Designed to fool.
We recently learned about a new scholarly open-access publisher whose name sounds very much like that of an established scholarly publisher.
It is Stringer Open, and of course it sounds like Springer Open.
The victim.
Stringer Open has just launched with ten journals, some with ungrammatical titles, and some with titles that make little sense, such as the International Journal of Addiction Science and Anesthesiology.
The publisher’s ‘contact us’ page does not state any location, but the domain name registration leads to an apartment complex in Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh, India. There are many predatory publishers from Andhra Pradesh, and it seems everyone there wants to be a scholarly publisher.
Stringer Open is currently spamming for editorial board members, and I wonder how many will be tricked by the similar name. The boards now contain a few members each. The same person, Carol Calini, is on the editorial boards of three of the ten Stringer Open journals. I contacted her, and she told me she’s a researcher’s secretary and had not heard of this publisher before.
This publisher is an affront to scholarly publishing and to open-access. I strongly recommend against submitting papers to any of its journals and against accepting an invitation to serve on an editorial board.
Hat tip: Tero Kivelä
Appendix: List of Stringer Open journals as of November 23, 2013:
- International Journal of Addiction Science and Anesthesiology
- International Journal of Cancer Therapy & Stem Cell Biology
- International Journal of Cardiology and Cardiovascular Medicine
- International Journal of Clinical and Medical Case Reports
- International Journal of Diabetes, Obesity and Metabolic Syndrome
- International Journal of HIV for Clinical and Scientific Research
- International Journal of Novel Physiotherapy and Rehabilitation
- International Journal of Ophthalmology and Clinical Research
- International Journal of Vaccines and Immunology
- Journal of Genetics and Gene Therapy
