And it really does have a connection to Thomson Reuters.
The International Journal of Review in Life Sciences (IJRLS) has been hijacked. The victim journal is published by India-based Pharmascope, a publisher included on my list. So this is a case of a predatory journal being hijacked.
Original journal: http://pharmascope.org/ijrls/
Hijacked journal: http://www.ijrls.com/
Why on earth would anyone hijack a predatory or low quality journal? Why not hijack a higher-quality journal?
The masthead of the original journal is shown in the image above. Note that the journal uses a picture to proclaim its loose association with Thomson Reuters, the company that calculates the impact factor, even though this journal has no impact factor. It is, rather curiously, indexed in the Thomson Reuters database Zoological Record, as are many predatory journals.
The image also shows a warning from the original journal about its fake counterpart (See “Latest news,” left).
The hijacked version of the journal.
One email correspondent reported to me that the hijacked journal accepted his paper for publication three hours after he submitted it. He emailed me suspecting that something wasn’t right.
The title used by both journals is ungrammatical and unidiomatic in English. Both journals use the same ISSN, 2231-2935, and this is what makes it a hijacking. It is not uncommon for new predatory journals to launch with duplicate titles.
I recommend that researchers avoid submitting papers to all journals published by Pharmascope, including both their original and hijacked versions.
