Legitimate scholarly publishers do not charge withdrawal fees.
Hyderabad, India-based OMICS Group has found a new and likely lucrative revenue source — charging authors to withdraw their submissions to the publisher’s many journals.
OMICS Group regularly sends out millions of spam emails to thousands of researchers. In its spam, it generally only mentions the particular journal title the spam email is soliciting for, avoiding mentioning the now stigmatized name of the publisher.
This strategy is — unfortunately — often successful, for researchers are busy and often lack time to check the publisher’s legitimacy. Moreover, OMICS Group has many journal titles that are very similar or close to the titles of reputable journals.
Here is a copy of a recent email from OMICS Group in response to a researcher requesting withdrawal:
From: Joseph G [mailto:authorproof-openaccess@omicsonline.com]
Sent: Thursday, 19 March 2015 7:51 PM
To: [Redacted
Subject: [Redacted]_Publication Withdrawal
Importance: HighDear Dr. [Redacted],
Greetings from OMICS International !!!
We discussed with our management and humbly inform you that we agreed to withdraw your article.
We processed your article starting from quality Peer review process to QC, to xml and pdf conversion due to which the minimum processing fee should be paid.
You are requested to pay the minimum processing charges of $419.
We will withdraw your article as soon as possible.
Thanks & regards
Joseph G
OMICS International
Charging a withdrawal fee is non-standard in the scholarly publishing industry. Sometimes, authors find mistakes in their works after submission and need to withdraw the paper to correct them before submitting the paper again.
I think such a fee is unethical, and it disincentivizes the making of corrections to the article.
If you submit an article to a publisher in response to a spam email you receive, please verify the publisher. If the publisher is OMICS Group or one of its many brands, I strongly advise you not to submit your work.
