Trademark violation?
The latest trend among some predatory publishers is to display the ISO (International Standards Organization) logo on their websites. They do this to make themselves look legitimate. I don’t think any of them are using the logo appropriately, and I think the ones that state they have an ISO certification are lying.
Some just add the ISO logo to their websites, but I’ve seen a number of predatory journals that claim to be ISO 9001:2008 certified, some without using the logo.
According to Wikipedia,
The ISO 9000 family of standards is related to quality management systems and designed to help organizations ensure that they meet the needs of customers and other stakeholder
Certified? They can’t even get their images to display. Plus their grammar and spacing are atrocious!
According to the ISO’s website:
The ISO logo is a registered trademark. Unless authorized by ISO, use of its logo is prohibited. Notably, ISO will not allow its logo to be used in connection with conformity assessment activities. These include the certification of management systems, products, services, materials or personnel, even when these certifications attest conformity to an ISO standard, such as one of the ISO 9000 or ISO 14000 series. Examples of unacceptable use of the ISO logo would include use on products, in publications, on Internet sites, in marketing materials, advertisements and company letterheads.
Engineers should know better.
I think this (the quote above) makes it pretty clear that using the logo is a trademark violation.
All the journals I’ve observed that use the ISO logo gratuitously or that falsely claim ISO certification are from India.
One of their dissertation covers, back (left) and front (right).
Don’t be fooled.
I receive many emails from all over the world complaining about LAP Lambert Academic Publishing GmbH & Co. KG. (This publisher is so bad, I will not even provide a link to them).
I don’t list them on my blog because they are not an open-access publisher. Instead, they spam recent graduates and junior faculty and entice them to sign over the rights to their dissertations and theses, which Lambert then advertises on Amazon and elsewhere and prints them on demand.
In fact, the company has a gaggle of “acquisition editors” who search the web all day and night and then send spam emails to their unlucky targets who have recently completed a dissertation.
LAP is an imprint of VDM Publishing, which is headquartered in Saarbrücken, Germany. The Wikipedia article about VDM Publishing provides a good description of the company’s questionable practices.
I won’t do a full analysis here because that’s already been done quite well by other bloggers.
Perhaps the best description and analysis of Lambert Academic Publishing is the one written by Christopher Collins of Toronto, Ontario in his blog. He concludes “Steer clear of this company,” and I agree.
Recommendation: Do not do any business with Lambert Academic Publishing.
Finally, some consequences for spamming.
Nigeria-based International Research Journals is being cut off by its United States-based Internet service provider for spamming, a violation of the provider’s terms of service. The publisher’s old domain name was http://interesjournals.org. The new domain name is http://interesjournal.org, but it is unclear who the publisher’s new ISP is. At this time, both domains are active, as the old ISP gives the company time to transfer its files.
The company that expelled International Research Journals appears to be IXwebhosting, based in Columbus, Ohio.
This information comes via an email that the publisher sent to one of its authors, who then forwarded the email to me.
In the email, the publisher blames competitors in the U.S. and Canada, who he says had enough influence with the ISP to get them to cut off International Research Journals. He claims this was done to dampen competition.
Here is the letter the publisher is sending out to its authors:
Dear [deleted]
Thanks for the submission of paper(s) to our journal (Educational Research, ER).
I want to inform you that we are having a downtime in our site: interesjournals.org. The reason is that our webhost are a small hosting company based in the USA. They are about to be blacklisted because of complaints of mails coming out of our mailboxes. These complaints are from some group of people who are also journal publishers that are afraid of our strength in journal publication. These people are based in USA and Canada. They have access to our webhost, they just contact them and our site is suspended. However, our previous webhost suggested we look for a bigger webhost to host our site because the pressure is too much on them and they promise to transfer the domain interesjournals.org to our new webhost within the next seven days. The transfer is currently ongoing. All of our contents are still intact.
In our effort to serve you better, so that our clients will not be worried, our new webhost suggested we should use this new website: interesjournal.org pending the transfer of the previous site.
Therefore, all of our contents and papers are now located in interesjournal.org. Therein, you will find your published and incoming papers. We do apologize for the inconveniences.
Thanks for your understanding and cooperation.
Kind Regards,
Ame Obobaifo,
Editorial Assistant,
NB: All contacts and correspondences should be forwarded to support.eduresearch@gmail.com
This may open up a new method of shutting down predatory publishers — complaining to their ISPs about the UCE (unsolicited commercial email) they send out. Perhaps we’ll give this a try.
Why the quotes around “peer reviewed”? Also note the typo: “Disease and addition.” Doesn’t add up.
OA Alcohol is the title of one of 140 new medical-science journals launched recently by the brand-new predatory publisher called OA Publishing London. While we love the idea of free drinks, we are frightened by the appearance of this sloppy new publisher.If this new enterprise is being run by surgeons, we would not let them cut on us. The website is filled with careless mistakes including spelling errors, word choice errors, grammatical errors, dead links, broken image links, and more. The fleet of journals includes two that the publisher claims were transferred from BioMed Central: Head & Neck Oncology and Hard Tissue. BMC states regarding Head & Neck Oncology that,
Whilst conducting an internal audit, BioMed Central has discovered a number of apparent major irregularities in the journal Head & Neck Oncology. In order to maintain the integrity of the BioMed Central portfolio of journals, we have taken the decision to close the journal with immediate effect and are currently conducting a detailed investigation.
It appears that something dramatic has taken place, but we are unable to determine what it was. Did the editors defect from BMC and bring their journal with them? What did they do to spur BMC’s investigation? We also observe that several of the journal’s editors have had an unusually high number of articles published in it. One, Mr. Tahwinder Upile, has had over fifty articles published in the journal in the past four years.
We can find no evidence that BMC ever had a journal entitled Hard Tissue, so it’s possible that this new publisher is not being completely honest. The publisher has a range of article processing charges (APCs) for its journals. The website states the range is from “£100/€125/$162 to £750/€925/$1200.” Only a very few of the journals currently contain any content.
We are suspicious of any new OA startup that begins with 140 new journals and are concerned about the murky circumstances surrounding the transfer of the BMC journals to this new publisher. The sloppy condition of the site supports our suspicion that those behind this venture lack the ability to move it forward successfully and ethically.
We think this new publisher is really just out separate authors from their money, and we recommend against submitting manuscripts to the publisher or serving on any of its editorial boards.
Appendix: List of OA Publishing London Journals as of 2012-11-12
85 new journals all started at the same time.
A brand-new open-access publisher has just appeared: Science and Education Publishing (SciEP). The publisher is launching with 85 new journals, the second large launch I’ve seen in a single week (OA Publishing London recently launched with 138 brand new journals).
This practice of starting a publisher with an excessive number of journals is called a “fleet startup.”
One interesting thing about SciEP is that the company does not reveal where it is from. Their “Contact us” page does not give any hint of a location. The location element of their domain-name registration is covered by a proxy. [Update Nov. 29, 2012: The contact us page now lists this address: 10 Cheswold Blvd., #1D, Newark, De, 19713, United States, which is a small apartment].
Predatory publishers often hide their true location when they think it will be a turnoff to potential authors.
A “call for papers” spam email the company is sending out says “Science and Education Publishing, USA,” indicating — probably falsely — that the publisher is U.S.-based.
I looked at the publisher’s inept Facebook page, which is set up as a person (rather than an organization) under the name Giovanni Sciepub. Could it be from Italy?
Poorly done Facebook page.
The spam email is signed “David Rain,” but this is a common name, and I cannot find anyone in the scholarly publishing industry with that name. A Google Scholar search on the name yields no usable clues. It’s probably a contrived name.
The email indicates that they are now accepting submissions, even though none of its journals has an editorial board yet — the editorial board pages are all blank. Submissions are free through the end of 2012 and they plan to release their first journal issues in February, 2013.
Because of its lack of transparency and probably use of a fake name, I strongly recommend against serving on any of this publisher’s editorial boards and against submitting a manuscript to any of its journals.
Hat tip: Lynne Fox, Charlie Greenberg
Appendix: List of journals published by Science and Education Publishing:
In August 2012, I published the first edition of my Criteria for Determining Predatory Open-Access Publishers. I received many helpful comments and am now publishing a second edition of the work. I am especially grateful to Bill Cohen and Dr. Michael W. Firmin for their helpful suggestions. Also, thanks to all the those who left helpful comments or who sent in emails with suggestions. This document is also available as a PDF.
Criteria for Determining Predatory Open-Access Publishers
By Jeffrey Beall
2nd edition / December 1, 2012
1. Complete an analysis of the publisher’s content, practices, and websites according to ethical standards established by membership organizations.
A. Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association (OASPA) Code of Conduct
B. Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) Code of Conduct for Journal Publishers [PDF]
C. International Association of Scientific, Technical & Medical Publishers (STM) Code of Conduct
2. Complete an analysis of the publisher’s content, practices, and websites: contact the publisher if necessary, read statements from the publisher’s authors about their experiences with the publisher, and determine whether the publisher commits any of the following practices (below) that are known to be committed by predatory publishers.
n.b. Some journals publish independently of any publisher, but in most cases, we evaluate journals that are part of a publisher’s fleet. The practices described below are meant to apply both to independent journals and to publishers with multiple journals in their portfolios.
Editor and Staff
Business Management
The publisher…
Integrity
Other
A predatory publisher may ...
The following practices are considered to be reflective of poor journal standards and, while they do not equal predatory criteria, potential authors should give due consideration to these items prior to manuscript submissions:
