Lots of problems here.
The International Journal of Information Research claims to be published by the Society of Scholarly Publishing and Open Access Resources (SPOARS), but the only information I can find about this “society” is on the journal’s website itself. The journal is low quality, has unoriginal content, and is a good example of how NOT to manage a scholarly journal.
Launched in 2011, the journal has published 13 issues so far. It appears most of the recent authors hail from India and Nigeria.
The journal’s editorial board includes two prominent American librarians, including at least one whose affiliation is outdated. Most of the other editorial board members are from India.
It is easy to find examples of unattributed, uncited, un-quotation-marked text in articles published in the journal. Here’s an example from the 2013 article “Journal Citations in Horticulture Doctoral Dissertations [1991-2010]: A Case Study“:
Unoriginal?
It appears the first two sentences closely match content from this 2004 pre-print:
The original work.
I learned about this journal from a Philippine librarian who told me he emailed a manuscript to the journal asking the editor whether it might be appropriate to submit formally.
According to the librarian, the journal then published the article without peer review and without revision. He emailed the journal demanding that they retract the article, but they have so far refused.
The journal requires that authors transfer copyright to the publisher, a non-standard practice for OA library science journals.
Apostrophe fail.
The articles are poorly copyedited and contain prominent errors, as the screenshot above shows.
On the one hand, it’s great that this journal’s content is open access and freely available, but what’s the point when the content is lifted, poorly edited, and of little value?
