Three Open-Access Publishers from Turkey

Turkey.

It’s Thanksgiving Day in the United States, a fitting time to examine a selection of predatory publishers from Turkey. Higher education in Turkey is currently in crisis, with numerous academics fired from their posts and institutions ordered closed.

Academic integrity has been declining in Turkey for years, with plagiarism (including many plagiarized dissertations) and the widespread use of predatory journals for academic advancement and promotions common.

Now, there is an increasing number of predatory publishers, journals, and conferences based in Turkey. I fear the numbers will increase further as unemployed Turkish academics seek to replace their lost income.

Here, I highlight three Turkey-based publishers I think all researchers should avoid.

1. Nobel International Journals

Neither Nobel or noble.

This publisher lists no physical location on its ‘Contact us’ page, but I’ve figured out that it’s based in Turkey. This publisher — which apparently tries to associate itself with the Nobel Prizes — currently has six open-access journals in its portfolio.

The journals are all broad in scope and include titles such as Turkish Journal of Scientific Reviews. This publisher requires authors to transfer copyright before the review process starts, a non-standard practice and an indication, perhaps, that acceptance is automatic.

The publisher charges €100 per accepted article, a fee it refers to as the “academic processing fee,” or APC. Pretty much all the published authors in the journals are from Turkey, and this publisher exists chiefly to provide quick, easy, and cheap academic publishing for such authors.

2. PressAcademia

Press on.

This publisher of six broad-scoped and unneeded business and engineering journals is — apparently — a one-woman operation. It’s based in Maltepe (though its ‘contact us‘ page gives no location), a jurisdiction south of Istanbul, and the domain-name owner is Dilek Teker.

Looking at the list of journals on their website, one sees that they can’t even spell the journal titles correctly, for example, “Jornal of Management, Markating and Logistics (JMML).”

One of their journals.

Like most other open-access publishers in Turkey, this one also organizes conferences, hoping to capitalize on some researchers’ use of university travel funds for conference-vacations in touristy places.

Regarding the publishing fees for the journals, the publisher says, “The regular publication fee is $200 to cover the issuing costs. The peer-review process is generally completed within 30 days.”

So this is another example of quick, easy, and cheap publishing. By charging in US dollars rather than euros, it’s clear they are marketing more to Asia and Africa than to Europe. Few in Europe would agree to publish in such low-quality journals, I think.

3. International Organization Center for Academic Research (OCERINT)

Impressive name?

This so-called “Center” has a long, ungrammatical name. The name is a meager attempt to create an impressive-sounding moniker for this conference organizer and publisher (of two journals) that wants to generate as much easy revenue as possible.

Its two journals have very broad scopes: The International E-Journal of Advances in Education, and the International E-journal of Advances in Social Sciences. The world does not need any more open-access education and social sciences journals — we’re already saturated with them.

These two journals serve as a publication venue for the papers presented at the firm’s conferences. It’s a package deal —— customers get academic credit for presenting at the conference and then publishing them in a journal.

The “center’s” “contact us” page doesn’t list any physical location, but I’ve determined Turkey is the base. There are no affiliations listed with the editorial board members, and the names may be contrived.

The publisher gives confusing information about copyright. It says, “By submitting the paper entitled below, the undersigned author agrees to transfer the rights to publish and distribute the paper … ” Is this an implied copyright transfer? A truly professional publisher would not have such an ambiguous licensing statement.

I recommend against submitting manuscripts to (and attending the conferences of) these three publishers.

Map by Numerus Klausus and licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

Appendix: Lists of journals from each publisher:

Nobel International Journals journals as of 2016-11-13:

1. International Journal of Natural and Engineering Sciences
2. International Journal of Social and Economic Sciences
3. Journal of Applied Biological Sciences
4. Research Journal of Agriculture Sciences
5. Research Journal of Biological Sciences
6. Turkish Journal of Scientific Reviews

PressAcademica journals as of 2016-11-13:

1. Journal of Business, Economics and Finance (JBEF)
2. Journals of Economics, Finance and Accounting (JEFA)
3. Journal of Engineering Management and Economics (JEME)
4. Jornal [sic] of Management, Markating [sic] and Logistics (JMML)
5. Journal of Risk and Financial Engineering (JRFE)
6. Research Journal of Business and Management (RJBM)

International Organization Center of Academic Research journals as of 2016-11-13:

1. International E-Journal of Advances in Education (IJAEDU)
2. International E-journal of Advances in Social Sciences (IJASOS)

Thanks!