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Recognizing a Pattern of Problems in “Pattern Recognition in Physics”
Getting sloppy? Copernicus Publications is an open-access publisher based in Göttingen, Germany. It is not on my list of predatory publishers. However, I do have some serious concerns with Copernicus...
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OMICS Journal Publishes Pseudo-Science Vaccine Paper
Pseudo-science OMICS Publishing Group has once again provided evidence that it is merely a scholarly vanity press. OMICS just published a paper entitled, “Prevalence of Autism is Positively Associated...
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Introducing … Purple Journals
Another silly name in a serious business. It’s not uncommon for new open-access publishers in Nigeria to assign attention-grabbing names to their operations. Purple Journals is the latest of these. It...
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Article-Level Metrics: An Ill-Conceived and Meretricious Idea
Except twelve of the tweets were bought and paid for. Many are excited about innovative measures that purport to quantify scholarly impact at a more granular level. Called article-level metrics or...
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Look out for Bogus Impact Factor Companies
The proliferation of predatory open-access publishers has created several new and expanding markets. One of these is the market for journal rankings. Because few predatory publishers are able to earn...
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Icelandic Journal Latest Victim of Journal Hijacking
The most-recent issue of the authentic journal, volume 62, 2012. The old print journal Jökull, published in Iceland since 1951, has been hijacked. The hijackers set up two bogus web sites for the...
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Fake Female Names Embellish Predatory Publishers’ Spam Emails
Predatory publishers often use fake names. For example, I documented that Ashry Aly, the sole-proprietor of Ashdin Publishing, used the name “John Costa” in his spam advertising. I think he used the...
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New OA Publisher Based in Clifton, New Jersey Apartment
Exploit the authors and readers? We recently added Elyns Publishing Group to our list of questionable journals. This journal has a curious and perhaps revealing slogan. Its slogan is “Explore and...
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Weekend Update: Predatory Publishing News
This blog post reports on four brief items related to predatory publishers. 1. Journal Influence Factor We all know about the journal impact factor, but now there is a brand-new measure called the...
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2006 Article Plagiarized Three Times in Predatory Journals
A 2006 article published in the Elsevier journal Geoderma has been plagiarized at least three times, a co-author reports. The original article The article, Mechanistic soil–landscape modelling as an...
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Conference attendee to OMICS: I want out
Today’s post consists of two emails. One is from OMICS Publishing Group to a scientist who attended an OMICS conference, and the second is the scientist’s reply to OMICS. Email from OMICS Publishing...
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Bell Press Now on Beall’s List
Not from Europe Bell Press is a newly-launched scholarly open-access publisher that uses deception to make itself look like a legitimate, European, scholarly publisher. It is none of these things,...
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Publisher of Two Journals Sells “Best Paper” Awards
We recently learned that an open-access publisher will publish submitted papers in one of its journals and include a “Best Paper Award” to authors for an additional fee. The publisher’ journals, both...
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The Open Access Movement is Fueling the Emergence of Pseudo-Science Journals
“Vithoba Dant Manjan gives the best natural care to your teeth because good health means strong and healthy teeth. An Ayurvedic product, this gives you strong teeth and healthy gums” [1].The internet...
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Science Magazine Conducts Sting Operation on OA Publishers
Stung! In its issue being released tomorrow (October 4, 2013, volume 342, p. 60-65), Science magazine is publishing a six-page article detailing a sting operation it conducted on scholarly open-access...
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Think Congress is bad? — Try Congress Press
We can all agree on this congress. Congress Press is a brand-new scholarly open-access publisher that has launched with thirty journals. Its logo is a stylized rendering of the United States Capitol...
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Publisher Requires only 20% Original Content in Article Submissions
Cease and desist. The publisher Global Science and Technology Forum (GSTF) has been sending out some very revealing spam recently. The spam emails solicit new articles and state that only 20% of the...
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More Bad Science in Predatory OA Journals
The suspect article. The COSMO-RS method is an advanced method for the quantitative calculation of solvation mixture thermodynamics based on quantum chemistry. It was developed by Andreas Klamt and is...
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Anger in Albania
Neither scientific nor international Academicus (subtitle: International Scientific Journal) is a scholarly journal based in Albania. I recently added it to my list of questionable standalone journals,...
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Allegations of Plagiarism in a BioMed Central Journal Remain Unresolved after...
A paper published in the BioMed Central Journal Nutrition & Metabolism is a near exact match of a paper published earlier in the Journal of Clinical Pharmacy and Therapeutics. The 2008 paper, “Role...
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