Hello everyone.
I am in an incredibly bizarre situation. I will not mention the names of people I communicated with, but I will mention the publisher and the journal because I feel like I am experiencing a lame scam.
Earlier this year, I submitted my article to a journal called the International Journal of Virtual and Augmented Reality (IJVAR), and the publisher is IGI Global.
I communicated with someone from the journal but didn't receive any response after two weeks. I tried to view my submission on the IGI Global website, and it has a technical issue, in which it shows from a drop-down-menu that I have (1) article; however, when I click on it, the page displays a message that I do not have any submitted articles.
After a month, I sent an email to withdraw my submission because there was no communication and due to the website's issue.
After another month, an editor from the journal reached out to me to say that he is interested in my article and will begin the revision process. I told him that I had requested to withdraw my submission, and he accepted it and said that he is a new editor who is still figuring things out. It is important to emphasize that I finally got a response after I sent an email, and it turns out that I was emailing a journal that was going through a change of editors. Nobody from that journal nor any employee from IGI Global was responding to my emails.
In October, the same editor sent me an email telling me to work on revising my article that's on IGI's website. I sent an email reminding him that I had already informed him that he had accepted my withdrawal. But I did not receive anything back, and I feel that it is much easier to communicate with ghosts and summon spirits than communicating with anyone from IGI.
Now, I just received an email from the Development Editor for IGI Global congratulating me that my article got accepted and that I need to work on the revisions and make the final edits before 28 December. I was not even able to view my article, let alone edit it! I sent a response email but didn't hear back. I emailed IGI's editors' email address and heard nothing from them. Could it be they're ignoring my response emails to forcefully publish my article? Such a ridiculous mess.
If it is a genuine journal, this must be the case. This looks most probably that you got trapped in a wrong journal predatory trap and might loose your research because it will be published in this journal you mentioned. Check out this article and there is a particular case mentioned about the publisher. Article The false academy: predatory publishing in science and bioethics
I think such a problem is repetitive.. and there should be solution(s) for that. I don't know if Research Gate can help in this regard. It could be through establishing a small group that may help in solving such dilemmas.
Dear Mohamed Jameel Alsaffar ,
Let me first make clear that your experience is a sad example of a sequence of events where everything seems to have gone wrong. Unfortunately (and this true for more publishers) much depends on the people behind a journal (editor, editorial board etc.) I think the main problem is as you said, “he is a new editor who is still figuring things out… it turns out that I was emailing a journal that was going through a change of editors.”. There is quite some discussion about this publisher IGI Global here on RG (some positive some negative):
https://www.researchgate.net/post/May_anyone_tell_me_about_the_reputation_of_the_IGI_Global_Publishers
https://www.researchgate.net/post/Publishing-a-IGI-Gliobal-is-good-or-not
https://www.researchgate.net/post/IGI_Global_as_a_publisher
Facts are:
-COPE has listed IGI Global Publishers as respected publisher with 160 Journals https://publicationethics.org/category/publisher/igi-global
-IGI Global was placed as the 7th best book publisher (see enclosed file). An estimate for the legitimacy of a publisher is whether it can be found here: http://wokinfo.com/mbl/ A while ago I checked and IGI Global gave 994 hits, Wiley 1783, Elsevier >6000 and Springer >19000
-They have managed to get an impressive number of more than 50 journals indexed in Scopus. Additionally, seven journals are indexed in SCIE/SSCI and more than 50 are indexed in ESCI https://www.igi-global.com/journals/indices/index/all
There might have been some issues in the past but, despite your unfortunate experience, this publisher is trying to get their act together and is most likely not predatory. The only real disadvantage I can come up with is that most of their journals are hybrid open access journals (so most of the papers are only accessible by subscription) and their books seems rather pricey: so, one might wonder who will read your work.
Best regards.
Legitimate publishers publishes articles and revenue by charging the author/s or the readers, or Libraries or a combination of those.
IGI has been accused of limiting the dissemination of their stable of published works to a few libraries and thus reducing the availability of those works to the academic community -- that sound predatory. See: Article The false academy: predatory publishing in science and bioethics
Next Point: you must sign a contract to transfer your copyright to a journal or attend a conference -- no actual or implicit contract (e.g. agreeing for your article to be included in a proceedings) means no transfer. In future, if your think your work has value to the academic community, avoid IGI--for now, send IGI formal notification that you are withdrawing from their article review process and file a copy of the notification plus proof it was sent.
Chris Wright (PhD, FCPA, FRSA)
Dear Mohamed Jameel Alsaffar i'm sorry to hear of your experiences. The responses already are correct, it is a shame and seems that you have just fallen victim of substantial internal changes in the editorship of a journal and this has resulted in communication problems. If you have published the paper elsewhere, inform the journal editor about this. Also, as noted by Chris Wright simply by not engaging with the production of the article means they will not be in a position to publish (you haven't addressed reviewer comments, not assigned copyright etc).
I wish you the best of luck with it, James.
If the journal is strong and reputable no, but if the journals are poor and predatory it will happen.
Some journals with inappropriate or predatory practices may use these types of practices.
However, you should not worry about this. In fact, before they will publish your article, you need to sign the copyright.
If you have not signed the copyright, they cannot publish your paper.
While Carlos Flavian highlights a common theme in the answers to this question, it is important to differentiate between "what should not be done" and "what cannot be done". If people always did what "should not be done" our courts would not be as busy and the world would a much more decent place.
IGI Global has such repute. Therefore, avoid predatory journals that damage the repute of the authors by forcefully publishing the papers.
The answer to the issue could be based on Hanlon's razor - this one works quite often. However, I believe that in this case it is based on something else: that is US $2,000 for publishing. It is a pity that the number of journals and publishers of this type keeps growing...
As discussed in the answer to your previous question, if you wish to withdraw your paper from a journal, you will have to send a withdrawal request. You should mention the title of the paper and the manuscript id provided by the journal.
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