Scholarly publishing has never been so easy.
The English word epitome can mean, according to Wictionary, “The embodiment or encapsulation of” or “A representative example.” Here I want to describe a publisher that is the epitome of predatory publishers.
The publisher is IJCRM. This India-based publisher is among the lowest-quality publishers I’ve seen. Some of its articles are a dumping ground of plagiarism. It’s clear that this publisher does not check for plagiarism prior to publishing its articles.
On its website, the publisher has trouble distinguishing among singular and plural and possessive. The site describes itself as a journal — indeed, IJCRM means International Journal of Research in Commerce & Management. However, this publisher has four journals in its portfolio:
- International Journal of Research in Commerce & Management
- International Journal of Research in Computer Application & Management
- International Journal of Research in Commerce, Economics & Management
- International Journal of Research in Commerce, IT & Management
The titles of the four journals are absurdly similar — it didn’t take a lot of time for someone to come up with them.
I think that this publisher is basically a one-man operation. He is Surender Kumar Poonia, a guy with an MBA. To make his scheme look legitimate, Poonia has concocted an elaborate hierachy of officials for his publishing business. It includes people at all these levels:
Chief Patron
Patron
Co-ordinator
Advisors
Editor
Co-Editor
Editorial Advisory Board
Associate Editors
Technical Advisor
Financial Advisors
Legal Advisors
Superintendent
Poomia is the lone person at the lowest level, superintendent, but we think he is really the “man behind the curtain” for this publisher.
We found a couple of the other characters interesting. The Chief Patron is Prof. K.K. Aggarwal, and, accordiong to his bio, “In 1975, he rose to the level of Professor at an age of 27½ years, probably the youngest person in the world to have achieved this level.” Very impressive.
We also found the information about the firm’s Investment Consultant to be captivating:
Interesting address.
Don’t mess with Neena.
It’s very easy to find plagiarism among this publisher’s journals. Give it a try. Randomly select an article, find a phrase that is written in standard English, and search it as a phrase in Google. If you get any hits from other sources, it’s a good bet that you’ve discovered some plagiarism. But don’t tell Neena.
