Hijacked Journals and Predatory Publishers: Is There a Need to Re-Think How to Assess the Quality of Academic Research?

Authors

  • Mehrdad JALALIAN Editor In Chief, Electronic Physician, Mashhad
  • Hamidreza MAHBOOBI Infectious and Topical Diseases Research Center, Hormozgan University of Medical Sciences (HUMS), Hormozgan

Keywords:

Research, journal, publisher, impact factor, fake

Abstract

During the last 2 years, there has been extensive discussion about “hijacked journals being imposed on the academic world by the huge increase in the number of bogus publishers and spurious websites”. Hijackers make money by stealing the identities of legitimate journals and collecting the article processing charges on the papers that are submitted to journals. The cybercriminals have cheated thousands of professors and Ph.D. scholars mostly from developing countries and those who were in the urgent need of publishing their articles in journals that are covered by the Journal Citation Report (a Thomson Reuters’ product). The fake journals targeted their victims using smart ideas both in web development step and victim selection. This paper introduces some simple methods that can be used easily to identify the fake publishers as a short to midterm solution and recommends establishing a movement for designing a new model for assessing the quality of academic research.

doi:10.14456/WJST.2014.16

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References

D Butler. Sham journals scam authors. Nature 2013; 495, 421-2.

G Kolata. Scientific Articles Accepted (Personal Checks, Too), The New York Times, Available online at: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/08/health/for-scientists-an-exploding-world-of-pseudo-academia.html?_r=2&, accessed April 2013.

J Beall. Predatory publishers are corrupting open access. Nature 2012; 489, 179.

M Jalalian and H Mahboobi. New corruption detected: Bogus impact factors compiled by fake organizations. Electron. Physician 2013; 5, 685-6.

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Published

2014-02-07

How to Cite

JALALIAN, M., & MAHBOOBI, H. (2014). Hijacked Journals and Predatory Publishers: Is There a Need to Re-Think How to Assess the Quality of Academic Research?. Walailak Journal of Science and Technology (WJST), 11(5), 389–394. Retrieved from https://wjst.wu.ac.th/index.php/wjst/article/view/1004

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Section

Special Article