No longer at McGill.
An alumnus of McGill University in Montréal, Québec — Abdel Rahman M. Al-Tawaha — is using his McGill University email account to conduct business as an open-access publisher. He is associated with at least three low-quality or predatory publishers in the Middle East and South Asia and uses his McGill affiliation to make the publishing operations appear connected to or affiliated with the university and therefore more legitimate than they really are.
It appears that Al-Tawaha is really now based at Jordan’s Al-Hussein Bin Talal University.
Here is an example of his McGill University email address in use:
On Thursday, June 18, 2015 4:27 PM, Abdel Rahman Al-Tawaha <abdel.al-tawaha@mail.mcgill.ca> wrote:
Dear [Redacted]
On behalf of the ISLAMIC WORLD Network for Environmental Science and Technology (IWNEST Publisher), Jordan team,I send you my best wishes and respect, I would like to inform you that we are interested to register our Journals in oaji.net
He also exclusively uses a McGill affiliation and contact information on the websites of several predatory open-access publishers he is affiliated with:
His IDOSI page: = http://www.idosi.org/wjas/agriacv503a.htm
His ISISnet page = http://www.isisn.org/editorial%20board%20br.htm
As the email above indicates, he is also associated with IWNEST Publisher. His formal affiliation with McGill apparently ended in 2006, when he graduated.
All three of the above publishers are included on my list.
His IDOSI profile.
His Innovative Scientific Information & Services Network (ISISnet) profile.
It’s clear that Al-Tawaha is exploiting his former association with McGill University and using his McGill alumni email to make the low-quality journals he associates with appear more legitimate than they actually are.
This strategy may be used to increase submissions to the journal. The journals use the gold (author pays) open-access model, so more submissions means more revenue for the publisher.
