal of Drug Policy
33. Global Journal of Early Childhood Education
34. Global Journal of Economic Policy
35. Global Journal of Education Policy
36. Global Journal of Elementary Education
37. Global Journal of Embryology
38. Global Journal of Emergency Management
39. Global Journal of English Studies
40. Global Journal of Entrepreneurship
41. Global Journal of Entrepreneurship
42. Global Journal of Environmental Science
43. Global Journal of Epidemiology
44. Global Journal of Ethics
45. Global Journal of Fire Ecology
46. Global Journal of Fire Safety
47. Global Journal of Fluid Mechanics
48. Global Journal of Food Engineering
49. Global Journal of Foodservice Management
50. Global Journal of Gerontology
51. Global Journal of Group Theory
52. Global Journal of Higher Education
53. Global Journal of Industrial Organization
54. Global Journal of Leadership
55. Global Journal of Mass Transit
56. Global Journal of Mastery Learning
57. Global Journal of Mechatronics
58. Global Journal of Media Studies
59. Global Journal of Mens Studies
60. Global Journal of Mental Health
61. Global Journal of Military History
62. Global Journal of Music
63. Global Journal of Numerical Analysis
64. Global Journal of Nutrition
65. Global Journal of Operations Research
66. Global Journal of Organizational Behavior
67. Global Journal of Orthodontics
68. Global Journal of Parasitology
69. Global Journal of Public Policy
70. Global Journal of Religion
71. Global Journal of Ring Theory
72. Global Journal of School Social Work
73. Global Journal of Secondary Education
74. Global Journal of Sex Education
75. Global Journal of Social Philosophy
76. Global Journal of Sport Management
77. Global Journal of Sport psychology
78. Global Journal of Sports Medicine
79. International Journal of Abnormal Psychology
80. International Journal of Actuarial Science
81. International Journal of Advanced Digital Design
82. International Journal of African History
83. International Journal of Agricultural Economics
84. International Journal of Agriculture
85. International Journal of Agronomy
86. International Journal of Algorithms
87. International Journal of Alternative Medicine
88. International Journal of American History
89. International Journal of Applied Economics
90. International Journal of Applied Physics
91. International Journal of Applied Psychology
92. International Journal of Archaeology
93. International Journal of Architecture
94. International Journal of Area Studies
95. International Journal of Arts
96. International Journal of Asian Psychology
97. International Journal of Astrophysics
98. International Journal of Atmospheric Chemistry
99. International Journal of Biochemical Engineering
100. International Journal of Bioeconomics
101. International Journal of Biological Anthropology
102. International Journal of Biological Psychology
103. International Journal of Biology
104. International Journal of Black Psychology
105. International Journal of Business Administration
106. International Journal of Business Analysis
107. International Journal of Business Economics
108. International Journal of Business Ethics
109. International Journal of Canadian Studies
110. International Journal of Ceramic
111. International Journal of Chemistry
112. International Journal of Clinical Biochemistry
113. International Journal of Clinical Immunology
114. International Journal of Clinical Laboratory Sciences
115. International Journal of Clinical Microbiology
116. International Journal of Clinical Physiology
117. International Journal of Clinical Psychology
118. International Journal of Coastal Engineering
119. International Journal of Coastal Management
120. International Journal of Community Practice
121. International Journal of Composite Materials and Processing
122. International Journal of Computational Physics
123. International Journal of Computational Statistics
124. International Journal of Computer Architecture
125. International Journal of Computer Science
126. International Journal of Consumer Education
127. International Journal of Cultural and Ethnic studies
128. International Journal of Cultural Geography
129. International Journal of Cytology
130. International Journal of Dance
131. International Journal of Data Structures
132. International Journal of Demography
133. International Journal of Design of Experiments
134. International Journal of Divinity
135. International Journal of Ecological Engineering
136. International Journal of Econometrics
137. International Journal of Economic Geography
138. International Journal of Economics
139. International Journal of Education
140. International Journal of Endodontics
141. International Journal of Entomology
142. International Journal of Environmental Management
143. International Journal of Environmental Studies and Forestry
144. International Journal of European Studies
145. International Journal of Exercise Physiology
146. International Journal of Family and Consumer Science
147. International Journal of Fisheries Management
148. International Journal of Gender and Sexuality Studies
149. International Journal of Geochemistry
150. International Journal of Geodesy
151. International Journal of Geography
152. International Journal of Geomatics
153. International Journal of Geotechnical Engineering
154. International Journal of Histology
155. International Journal of Human History
156. International Journal of Human Physical Performance and Recreation
157. International Journal of Human Services
158. International Journal of Human sexuality
159. International Journal of Hydraulic Engineering
160. International Journal of Information Theory
161. International Journal of Instrumentation Engineering
162. International Journal of Interior Architecture
163. International Journal of Interior Design
164. International Journal of International Relations
165. International Journal of Journalism, Media Studies and Communication
166. International Journal of Land Management
167. International Journal of Landscape Architecture
168. International Journal of Law
169. International Journal of Leisure Studies
170. International Journal of Library and Museum Studies
171. International Journal of Linear Algebra
172. International Journal of Linguistics
173. International Journal of Literature
174. International Journal of Logic
175. International Journal of Maritime Archaeology
176. International Journal of Medical Social Work
177. International Journal of Metallurgical Engineering
178. International Journal of Military Science
179. International Journal of Mining Engineering
180. International Journal of Natural Resource Management
181. International Journal of Near Eastern Archaeology
182. International Journal of Pastoral Counseling
183. International Journal of Philosophy
184. International Journal of Photonics
185. International Journal of Physical Fitness
186. International Journal of Political Science
187. International Journal of Polymer Engineering
188. International Journal of Power Systems
189. International Journal of Pure Mathematics
190. International Journal of Quantum Computing
191. International Journal of Recreation Ecology
192. International Journal of Religion
193. International Journal of Services Computing
194. International Journal of Social Work
195. International Journal of Sociolinguistics
196. International Journal of Sociology
197. International Journal of Solid State Circuits
198. International Journal of Space Science
199. International Journal of Sports Sciences
200. International Journal of Statistics
201. International Journal of Structural Mechanics
202. International Journal of Surveying
203. International Journal of Telecommunications Engineering
204. International Journal of Textiles
205. International Journal of Thermodynamics
206. International Journal of Transportation
207. International Journal of Urban Planning
208. International Journal of Wildlife Management
209. IOSRD International Journal of Anthropology
210. IOSRD International Journal of Applied Mathematics
211. IOSRD International Journal of Business
212. IOSRD International Journal of Earth Science
213. IOSRD International Journal of Engineering
214. IOSRD International Journal of Materials Engineering
215. IOSRD International Journal of Medicine
216. IOSRD International Journal of Physics
217. IOSRD International Journal of Power Electronics
218. IOSRD International Journal of Psychology
219. IOSRD International Journal of Public Administration
220. IOSRD International Journal of Systems Science
221. Journal of Acoustics
222. Journal of Administrative law
223. Journal of Aerobiology
224. Journal of African Religions
225. Journal of Agricultural Policy
226. Journal of Agro Chemistry
227. Journal of Agroecology
228. Journal of Agrology
229. Journal of Alternative Education
230. Journal of American Politics
231. Journal of Amphibious Warfare
232. Journal of Analytical Sociology
233. Journal of Anarchist Economics
234. Journal of Animal Husbandry
235. Journal of Animation
236. Journal of Anthropological Criminology
237. Journal of Appalachian Studies
238. Journal of Applied Sociology
239. Journal of Architectural Analytics
240. Journal of Architectural Analytics
241. Journal of Architectural Sociology
242. Journal of Archival Science
243. Journal of Artillery
244. Journal of Arts Administration
245. Journal of Astrobiology
246. Journal of Astrochemistry
247. Journal of Atomic, Molecular, And Optical Physics
248. Journal of Australian History
249. Journal of Battlespace
250. Journal of Behavioural Economics
251. Journal of Bibliometrics
252. Journal of Biocybernetics
253. Journal of Black Holes
254. Journal of Broadcast Journalism
255. Journal of Buddhism
256. Journal of Business English
257. Journal of Campaigning
258. Journal of Canadian Politics
259. Journal of Canon law
260. Journal of Cartography
261. Journal of Chaos Theory
262. Journal of Child Welfare
263. Journal of Chinese Folk Religion
264. Journal of Chinese Sociology
265. Journal of Church History
266. Journal of Citation Analysis
267. Journal of Civics
268. Journal of Classical Archaeology
269. Journal of Classical Language
270. Journal of Collective Behavior
271. Journal of Commercial Policy
272. Journal of Community Informatics
273. Journal of Comparative Anatomy
274. Journal of Comparative Education
275. Journal of Comparative literature
276. Journal of Comparative Politics
277. Journal of Complex Systems
278. Journal of Complexity Economics
279. Journal of Computational Economics
280. Journal of Computational linguistics
281. Journal of Conceptual Systems
282. Journal of Condensed Matter Physics
283. Journal of Conservation Biology
284. Journal of Conservation Science
285. Journal of Constitutional law
286. Journal of Corrections
287. Journal of Creative Nonfiction
288. Journal of Critical Pedagogy
289. Journal of Cross-Cultural Studies
290. Journal of Cryobiology
291. Journal of Cultural Anthropology
292. Journal of Culturology
293. Journal of Curriculum and Instruction
294. Journal of Cybernetics
295. Journal of Cytogenetics
296. Journal of Cytohematology
297. Journal of Decision Science
298. Journal of Dental Hygiene and Epidemiology
299. Journal of Dental Surgery
300. Journal of Diachronic Linguistics
301. Journal of Digital Journalism
302. Journal of Discourse Analysis
303. Journal of Doctrine
304. Journal of Domestic Policy
305. Journal of Drawing
306. Journal of E-Business
307. Journal of Edaphology
308. Journal of Egyptology
309. Journal of Energy Policy
310. Journal of Environmental chemistry
311. Journal of Epistemology
312. Journal of Ergonomics
313. Journal of Ethnic Studies
314. Journal of Ethnolinguistics
315. Journal of Ethnology
316. Journal of Ethnomusicology
317. Journal of Etymology
318. Journal of European History
319. Journal of Experimental Archaeology
320. Journal of Fashion design
321. Journal of Feminine Psychology
322. Journal of Feminist Geography
323. Journal of Field Theory
324. Journal of Filmmaking
325. Journal of Food Policy
326. Journal of Game Design
327. Journal of Game Theory
328. Journal of Gemology
329. Journal of Grammar
330. Journal of Graphic design
331. Journal of Gravitational Astronomy
332. Journal of Haemostasiology
333. Journal of Hetero Sexism
334. Journal of Highway Safety
335. Journal of Hinduism
336. Journal of Historic Preservation
337. Journal of Historical linguistics
338. Journal of Homiletics
339. Journal of Housing
340. Journal of Human Anatomy
341. Journal of Human Geography
342. Journal of Human Resources Management
343. Journal of Human sexual behavior
344. Journal of Indology
345. Journal of Industrial design
346. Journal of Infographics
347. Journal of Information Architecture
348. Journal of Interlinguistics
349. Journal of Intermodal Transportation Studies
350. Journal of Interstellar Medium
351. Journal of Jainism
352. Journal of Legal Management
353. Journal of Lie Algebra
354. Journal of Literary Criticism
355. Journal of Liturgy
356. Journal of Marine Transportation
357. Journal of Masculine Psychology
358. Journal of Mathematical Statistics
359. Journal of Medieval literature
360. Journal of Meta Philosophy
361. Journal of Military Engineering
362. Journal of Modern Language
363. Journal of Molecular Genetics
364. Journal of Museology
365. Journal of Museum Informatics
366. Journal of Network Science
367. Journal of Numerical Simulations
368. Journal of Operating Systems
369. Journal of Organizational Studies
370. Journal of Organology
371. Journal of Painting
372. Journal of Paleoanthropology
373. Journal of Pastoral Theology
374. Journal of Philosophical Traditions
375. Journal of Photography
376. Journal of Poetry
377. Journal of Port Management
378. Journal of Post-Modern Literature
379. Journal of Prehistoric Archaeology
380. Journal of Recording
381. Journal of Religious Education Techniques
382. Journal of Rhetoric
383. Journal of Sample Survey
384. Journal of Sikhism
385. Journal of Silviculture
386. Journal of Speech Communication
387. Journal of Sports Coaching
388. Journal of Statistical Modelling
389. Journal of Synchronic Linguistics
390. Journal of Theory of Computation
391. Journal of Toy and Amusement Design
392. Journal of Visual Arts
393. Journal of VLSI Design
394. Journal of World Literature

He’s back !

The scandal-plagued, Switzerland-based publisher Frontiers has just published a chemtrails conspiracy theory paper by the same author whose earlier article was published and then retracted in an MDPI journal.

In August, 2015, I reported that J. Marvin Herndon had published a conspiracy theory paper in the MDPI journal International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health. After my blog post was published, MDPI quickly retracted the article.

Now a very similar paper has just appeared in Frontiers in Public Health. The paper is entitled “Human and environmental dangers posed by ongoing global tropospheric aerosolized particulates for weather modification.”

Frontiers states that the paper was “edited by Judi Krzyzanowski, Krzyzanowski Consulting, Canada” and “Reviewed by Otto Andersen Stiftinga Vestlandsforsking, Norway [and] Yue-Wern Huang, Missouri University of Science and Technology, USA.”

The sky is falling, again. Photo credit: J. Marvin Herndon.

In the new paper, Herndon again theorizes that the government is spraying coal fly-ash into the atmosphere:

In contrast to the presumption of academic geoengineers, covert government/military geoengineering activity has occurred over the past 70 years and has intensified since the end of the Cold War and the discovery of global warming as a national security issue (20).

Later in the article he writes,

The government/military solution to inhibit the fall of rain is to deliberately add an aerosolized pollutant to the region where clouds form to interfere with raindrop nucleation. The intentional addition of particulate pollution not only inhibits the fall of rain but also warms the atmosphere (by absorbing solar energy) and limits loss of heat radiated by Earth. Consequently, the particulate pollution creates an artificial increase in air pressure, which can block the movement of an oncoming weather front thus further keeping the sprayed area from experiencing rainfall (22, 23).

Comments left at the end of the article are beginning to detail the article’s flaws. One says,

This article has a fundamental methodological flaw in that it only compares the composition of rainwater and air particulates to coal fly ash and nothing else. Soil samples should have been used as controls. Also, a statistical analysis is completely missing. The total lack of controls and the lack of statistical analysis renders the article unsound and its conclusions invalid.

The publication of this article is further evidence that Frontiers is little more than a vanity press. The fringe science published in Frontiers journals stigmatizes the honest research submitted and published there.

I suspect that no honest publisher would have accepted this article. That’s why conspiracy theorists such as Herndon go to MDPI and Frontiers when they want to publish something — the acceptance and publication are all but guaranteed, as long as the author fee is paid.

Frontiers’ peer review process is flawed. It is stacked in favor of accepting as many papers as possible in order to generate more revenue for the company. Frontiers is included on my list, and I recommend against publishing in its journals, which are rather expensive to publish in anyway.

Appendix:  Additional criticism of Herndon’s article is posted in the blog Metabunk (scroll down to the 2016 comments).

Worth a read …

An article just published in the University of Toronto Press’s Journal of Scholarly Publishing details a test of several scholarly publishers that sent spam emails to the author. She submitted secondary school essays to determine whether they’d be accepted for publication by the journals.

The article is “An Expanded Approach to Evaluating Open Access Journals.” In the article, author Dr. Margaret Ray of the University of Mary Washington describes what happened after she sent several essays written by high-school students to journals she received spam emails from.

Preceding Dr. Ray’s methodology and results is a deep and interesting commentary on scholarly open-access publishing. A professor of economics, Dr. Ray contextualizes her experiment in the broad economic context of open-access.

Though the paper appears in a subscription journal, the publisher has kindly provided me with a link to share with those interested in accessing and reading the article: http://bit.ly/OpenAccess_Ray.

A selection from the paper (p. 322).

Appendix: The article’s citation:

Ray, M. (2016). An expanded approach to evaluating open-access journals. Journal of Scholarly Publishing 47(4), 307-327. http://doi.org/10.3138/jsp.47.4.307

All rights reserved.

Scholarly open-access publishing was designed to be both gratis (free to access online) and libre (free to re-use with proper attribution). However, in my experience, many — if not most — of the publishers and journals on my lists require copyright transfer and include copyright statements on the articles they publish, copyrighted by the publisher or journal. Given the vast number of journals and publishers now on my lists, it may be that a majority of open-access journals require copyright transfer and are not “libre” at all.

I’ve observed that most open-access journals and publishers based in South Asia and West Africa require copyright transfer. Typically, they have a form, in either PDF, HTML, or DOC format, that the author(s) must sign, scan, and return. The copyright transfer statements generally look something like this:

What’s yours is ours.

Here are some example copyright transfer forms from various journals:

• The Standard International Journals [.pdf]
• International Journal of Health Sciences and Research [.doc]
• International Journal of Medical Science and Education (IJMSE) [.pdf]
• Albert Science International Organization [.html]
• International Journal of Research in Library Science [.pdf]

Also, most of these for-profit journals that require copyright transfer also charge authors to publish. In the case of for-profit publishers, I don’t think it makes sense for a scholarly author to both transfer copyright and pay to publish.

I’ve seen “copyright transfer” forms that are so poorly written they don’t actually transfer copyright. Here are some examples:

• International Journal of Advanced Engineering, Science and Technological Research (IJAESTR) [.doc]
• International Journal of Research in Science & Technology (IJRST) [.pdf]
• GreenField Advanced Research Publishing House [.doc]

There are also some journals that say that by submitting a paper, the authors automatically transfer copyright. Here are two examples:

First, the International Journal of Advanced and Applied Sciences indicates that copyright is automatically transferred to the journal:

Automatic copyright transfer.

Perhaps deceptively, the journal displays the CC BY logo on its main page. Its articles bear copyright statements like this:

Here’s the second example:

Automatic from the people.

DAMA International. They say,

Copyright Policy: Submission of a manuscript implies that the work has not been published before, and that it is not under consideration for publication elsewhere. Acceptance of a manuscript will automatically transfer all copyrights of the manuscript to store, publish, distribute, access, and make commercial use of the article.

Conclusion

Many — perhaps most — scholarly open-access journals require copyright transfer. Some of the copyright transfer forms are so poorly drafted they don’t actually transfer copyright. It makes no sense to pay a for-profit company to publish your article while simultaneously surrendering your copyright to the firm. Some open-access publishers and journals imply a contract that automatically transfers copyright from author to publisher when the author submits a paper for publication. □

Great graphics, but rubbish journals.

There’s a new open-access publisher with a great name — Science Research Library — and with great graphics on its main page. However, the rest of the publisher’s website is merely designed to entrap authors.

The ‘contact us’ page of Science Research Library doesn’t list any physical headquarters location, but it’s easy to tell it’s from India.

The publisher launched recently with ten duplicative and unneeded journals.

Worthless awards.

To lure article submissions, the publisher promises two awards. According to the publisher [sic throughout],

Science Research Library (SRL) announces “Young Researcher” to the author(s) who publish minimum 5 articles in any of SRL journals.

The award is only a certificate, emailed to the winner. The terms for the other award they give, the best paper award, are a similar rip-off. Winning the award will be a mark of disgrace and will hurt the unlucky winner’s career more than help it.

Publishing an article in one of the journals costs $100 for researchers from developed countries and $50 for those from undeveloped countries.

The website has a scrolling logo display bar that says, “SRL journals will be indexed in” The scrolling logos include resources that are not academic indexes, and they include several fake impact factor companies.

Even their indexing is a lie.

No journal or publisher should make promises about future indexing, and researchers should avoid any journal that makes such promises.

The publisher’s main page contains a dark representation of a forest, an image that looks like a scene from a computer game. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn the image is pirated.

Many of the predatory publishers originating in India have appealing graphics, but, as publishers, their practices, content, and reputations are unworthy.

Despite the spiffy graphics and meretricious awards, researchers should avoid tricky, bogus publishers such as Science Research Library.

Appendix: List of Science Research Library journals as of 2016-07-23:

1. Frontiers in Biomedical and Life Sciences
2. International Journal of Advanced Research and Reviews
3. International Journal of Commerce, Economics and Business Management
4. International Journal of Engineering, Sciences, Technology and Management
5. International Journal of Environmental Pollution and Control Research
6. International Journal of Medical and Pharmaceutical Research
7. International Journal of Microbiology, Biochemistry and Molecular Biology
8. International Journal of Recent Advances in Biotechnology
9. Journal of Environmental and Applied Bioresearch
10. Social Sciences and Humanities: An International Research Journal

The sparc has gone out.

Two new fake impact factor companies have appeared: SPARC Indexing and Root Indexing. They are both counterfeit metrics companies, in my opinion, and any journal that displays numbers from either of these two companies should be avoided completely.

SPARC Indexing

The first one, SPARC Indexing, is interesting because “SPARC” is also the name of an open-access advocacy group connected to the Association of Research Libraries. The purpose of the library SPARC group is to provide lifetime employment to open-access advocates who travel from conference to conference repeating their hackneyed manifesto about killing off Elsevier and making all scholarly publishing open-access, like the journals on my lists. Except they don’t really want open-access, because that would mean an end to their jobs — sorry, I digress.

Looking at the SPARC Indexing website, we see this prominent statement: “An ISO 9001-2008 Certified Organization.” In my experience, whenever a publisher or metrics company claims it’s “An ISO 9001-2008 certified organization,” that really means it is NOT an ISO 9001-2008 certified organization. And that’s the case here — they are merely using the ISO name to make their fake company look legitimate.

It’s not apparent where SPARC is based, for their “contact” page does not list any location. The company doesn’t understand what “indexing” is in the context of scholarly journals. They think indexing is including the name of a journal on their list of journals with the fake impact factors they have assigned.

SPARC provides this naïve and illiterate self-description:

SPARC Indexing offering academic database services to researcher. Indexing is important parameter for any Research Journal/Serial Publication to increase their visibility so that maximum researchers can explore new innovative ideas and opportunities all around the world which includes citation indexing, analysis, and maintains citation databases covering thousands of academic journals, books, proceedings and any approved documents.

Fake metrics companies, like SPARC Indexing, are a side effect of open-access publishing, and just like open-access advocacy organizations, they will probably never go away.

Another fake metric.

Root Indexing

Root Indexing is just as bad. It’s “contact” page is also non-transparent about its location.

Root falsely claims to be a “society,” and its self-description goes like this:

Root Society for Indexing and Impact Factor Service (rootindexing.com) is a society to provide indexing to all types of online and offline journals to get international visibility of research and also provide impact factor (RIF-Root Impact Factor) to the journal to impove [sic] journal visibility in the world of research.  Lot of members are giving their service to this society. It is a completely free service to index any journal in the world.

It helps user to find a suitable international journal to publish their work. All indexed journals will be submitted in all search engines, online libraries, social media etc to get more researchers under a single platform rootindexing.com.

Why would anyone want to use a metric from a company that can’t even communicate properly? Looking at Root’s website, I see 249 journals already included in its database.

Summary

I recommend using both SPARC and Root’s lists as blacklists. Don’t submit any papers to journals included in their lists. It’s possible that some open-access publishers are the developers of these and other fake metrics, and they use them to promote their journals.

The only authentic impact factor is assigned by the company Thomson Reuters in its product InCites Journal Citation Reports. Don’t use or trust an impact factor from any other source. Your librarian can help you access the authentic resource.

Appendix: Selections from the domain name registration data for the two fake companies:

A. SPARC Indexing

Registrant Name: Mukesh Arora
Registrant Organization:
Registrant Street: Infront of choudhary Aman Dharam kanta,
Registrant Street: Pugal Road, Bikaner
Registrant City: Bikaner
Registrant State/Province: Rajasthan
Registrant Postal Code: 334004
Registrant Country: IN
Registrant Phone: +91.9413112979
Registrant Phone Ext:
Registrant Fax:
Registrant Fax Ext:
Registrant Email: mukesh.ece.2008@gmail.com

B. Root Indexing Domain Name: rootindexing.com

Registrar URL: http://www.godaddy.com
Registrant Name: Kumar Desai
Registrant Organization: Rootindexing
Name Server: NS11.DOMAINCONTROL.COM
Name Server: NS12

Bad management.

I learned recently that the domain name for one of the publishers on my list had expired. In investigating this, I learned that the publisher’s lone journal has been sold, apparently, to OMICS International, the most notorious and predatory scholarly publisher ever to exist.

The publisher was called Management Journals. Its domain name expired on July 11, 2016 and has not been renewed. It published only one journal, the International Journal of Economics and Management Sciences (IJEMS), which started publishing in 2011.

Management Journals claimed to be based in Staten Island, New York, but I think it was really run from Pakistan.

Domain name expired, with no explanation, no re-directs.

Looking at the Wayback Machine, it appears the journal published a total of 26 issues from the period 2011-2014. I originally thought that the published content had been lost, as is normally the case when an open-access publisher goes out of business. But I searched the titles of some of the old articles to see whether they still existed anywhere on the internet and found they were indeed still available.

This is what the journal looked like under its original publisher.

I discovered the journal was sold to OMICS International, and they have transferred all or most of the articles from the old journal to its new website.  OMICS has given the journal a new editorial board and a new, fake impact factor.

OMICS International has for several years been spamming journals offering to buy them, and some of these emails have been forwarded to me. This appears to be a case where they were successful in acquiring a low-quality journal and fitting it into their journal portfolio, which is already full of rubbish journals.

Reborn under the banner of the worst publisher ever.

There’s no re-direct from the old URLs to the new ones. The lesson here is that if you publish in a low-quality, open-access journal, your article may someday appear in a journal from a stigmatized publisher such OMICS International.

OMICS International’s management suffers from megalomania and wants to take over and rule scholarly publishing. The publisher doesn’t manage any peer review for most of the articles it publishes, and it is abusive towards scholarly authors, as I have documented many times here.

Again, be careful where you publish, or your work may appear in a journal from a publisher like OMICS International.

Complete rubbish.

You have probably received a clever, personalized, and manipulative spam email from a journal called Internal Medicine Review. The email includes a purported email exchange between two people at the journal, with one asking the other to invite you to submit follow-up article to your earlier article. Here’s the backstory.

Internal Medicine Review is a completely fake medical journal that falsely claims to be based in Washington, D.C. This journal alone accounts for a good percentage of the predatory spam emails sent out in 2016. I personally have been hit by their spam several times.

The spam panders to and attempts to manipulate the recipient by feigning a conversation between two imaginary journal executives, one asking the other to contact the recipient and ask him or her to submit a paper to the journal. Here’s the text of the spam email I received recently:

Dear Dr. Beall,

My last email must have reached you at a bad time so I am following up. If you are not the right person to talk to about this please let me know or feel free to forward this email.

Sincerely,

Lisseth

From: Dr. Lisseth Tovar, M.D. [mailto:lisseth.tovar@internalmedicinereview.org]
Sent: Monday, July 11, 2016 7:33 AM
To: Dr. Beall
Subject: manuscript submission from Dr. Beall

Dear Dr. Beall,

I hope this email finds you well. My colleague Milena asked if I could get in touch with you about a paper you authored titled “Predatory publishers are corrupting open access.” Firstly thank you for taking the time to publish this, it was an interesting read. I am hoping to have the opportunity to discuss having a short followup or perhaps a review article published in one of the next issues of the Internal Medicine Review. I think our readers could be interested in a paper with information from any continued research or new data since this was published. It would not have to be a long article, but if you don’t have time for this perhaps you could also reach out to the co-authors or one of your students to collaborate.

If you have moved on from this line of research I am certainly interested in knowing more about your current projects; perhaps there is the potential for an article that would fit our journal. If you have any questions about whether or not a certain subject fits our scope I can put you in contact with Dr. Chadwick Prodromos from our editorial board.

Could you please let me know your thoughts on this?

Sincerely,

Dr. Lisseth Tovar, M. D.
Senior Editor
Internal Medicine Review
http://www.internalmedicinereview.org

From: Mihaleva, Milena [mailto:milena.mihaleva@internalmedicinereview.org]
Sent: Saturday, July 9, 2016 6:54 PM
To: Dr. Lisseth Tovar
Subject: manuscript submission from Dr. Beall

Lisseth,

Would you contact the authors of “Predatory publishers are corrupting open access” about possibly preparing something for the next issue? Or possibly September? Let me know if you can’t find the article and I will send it.

Thank you,

Milena

Tens of thousands of researchers have received similar, personalized spam emails. They are sent wantonly to people in all fields of study, not just internal medicine.

The journal is not open-access; when you navigate to open an article, a link appears that says “Subscribers only.” Following the link brings the user to an empty page.

In fact, there are no subscribers — the entire operation is a scam. I think Internal Medicine Review is connected to the predatory publisher called KEI Journals. KEI claims it’s based in California, but they use a mail forwarding service there.

More complete rubbish.

My understanding is that both Internal Medicine Review and KEI journals are the efforts of Dylan Fazel, of Anoka, Minnesota. He’s been a scholarly publisher since he was in high school, and he’s made a lot of money. His telephone number is (612) 524-5566. When you call it, a recording plays, then the call is transferred to an overseas number.

Pay a princely sum to hide your research.

By the way, if you publish in Internal Medicine Review — a closed-access, subscription journal with no subscribers — you must pay $1250-3000.

Appendix: List of KEI Journals’ titles as of 2016-07-28:

1. Biomedical Engineering Review
2. International Biology Review
3. International Chemistry Review
4. Journal of Economics and Banking
5. Medical Research Archives
6. Quarterly Physics Review

Bad management.

The number of scholarly open-access publishers and standalone journals based in India is skyrocketing. Everyone there — it seems — wants to get in on the open-access gold rush. Here I describe a typical Indian open-access publisher, the so-called Jabalpur Management Association.

I don’t think the Jabalpur Management Association is really an authentic “association.” Instead, I think it’s really just a one-man operation, the man being Mr. Anil Mehra, who is running the operation out of his house or a small storefront. Jabalpur is a city in India’s Madhya Pradesh state, located in the center of the country.

Colorful rubbish.

One of the things that distinguishes this publisher is the colorful design of its journal covers. The design makes the covers stand out — much like children’s books. Some include pictures lifted from the internet.

The “association’s” twenty journals are all broad in scope and cover academic fields already saturated with open-access journals, so they’re just noise. In fact, they have few published articles, as researchers have increasingly learned to avoid phony open-access journals.

More rubbish in a colorful package.

The Jabalpur Management Association offers two degrees: Diploma in Caterinng Management [sic, they mean “catering”] and a Diploma in Digital Marketing. So, the same guy publishing Global Journal of Surgery is also teaching classes on catering.

Some of the journal covers display ISBNs instead of ISSNs, additional evidence of non-standard or inept practices.

Everybody in India wants to be a scholarly publisher, it seems. India’s population is 1.2 billion, so soon there will be 1.2 billion scholarly publishers in India.

While we want to maintain freedom of the press, there is an increasing need to credential scholarly publishers. Science and other research is too important to humans to allow its publication by inexperienced, open-access profiteers.

Appendix: List of Jabalpur Management Association journals as of 2016-08-03

1. Global Journal of Basic and Applied Chemical Sciences (GJBACS)
2. Global Journal of Basic and Applied Medical Sciences (GJBAMS)
3. Global Journal of Basic and Applied Medical Sciences (GBAMS)
4. Global Journal of Bio-Protocols (GJBP)
5. Global Journal of Biotechnology
6. Global Journal of Engineering, Science and Social Science Studies (GJESS)
7. Global Journal of Fundamental and Applied Life Sciences (GJFALS)
8. Global Journal of Innovative Research and Review (GJRR)
9. Global Journal of Law (GJL)
10. Global Journal of Library Sciences (GJLS)
11. Global Journal of Medical Case Reports (GJMCR)
12. Global Journal of Microbiology (GJM)
13. Global Journal of Multidisciplinary Studies (GJMS)
14. Global Journal of Pharmaceutical Sciences (GJPHS)
15. Global Journal of Physics and Mathematical Sciences (GJPMS)
16. Global Journal of Plant Sciences (GJPS)
17. Global Journal of Surgery (GJS)
18. Global Journal of Zoology (GJZ)
19. International Journal of Animal, Veterinary, Fishery, and Allied Sciences (IJAVFAS)
20. South Asia Journal of Multidisciplinary Studies (SAJMS)

Fake meatballs

Here’s a new scholarly open-access publisher that exploits the name of Sweden: Swedish Scientific Publications. Predatory publishers often commandeer the names of countries to make their illicit schemes appear legitimate, and I think that’s the case here.

I first heard of Swedish Scientific Publications last week through a tweet from Dr. Elisabeth Bik:

As Dr. Bik indicates, the publisher implies it only wants male peer reviewers.

Those Swedes sure are sexist!

In its list of requirements for peer reviewers, Swedish Scientific Publications uses the pronoun “He” exclusively. The publisher says “He must be aware of the value of the review process He must be interested and expert [sic] in the specific field.”

The publisher has many other weaknesses and shortcomings as well.

• Its 23 journals all boast fake impact factors, a tactic designed to attract article submissions from researchers needing to publish in impact factor journals.
• The text on the website is full of grammatical, idiomatic, and editing errors.
• The publisher unwarrantedly displays the logo of Göteborgs universitet on the main page, though there is no association between it and the university.
• The publisher makes false claims about where its journals are indexed, including falsely claiming they are indexed in Scopus.
• Some of the journals appear to also be published by the predatory publisher Associated Asia Research Foundation, also on my list. So the owners are recycling some journals from another predatory publisher they own.

Poor Sweden. It’s formerly good name is being polluted and abused by a low-quality, predatory publisher.

I recommend against submitting manuscripts to both the Associated Asia Research Foundation and to Swedish Scientific Publications.

Hat tip: Dr. Elisabeth Bik

Appendix: List of Swedish Scientific Publications as of 2016-08-05

1. GE-International Journal of Engineering Research (GE-IJER)
2. GE-International Journal of Management Research (GE-IJMR)
3. International Archives of Integrated Medicine (IAIM)
4. International Journal in Commerce, IT and Social Sciences (IJCISS)
5. International Journal in IT and Engineering
6. International Journal in Management and Social Science
7. International journal in physical and applied sciences (IJPAS)
8. International Journal of Advanced Research in Engineering and Applied Sciences (IJAREAS)
9. International Journal of Advanced Research in IT and Engineering (IJARIE)
10. International Journal of Advanced Research in Management and Social Sciences (IJARMSS)
11. International Journal of Computer Networks and Communications Security (IJCNCS)
12. International Journal of Drug Regulatory Affairs (IJDRA)
13. International Journal of Research in Commerce, IT, Engineering and Social Sciences (IJRCIESS)
14. International Research Journal of Human Resources and Social Sciences (IRJHRSS)
15. International Research Journal of Humanities, Language and Literature (IRJHLL)
16. International Research Journal of Management and Commerce (IRJMC)
17. International Research Journal of Marketing and Economics (IRJME)
18. International Research Journal of Mathematics, Engineering and It (IRJMEIT)
19. International Research Journal of Natural and Applied Sciences (IRJNAS)
20. Journal of Biological and Chemical Research (JBCR)
21. The Journal MVZ Cordoba
22. The Recent Advances in Academic Science Journal (RAASJ)
23. World Journal of Biology and Medical Science (WJBMS)

Do-it-yourself taxonomy.

A Peru-based open-access journal devoted to plant taxonomy is bulldozing its way into the field. The “Scientific Editor” and co-author of most of its published articles are one and the same. Taxonomy, a precise science, is being damaged by unvetted, unselective, and activist open-access journals.

The journal — Weberbauerella — takes its name from a legume native to South America. It’s the effort of two guys, Eduardo Antonio Molinari-Novoa — apparently a graduate student at Peru’s Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos — and Carlos Enrique Sánchez Ocharan, who has some connection to the Universidad Nacional Agraria La Molina, also in Peru. Neither has a graduate degree, as far as I can tell.

The journal has so far published a single “volume” only, volume 1 (2016), and Molinari-Novoa, by my count, appears as a co-author on 15 of the volume’s 19 articles.

The journal has a “Scientific board,” which apparently functions as an editorial board. It has eight members, all from Peru. Carlos Enrique Sánchez Ocharan serves as the journal’s Editor-in-Chief, and our prolific author, Eduardo Antonio Molinari-Novoa, is the “Scientific editor.” These two are also two of the eight members of the Scientific Board.

An annotated bibliography entry in the Manual de Plantas de Costa Rica criticizes one of Eduardo Antonio Molinari-Novoa’s Weberbauerella articles. The entry says:

Molinari-Novoa, E. A.  2016. Two new lamiid families for the Americas.  Weberbauerella 1(7): 1–4.

So now we have two new family names, both potentially applicable to genera occurring in Costa Rica, validated by an individual who evidently spends much of his time surfing the Internet to peruse the careful work of others in search of just this sort of opportunity, and who now has his own vanity-press, online journal to facilitate the whole nefarious enterprise.  Enough said.  Namaceae Molinari, segregated from Hydrophyllaceae, would include four genera, one of which (Wigandia) is represented in Costa Rica.  Peltantheraceae Molinari accommodates the monospecific Peltanthera, widespread in the Neotropics (including Costa Rica), which has been bounced among Buddlejaceae, Loganiaceae, and Solanaceae, and could eventually find a home in Gesneriaceae (see under “The Angiosperm Phylogeny Group,” at the head of this column).  Oddly, the subfamily names Namoideae Molinari and Peltantheroideae Molinari are also validated here (can a family have just one subfamily?).  All the new taxa are minimally diagnosed.

Sánchez Ocharan (left) and Molinari-Novoa.

Note that the entry indicates Molinari-Novoa has named a taxonomic family after himself, Peltantheraceae Molinari, and two sub-families also.

I wrote about predatory journals and taxonomy previously in 2013. In that blog post, I cited this article:

Kaiser, H., Crother, B. I., Kelly, C. M. R., Luiselli, L., O’Shea, M., Ota, H., et al. (2013). Best practices: In the 21st century, taxonomic decisions in herpetology are acceptable only when supported by a body of evidence and published via peer-review. Herpetological Review 44(1), 8–23.

I think this passage from the article is relevant here:

For taxonomists, this [easy publishing] trend is both a curse and a blessing. Even as the path to publication has been simplified and the time to publication shortened by the emergence of reputable, rigorously scientific, peer-reviewed, and well-edited electronic or rapid-print journals (e.g., ZooKeys, Zootaxa), publishing is no longer a controlled environment and there are outlets where nonscientific and misguided taxonomy is presented as fact. Differentiating between science and non-science in taxonomy is a challenge (p. 8-9).

Will taxonomy survive the transition to open access?

Relatively awful

A new, India-based predatory publisher has emerged — Einstein International Journal Organization. The publisher gratuitously uses the name of one of one of history’s greatest scientists to attract manuscripts and author fees from unwary researchers for its nine anti-journals.

Two things stand out about this publisher’s journals: they combine multiple fields of study, including fields not normally treated together in the same journal, and they are in some cases devoted to pseudo-science.

My favorite is the EIJO Journal of Civil Engineering, Architecture, Interior Design and Innovative Research (EIJO–CEAIDIR). You don’t see too many scholarly journals that cover interior design, and there are even fewer that combine this field with civil engineering. Of course, the publisher claims — falsely — that the journal has an impact factor of 2.078. Pretty much all journals from India have impact factors now, most of them made up.

Colorful junk science.

Another of their journals is the EIJO Journal of Homeopathic, Unani Medicine and Innovative Research (EIJO-HUMIR). Unani is a pseudo-science associated with the silly “cupping” trend. This journal at least does not list any impact factor, and it hasn’t published any articles yet, thankfully. It’s just someone’s bad idea at this stage.

The publisher is based in Jaipur, Rajasthan. It requires its unlucky authors to both pay to publish ($100) and transfer their copyright. The author fees are to be deposited directly into Mrs. Nitu’s personal savings account:

Profit center.

I think that if Albert Einstein were alive today to read the journals published by the Einstein International Journal Organization he would be sickened, and no amount of lead-tainted treatment from pseudo-sciences such as Ayurveda or Unani would make him well again.

Additional reading:

Beninger, P. G., Beall, J. & Shumway, S. E. (2016). Debasing the currency of science: The growing menace of predatory open access journals. Journal of Shellfish Research, 35(1), 1-5.

Appendix: List of Einstein International Journal Organization journals as of 2016-08-10

1. EIJO Journal of Ayurveda, Herbal Medicine and Innovative Research (EIJO–AHMIR)
2. EIJO Journal of Bio-Technology, Food Technology, Agriculture and Innovative Research (EIJO–JBTFTAIR)
3. EIJO Journal of Civil Engineering, Architecture, Interior Design and Innovative Research (EIJO–CEAIDIR)
4. EIJO Journal of Engineering, Technology and Innovative Research (EIJO–JETIR)
5. EIJO Journal of Homeopathic, Unani Medicine and Innovative Research (EIJO-HUMIR)
6. EIJO Journal of Humanities, Social Affair, Management and Innovative Research (EIJO–JHSAMIR)
7. EIJO Journal of Law, Cyber Crime, Justice and Innovative Research (EIJO-JLCCJIR)
8. EIJO Journal of Medical, Health Science, and Innovative Research (EIJO–JMHSIR)
9. EIJO Journal of Science, Technology and Innovative Research (EIJO–JSTIR)

Good, cheap, fast: choose one.

Scientific spammer PLOS ONE is an ongoing source of amusement. Its peer review is regularly called into question, with the journal accepting unscientific papers. PLOS ONE increasingly resembles a lonely and un-selective digital repository more than a scholarly publication. Here’s a report of another PLOS ONE blooper.

Dr. Norman Sleep is a geophysicist at Stanford University. Recently, he received a spam email from PLOS ONE inviting him to conduct an ad hoc peer review of an article submitted to the journal (apparently PLOS ONE’s 5,000-member editorial board is only for show).

Here’s part of the spam email Dr. Sleep received from PLOS ONE:

From: PLOS ONE <em@editorialmanager.com>
Reply-To: PLOS ONE <plosone@plos.org>
Date: Tuesday, August 16, 2016 at 9:03 PM
To: Norman Sleep <norm@stanford.edu>
Subject: Reminder: Pending invitation to review PLOS ONE manuscript about to expire – PONE-D-16-24600 – [EMID:960690e1f258b755]

*Do not reply directly to this email. Please use the links below to accept or decline this assignment to avoid receiving automated reminders.

—————————-

Dear Dr Sleep,

We are writing to follow up on your invitation from Dr. Harry Zhang to review the below manuscript, which has been submitted for publication in PLOS ONE. The Academic Editor values your expertise and would greatly appreciate your time in reviewing the submission. This invitation will time out in 24 hours, at which point you will be unable to accept the invitation and review the manuscript. Please click the “accept” link below if you would like to evaluate this submission.

PONE-D-16-24600
Physical activity, energy expenditure, nutritional habits, quality of sleep and stress levels in shift-working health care personnel

The author list and abstract are appended below in addition to more detailed information about PLOS ONE and its editorial criteria. If you accept this assignment, you are confirming that you have no competing interests that may affect your ability to provide an objective evaluation. Our Competing Interests policy can be found at http://www.plosone.org/static/competing.action. If you have any potential competing interests, you should decline this assignment.

—————————-

So, as you see, the journal solicited Dr. Sleep — a geophysicist — to peer review a manuscript about sleep, which is far outside his area of expertise but matches his surname.

This is evidence that PLOS ONE is using a flawed, automated system for selecting peer reviewers.

Publishing in PLOS ONE is easy; the journal is not very selective. Its editorial board of over five thousand members apparently doesn’t perform too many peer reviews, and the journal mainly exists to generate income to subsidize the publishing of PLOS’s specialized journals.

Appendix: A spam email from PLOS ONE I received recently.

The rubbish publishers keep on appearing.

This blog post profiles three new scholarly open-access publishers added to my list in August, 2016. The names cover the alphabet from A to Z: American Journal, Scholars Middle East Publishers, and Zygoscient. Additionally, I append a short description of a standalone predatory journal that took liberties with a United States Government logo.

As American as curried rice.

1. American Journal. This publisher has a grammatical error in its name, for it publishes three open-access journals and should be called ‘American Journals.” It actually is based in the United States, unlike most OA publishers that exploit North American geography in their names.

It’s based in Connecticut, and it’s owned by a bunch of Bangladeshis or Bangladeshi-Americans that live in the New York City Area. I wrote about them three and a half years ago. Among all their open-access imprints, they publish thousands of journals.

Everything’s a lie here.

2. Scholars Middle East Publishers claims it’s based in Dubai. However, most of its journals steal the name of a neighboring kingdom and start with the phrase, “Saudi Journal of … ”

In all the firm publishes eleven journals, with twelve others listed as “upcoming.” Here are their instructions for submitting a paper: “Manuscript should submit along with electronically to the email IDs : scholarsmepub@gmail.com.”

Generous, they only charge $25 per paper, but given the abysmal quality of this publisher, even this rock-bottom APC may be too much. Suspiciously, they also accept payments in Indian rupees.

Perhaps this publisher should be re-named to “Scholars South Asia Publishers.”

Zygo-trash.

3. Zygoscient is a brand-new publisher of six medical journals that smells like OMICS International. It says, “Contact info, Los Angeles, California,” which only tells us it’s headquarters is most certainly somewhere other than LA.

I got a copy of one of their spam emails, and it was signed by “Michael Skyler,” certainly a contrived name. The spam begins,

I hope you are doing well!

We are truly obliged to introduce our Journal of Clinical Cardiology and Cardiac Therapy which has been recently launched and is looking forward to frame up an eminent and outstanding first issue with the best quality articles.

We have chosen selected scientists who have contributed excellent work to the scientific community, thus I kindly request you to contribute Research, Case report, Letter to editor, Short communication or Review manuscript for publication in our Inaugural issue.

See? Typical OMICS International prose. OMICS International is trying to saturate scholarly publishing and completely take it over. It is creating dozens of bogus publishers such as Zygoscient.

This publisher is the last one on my list, alphabetically.

Bonus:

Stealing from the U.S. Government.

The image above is a screenshot of part of the homepage of the International Journal of Engineering Science Invention Research & Development, based somewhere in India.

Does the circular logo look familiar? It’s derived, probably as a trademark violation, from the logo of the United States National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

The original logo.

Predatory publishers continue to increase in number. The problem is not going away anytime soon.

Appendix:

List of American Journal journals as of 2016-08-19:

1. American Journal of Engineering & Natural Sciences (AJENS)
2. American Journal of Business Studies (AJBS)
3. American Journal of Social Studies (AJSS)

List of Scholars Middle East Publishers journals as of 2016-08-19:

1. Saudi Journal of Biomedical Research (SJBR)
2. Saudi Journal of Business and Management Studies
3. Saudi Journal of Engineering and Technology
4. Saudi Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences
5. Saudi Journal of Medical and Pharmaceutical Sciences
6. Saudi Journal of Pathology and Microbiology (SJPM)
7. Scholars Bulletin
8. Haya: The Saudi Journal of Life Sciences
9. Saudi Journal of Oral and Dental Research (SJODR)
10. Saudi Journal of Biomedical Research (SJBR)
11. Saudi Journal of Medicine (SJM)

List of Zygoscient journals as of 2016-08-19:

1. International Journal of STD and AIDS Research (IJSTADAIDSR)
2. Journal of Anesthetic Research and Pain Medicine (JARPM)
3. Journal of Clinical Cardiology and Cardiac Therapy (JCCCT)
4. Journal of Diabetes Mellitus and Metabolic Syndrome (JDMMS)
5. Journal of Stem Cells and Regenerative Therapy (JSCRT)
6. Obstetrics and Gynaecology Insights (OGI)

Definitely worth a read.

I subscribe to several saved-search, citation, and table-of-contents alerts, and through these, I learn of 10-20 newly-published scholarly articles each week that match my research interests. Of these, I generally select four or five to print out and read. Every few months or so, one of the articles I read stands out as exemplary and memorable. Here is one such article.

The article is entitled, “Evaluating Claims to Avoid Pseudoscientific and Unproven Practices in Special Education.” The sole author is Dr. Jason C. Travers of the University of Kansas. The article stands out for its description of the problem of pseudoscience in the context of contemporary scholarly publishing, for its clear prose, and for the applicability of the article’s findings beyond the author’s own field of special education.

The fact that the article cites me is pretty nice also.

Predatory publishers have drawn renewed attention to published pseudoscience. Those wanting to publish junk science have found predatory open-access journals happy to take their money and publish their rubbish science as if it were authentic.

A table from the article that compares science and pseudoscience.

Here’s a short selection from the article:

A main feature of pseudoscience is its emphasis on seeking support for an already-held belief, usually through low-grade forms of evidence (e.g., testimonials, anecdotes, coincidences). In other words, pseudoscience tends to focus on confirming what is already believed. Conversely, science requires suspension of belief in a claim until sufficient evidence is available.

Pseudoscience typically is associated with grandiose claims that are not supported by evidence or, in some cases, in direct opposition with evidence. Science is conservative and therefore more likely to result in gradual changes that are informed by the collection of facts. Whereas science values open-mindedness and results in changes in belief based on new evidence, pseudoscience typically is dogmatic in the face of new evidence. Promoters of pseudoscientific interventions typically use convoluted language and borrow jargon to appear more credible (e.g., “brain-based learning”), but scientists use precise terminology with explicit procedures conducive to verification by independent researchers. And while scientists seek out and value criticism from their peers, pseudoscientists view critics as adversaries and often work alone.

Reading the article reminded me of the following:

• Scientific conclusions may be unpopular, yet science values integrity and truth, even when prevailing opinion disagrees. Science should not be democratized.
• Attention metrics in scholarly publishing are undermining science. Anyone with internet access can increase the altmetrics of a pseudoscience article, increasing its popularity, a new proxy for impact.
• Science’s gatekeeping and quality control function, peer review, is more essential than ever. It’s imperfect, but there are no viable alternatives.

Travers’ article provides a useful overview of fallacious and pseudoscientific thought in science and how to recognize and avoid it.

Appendix: The article’s current citation:

Travers, Jason C. (2016). Evaluating claims to avoid pseudoscientific and unproven practices in special education. Intervention in School and Clinic. [In press]. http://doi.org/10.1177/1053451216659466

Can’t say no.

An associate dean from the University of South Florida (USF) is the editor-in-chief of six questionable, open-access journals and serves on the editorial boards of dozens more. He lists them in his CV.

Dr. Mark S. Kindy is — ironically — the Associate Dean for Research and Innovation as the University of South Florida’s College of Pharmacy. He’s also associated with the VA Hospital in Tampa, according to his lengthy, 41-page CV.

His CV indicates he is the Editor-in-Chief of the following open-access journals (publisher name in parentheses):

• International Journal of Neuropathology (Columbia International Publishing)
• Internal Medicine: Open Access (OMICS International)
• Journal of Immunology and Immunotherapeutics (Sciforschen)
• Scholar’s Advances in Animal & Veterinary Research (Mr. Scholar)
• Austin Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s Disease (Austin Publishing Group)

What serious researcher would want to edit a journal from a publisher named “Mr. Scholar“? Some of the above journals have more than one EiC. Also, for Scholar’s Advances in Animal & Veterinary Research, the journal lists him as one of three “Section Editors” rather than Editor-in-Chief, as his vita claims.

The publisher of each of the above journals is on my list. Both OMICS International and Austin Publishing Group are super predatory and have victimized many honest researchers. The United States Federal Trade Commission recently launched a lawsuit against OMICS International, an action I welcome.

By my count, Kindy’s vita claims he has served on the editorial board of 121 different scholarly journals, including both current and former service. I haven’t checked every one, but most of them appear to me to be journals belonging to publishers on my list. One of the journals he lists is an oceanography journal, far from his own field of pharmacy.

I learned about Kindy because a new predatory publisher is spamming for article submissions using his name. The publisher is called Research Open, which launched recently with four broad-scoped, open-access journals.

Rubbish Open

Kindy is listed as one of two co-Editors-in-Chief of Research Open’s Internal Medicine Research—Open Journal, though this service does not appear on his vita yet. I think Research Open may be an effort of OMICS International. The publisher is establishing dozens of smaller open-access publishers, saturating the scholarly publishing industry with junk journals, such as the ones Kindy oversees.

Analysis

Some researchers choose to beef up their CVs by publishing in easy-acceptance, pay-to-publish journals and by joining the editorial boards of such journals. Such publishing and memberships are certainly within the bounds of academic freedom, but hiring processes at serious research universities ought to eliminate from consideration job candidates who exploit easy publishing and automatic acceptance on journal editorial boards.

I don’t understand why the University of South Florida has hired an Associate Dean for Research and Innovation whose record indicates association with journals from so many disreputable publishers. Typically, predatory publishers don’t carry out an authentic peer review, and they accept papers regardless of quality just to earn fees from the authors. This practice is contrary to the missions of research universities, institutions that typically value scientific integrity and selectivity.

Some — perhaps most — of Kindy’s published research appears in reputable journals, so I don’t fully understand why he would serve on editorial boards of so many predatory journals yet publish in reputable ones. Perhaps it’s because being a member of a predatory editorial board requires little or no work, as few perform any peer review. So he can fill up this section of his CV without having to do any work. Clever.

Hat tip: Dr. Alexandra F. Dalton

Appendix 1:

List of journals on Mark S. Kindy’s CV for which he claims editorial board membership:

• Neuroscience Research Communications
• American Journal of Pathology
• Amyloid
• Stroke
• Neural Regeneration Research
• Future Neurology
• American Journal of Translational Research
• Open Journal of Neuroscience
• International Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease
• Current Aging Science,
• World Journal of Translational Medicine
• World Journal of AIDS
• Open Journal of Immunology
• World Journal of Vaccine
• Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease & Parkinsonism
• Atherosclerosis, Thrombosis and Vascular Biology
• Guest Editor, World Journal of Neuroscience
• NeuroMolecular Medicine
• Journal of Neuroinflammation
• World Journal of Biological Chemistry
• World Journal of Methodology
• Guest Editor, International Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease,
• Special Issue on Alzheimer’s Disease: Environmental and
• Epigenetic Factors
• Journal of Genetic Disorders & Disease Information
• Oceanography: Open Access
• World Journal of Methodology Editorial Board
• Journal of Neurology and Translational Neurosciences
• Austin Journal of Drug Abuse and Addiction
• International Journal of Forensic Science & Pathology
• Journal of Cardiology & Clinical Research
• Austin Journal of Clinical Cardiology
• Austin Journal of Genetics and Genomic Research
• Austin Vaccines
• Austin Journal of HIV/AIDS Research
• Journal of AIDS Clinical Research and STDs
• Journal of Neurocardiovascular Disease
• Translational Stroke Research
• Journal of Gene Therapy and Genetic Disorders
• Clinical Interventions in Aging
• Journal of Inflammation Research
• Austin Journal of Cerebrovascular Disease and Stroke
• Journal of Addiction and Neuropharmacology
• Austin Journal of Cardiovascular Disease and Atherosclerosis
• SIDS Clinical Research and STDs
• Medical Genomics and Biomarkers
• Journal of Experimental Cardiology and Research
• Austin Journal of Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s Disease
• Turkish Journal of Medical Sciences
• International Journal of Vaccines and Research
• Annals of Neuroscience and Psychology
• Journal of Parkinson’s Disease and Alzheimer’s Disease
• Journal of AIDS Clinical Research and STDs
• Journal of Cardiovascular Disease
• International Journal of Neural Science and Brain Research
• Journal of Immunology and Immunotherapeutics
• International Journal of HIV/AIDS and Research (IJHR)
• Scholarena Journal of Cardiology
• Scholarena Journal of Neurology
• Journal of AIDS and Immune Research
• Journal of AIDS and HIV
• Neurology: Open Access
• International Journal of Vaccines and Immunization
• International Journal of Stem Cell Research and Transplantation
• Journal of Medical Education and Informatics
• International Journal of Neurology and Brain Disorders
• Pharmacologia
• Drug Design, Development and Therapy
• Journal of Genetic Disorders and Genetic Reports
• Advances in Genetic Engineering
• SM Vaccines and Vaccination Journal (SMVVJ)
• Roger Journal of Cardiology
• Journal of Clinical and Experimental Ophthalmology
• Journal of HIV/AIDS
• Journal of Neuroscience and Neuroeconomics
• Jacobs Journal of Anatomy
• Journal of Aging and Disease
• Journal of Vaccine Research
• Journal of Clinical Case Reports and Reviews
• Journal of Cancer Biomarkers
• Journal of Immunological Diseases and Disorders
• Journal of Biomedical Sciences
• Stem Cells and Regenerative Biology
• Journal of Global Vaccines and Immunology
• International Journal of Neurological Disorders & Interventions
• Annals of Alzheimer’s and Dementia Care
• Kenkyu Journal of Pharmacology
• Journal of Clinical Case Studies
• Nutrition and Food Sciences
• Journal of Clinical Interventions in Aging
• Trends in HIV/AIDS
• SRL Alzheimer’s & Parkinson’s Disease
• SRL Cardiovascular Diseases & Diagnosis
• Journal of Clinical & Experimental Neuroimmunology
• Journal of Immunology and Immunotherapy
• Brain Circulation
• Insights in Blood Pressure
• Translational Brain Rhythmicity
• Madridge Journal of Pharmaceutical Research
• Clinical Trails and Case Studies Journal
• JBR Journal of Translational Biomarkers & Diagnosis
• Journal of Clinical Case studies
• European Medical Journal
• JSM Clinical and Medical Imaging
• Biomedical Research
• Reactive Oxygen Species
• SciTz Gynecology & Reproductive Medicine
• Annals of Alzheimer’s and Dementia Care
• SciFed Drug Delivery & Research Journal
• Journal Clinics in Oncology – Radiation Oncology
• Annals of Cardiovascular Diseases
• Journal of Zoological Sciences
• Clinics in Oncology
• Translational Biomedicine
• Journal of Imaging Sciences
• HeighPubs Journal of Pathology and Clinical Research
• HeighPubs Clinical Microbiology and Biochemical Technology
• Journal of Oncology and Therapeutics
• Journal of Clinical Nephrology
• Journal of Genetic Medicine and Gene Therapy
• Journal of Stroke Research

Appendix 2:

Text of an email sent under the name of Mark S. Kindy for a journal from the new predatory publisher Research Open:

From: Mark S Kindy – Editor In Chief <editor.imroj@rowjournals.com>
Date: August 12, 2016 at 7:06:15 AM MDT
To: < Redacted >
Subject: Follow up email :  Call for Internal Medicine manuscript submissions

Dear Dr. [Redacted],

Thank you again for your time today.

I would like to follow up on my previous E-mail regarding your contribution to Inaugural issue of “Internal Medicine Research Open Journal (IMROJ)”. As a founding member of the journal I would like to invite you for submitting your upcoming Research/Review/Case Reports to Inaugural issue of IMROJ and I am excited to work with you and anticipate the development of the Journal with quality submissions like yours.

For manuscript submission guidelines please visit the link below
http://www.researchopenworld.com/authors-desk

You are welcome to submit the manuscript as an attachment to email at submissions@researchopenworld.com or as a reply to this email.

I hope the Inaugural articles will enhance the quality of the journal and please let me know if you have any questions or need anything else on my end. Kindly inform us your feasibility of submission at the earliest.

Regards
Inviting on behalf of Founding Editor-In-Chief Prof. Mark S Kindy
Yun Wang
Assistant editorial Manager
Internal Medicine Research-Open Journal