Dear colleagues,
Here comes another fraudulent publisher (possibly): Copernicus Publishing (https://journals.copernicuspublishing.com/). Please notice: there is a real and legitimate publisher from Germany with a similar name: Copernicus Publications (https://www.copernicus.org/). Do not get confused.
There are three academic journals in the Copernicus Publishing’s website. I keep receiving e-mails from a person called “A. Umana, M.D.”, requesting articles to one of these three journals: “Clinical Medicine Review”. The e-mails just don’t stop coming. There used to be no published articles in the webpage one year ago, but now there are. I wonder whether these articles were written by real researchers (if they were, these researchers have unfortunately fallen into a trap) or they are ‘fabricated’ articles. Another journal, “Archives of BioScience”, does not have a single article published. The third journal, “Archives of Psychology”, has many published papers, and even an editorial board, but I am very doubtful about the legitimacy of these papers. I found comments from a blog (http://flakyj.blogspot.com/2018/03/copernicus-publishers.html), dated March 2018, exactly one year ago. The person who wrote it stated that back then there was not a single published paper in this journal. Still, I was now able to find in the archives of the journal issues dated 2017. This is very weird. They state they are indexed in Pubmed, but I was not able to find a single paper there.
Checking in Google Maps, one can see that the mailing address on the website (Copernicus Publishing, 4607 Library Rd Suite 220-1048 Bethel Park, PA 15102) belongs to a firm called Back Office Plus (https://www.backofficeplusonline.com/):
“Back Office Plus located at 4607 Library Rd Suite 220, Bethel Park PA is the go-to resource for packing, shipping, printing and business service needs for the residents and businesses of the South Hills. Our team of dedicated, professionally trained experts understands the meaning of Super-Star Customer Care—we focus on saving you time and money by ensuring you get the right products and services at the right price—in a single, quick visit.”
Beware when you receive an e-mail from this so-called “A. Umana, M.D.”. This seems to be a scheme, with publication fees reaching US$ 2,900.
It is a lucrative industry, its the power of money.
But we are feeding them, they are out of business without scientists submitting work for publication or presenting work in meetings.
My recommendation is:
Avoid insults (calling them names, add nothing to real ideas), and when possible, backup you saying with documents, URL or other sources.
Then they will have no arguments, because there is FREEDOM of EXPRESSION.
And as potential customers, we have rights to share our views of what is good or bad for us.
As far as I remember, nothing we have discussed has grounds for a sue.
Best wishes,
Rogelio
That is why I suggest to ignore / mark as spam and block all such emails.
For publications, search for reliable journals (for example through Web Of Science platform) and go to the journal official website,
Potential predatory scholarly open‑access publishers
https://beallslist.weebly.com/
https://www.forbes.com/sites/stevensalzberg/2017/01/03/fake-medical-journals-are-spreading-and-they-are-filled-with-bad-science/
Thanks Bruno Chrcanovic for the clarification, it helped me to separate the straw from the grains, we reading my e-mail.
Best wishes
Rogelio
To know more, I wrote to Dr. Umana (Clinical Medicine Review and Copernicus Publishing) that the sum was too high for my pockets. He wrote to me:
"However, I did speak to our board about this and they said that because this is an invited article we can lower the fee down to $300."
It seemed not very serious (a fraud?). I took information from the journal and didn't trust it.
I received an almost identical e-mail from another journal: Internal Journal Rewiew (from Dr. A. Lesnevskyi, M.D. ). They too have gone down to 300 Dollars. Is there the same organization (or a similar one) behind it?
Franco Baldoni , all these e-mails seem to come from the same group of crooks.
I usually receive similar e-mails - although from different "journals" and different "publishers" - from the following subjects:
“E. Padron, Ph.D.”
"A. Siozos, M.D."
"P. Jimenez, Ph.D."
"Dr. A Lesnevskyi M.D."
Dear Bruno Chrcanovic
Thank you so much for information. Pertinent and timely
Best,
Jean Nikola Cudina
Dear Colleagues
This should be of the interest of all researchers:
https://www.researchgate.net/project/ETHICAL-AND-QUESTIONABLE-PRACTICES-IN-RESEARCH-AND-PUBLISHING
Predatory Publishing: An Industry that Is Threatening Science:
https://www.researchgate.net/project/ETHICAL-AND-QUESTIONABLE-PRACTICES-IN-RESEARCH-AND-PUBLISHING/update/5c3ef8adcfe4a76455115c37
There is also this list of predatory journals (besides the Dolos list):
https://predatoryjournals.com/journals/
A good tip from @Randolph B Caldwell:
9 Signs a conference is a big fat fake!
https://www.exordo.com/blog/9-signs-this-is-a-fake-conference/
Thanks Bruno Chrcanovic,
Its a comprehensive piece of advice!
Rogelio Rodríguez-Sotres, just received an e-mail from the ResearchGate Community Support, where it was written that they are removing my posts about the Science Publishing Group. They received a "Notice of Claimed Defamation" from SPG. They are defending their rights to lure and deceive researchers! Can you believe this?
It is a lucrative industry, its the power of money.
But we are feeding them, they are out of business without scientists submitting work for publication or presenting work in meetings.
My recommendation is:
Avoid insults (calling them names, add nothing to real ideas), and when possible, backup you saying with documents, URL or other sources.
Then they will have no arguments, because there is FREEDOM of EXPRESSION.
And as potential customers, we have rights to share our views of what is good or bad for us.
As far as I remember, nothing we have discussed has grounds for a sue.
Best wishes,
Rogelio
Dear Bruno Chrcanovic , dear all,
it seems quite interesting to that (as one can see really simply and easily by visiting their (Journals' Main?)Page
[- contrary to HOME: https://copernicuspublishing.com/ - ]
see: https://journals.copernicuspublishing.com/ : scroll down to bottom and find
(in both pages!):
- [email protected] as their official E-Mail-contact
the lacking "L" in between '...bi...' seems to be intentional... which normally would display no good optics if they were professional at all...
Copernicus Publishing also already is listed in the DOLOS-List
of Alexandre Georges (cf: https://copernicuspublishing.com/)
But most interesting was the following finding (when searching Google for
| COPERNICUSpubishing | : also
https://prabook.com/web/jaroslaw.spychala/18335 :
In Section " Connections " (Scroll down), there are named "friends" and "Colleagues", etc, among them also mentioned (CTRL-F: insert | Copernicus |) as
Colleague: A. Umana - American - M.D. and it seems that the owner of the website https://prabook.com/web/jaroslaw.spychala/18335, Jaroslaw Spychala on PRABOOK shows off 'a bit' by mentioning a lot of SCAM-SPAM-Mails and their senders as COLLEAGUES and FRIENDS (isn't that interesting and exciting?? I never thought such might be anytime possible!!):
>> Senior Editor, Clinical Medicine Review, Copernicus Publishing, 4607 Library Rd Suite 220-1048, Bethel Park, PA 15102, USA, [email protected].
(215) 207-0125 Located in Levittown, Pennsylvania
The phone number 2152070125 is located in Levittown, in the state of Pennsylvania
Comments:
The public complaints that exist in thisphone can be read by children and other respectful people, do not make offensive comments or insults, nor make comments that are defamatory, this type of actions violate our policies and are not allowed, be respectful.
PS: 2 points in addition to my previous answer:
1) it is not quite tempting that one has to register first to get access to perhaps the more important data and conditions for publishing....
2) it is quite a calculating, but nevertheless most likely a perfidious business "service", to mention sources of FUNDING to AUTHORS:
( https://journals.copernicuspublishing.com/funding/ ).
For Austria I think that the mentioned organisations are warned enough NOT to spend their money for author funding to Copernicus Pubishing/publishing.com...
The first problem might be at the side of authors in perhaps being misguided
COPERNICUS PUBLISHING.COM (USA) [=https://whois.icann.org/en/lookup?name=Copernicuspublishing.com: Thanks to "GoDADDY.com" we only know their 'private registration' and their 'Name Servers'] and COPERNICUS PUBLISHING GmbH= COPERNICUS PUBLICATIONS.org, =https://www.copernicus.org/ Germany, WHOis:
https://www.easyname.at/de/domain/whois / for: COPERNICUS.ORG, or https://www.whois.com/whois/copernicus.org
Registrant Organization: Copernicus Gesellschaft mbH Registrant State/Province: Niedersachsen Registrant Country: DE
the latter three data of which - contrary to the GoDaddy-protocol - at least point to a really existing company in the Registration section:
Cf: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copernicus_Publications and [for their list of publications/journals cf.: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copernicus_Publications]:
[only 4 out of some more are mentioned: quote:
Organizations
Austrian Partnership Programme in Higher
Education & Research for Development
(cf.: https://oead.at/en/expertise/knowledge-and-development/ ) Funds *1)
Commission for Development Research at
the OeAD-GmbH (KEF) (cf.:https://oead.at/en/ ) Funds *2)
Austrian Science Fund (FWF) Funds *3)
Universities
Institute of Science and Technology Austria Funds
University of Salzburg Funds
University of Vienna Funds
When clicking to "FUNDS" at right side: in *1) of these = :
"Page not found
The page did not exist or was inaccessible.
Reason: Segment was not a keyword for a postVarSet as expected on page"
end of quote]
*2) "We provide our target groups with the pertinent information, for example through www.grants.at(Database for grants and research funding), www.youngscience.at (Interface between schools and science) und www.euraxess.at (for researchers).
Austrian Database for Scholarships and Research Grants https://oead.at/en/expertise/knowledge-and-development/ "
cf.: Austrian grants: https://grants.at/en/
*3) https://www.fwf.ac.at/en/research-funding/open-access-policy/open-access-to-peer-reviewed-publications/open-access-publication-models/
Thank you Wolfgang H. Muss ,
They could threaten to sue you too for reading too deep into their own websites.
Their modus operandi is crystal clear:
Profits first, at zero cost.
profits next, at minimal cost.
and when in doubt... consider high profits at very low cost.
Ethics and value for the customer... who cares? - those are costs!
Customer complains? warn them to shut up! - we have the money to sue!
Best wishes,
Rogelio
Dear Rogelio Rodríguez-Sotres :
What did I do? Just only "scientifically" examined and retraced/comprehended what their web-presentation suggests us to be allright...... I didn't hack anybody - anything....just what obviously has been presented publically...As I learned from others that there are some short cuts like 'CTRL+U' for reading the html-source text..., that often in CACHE (that is the green down-pointing arrow next right to the URL-display in Google results) there is valuable information too...etc.etc. ....
And - last but not least - just to inform all interested colleagues:
Yesterday I have sent to:
Dr. med. Ijad Madisch, CEO ResearchGate
Dr. med. Sören Hofmayer, CSO, ResearchGate
DI (Diplom-Informatiker) Horst Fickenscher, CTO ResearchGate
as well as to [email protected] *)
my reservations as well as apprehension (including most of the known sources of information about SPG) regarding the removal of "predator" and "fraudster"-discussion-content in case of [ Bruno Chrcanovic ] which was accompanied by a menace of exclusion from RG-platform in case of repeated 'defamating action'.
I honestly ask all of you at least for some understanding that I didn't post this my reply to RG publically in the respective threads.
Best wishes and regards, W.H.M
NB:
*) Edited 2019-06-28,10:15 p.m. only for the correct communication-e-Mail-address of ResearchGate Community Support:
Dear Wolfgang H. Muss ,
You are right, none of us have done anything worth prosecution, neither you nor has Bruno Chrcanovic , nor any of the other 9 followers to this thread. I was being ironical.
We are all discussing aspects of an industry that MATTERS TO US, because it should be an ETHICAL PROVIDER of a service we CONSUME.
We all have every right to argue about the malpractice, and this platform is suppose to provide a close environment for us to FREELY discusses such matters.
I am really surprised of the RG response, because the have refused to remove a large number of papers deposited in their website, that might be infringing copyright (
https://www.researchgate.net/post/How_is_ResearchGate_dealing_with_copyright_issues_when_posting_our_papers?_iepl%5BviewId%5D=Y932fzT357y3PUibpcwGivK1&_iepl%5Bcontexts%5D%5B0%5D=prfiqi&_iepl%5BtargetEntityId%5D=Q%3A505c48ade4f076ed3f00001d&_iepl%5BinteractionType%5D=questionView
).
But in the case of Bruno they reacted threatening Bruno and removing his posts, which he has every right to issue.
It is a very BIASED attitude. They defend their dubious right to act as self-archivers, but they cannot defend the right of members to FREE EXPRESSION.
Best wishes,
Rogelio
You are completely on my wavelegth... dear Rogelio! Really impressing formulation regarding/ explanation of the matter!
Best regards and to all co-fighters /fellow-campaigners a beautiful, undisturbed, relaxed and recreative weekend !
WHM
Thanks for the support Wolfgang H. Muss and Rogelio Rodríguez-Sotres
They have decided to do not kick me out from RG after all. The message I got, after my (and my colleagues here from RG) complaint:
"Dear Bruno, Thanks for taking the time to write to us. We take your concerns very seriously.
At ResearchGate, while we generally support freedom of expression, we also respect any laws that might apply to particular types of content, including the laws of defamation.
Defamation cases tend to be complex and highly factual. As a platform that hosts third party content, we are not in a position to independently assess the merits of these types of claims. Where the allegations in a Notice of Claimed Defamation assert a prima facie case of defamation, we generally accept the notice and remove the content. Failure to do so could possibly expose us and you to legal liability.
We regret that this outcome is disappointing for you and we hope you can understand the difficult position we are in.
Kind regards, Dan
RG Community Support"
Hi Bruno Chrcanovic ,
Good!
There was no reason, as the CP sue has no grounds.
Furthermore, we should be free to discuss the point.
Best wishes
Rogelio
There is a new journal on the block: Medical Research Archives. Who is sending the e-mails? Our friend "Dr. L. Smith, M.D."
The name is a mimic of a regular Journal
Archives of Medical Research
Published by the "Instituto Mexicano del Seguro Social" since the 1980's (at least) and currently hosted by Elsevier (JCR 5Y-IF ~2.5).
Cleverly, "Medical Research Archives" has registered on Publons:
https://publons.com/journal/26422/medical-research-archives
and their policy is
" Does not allow reviews to be publicly displayed"
(why it does not surprise me?).
They claim to place all their papers on PubMed central, yet if you look at PubMed, there are only 12 entries since 2016 for this Journal, publishes (according to their website) since 2015.
Their editorial board has 4 members:
===Dr. James W. Fetterman Jr., Pharm.D. South University School of Pharmacy in Savannah, Georgia; and there is a RG member with that name with 11 research items displayed in his home page.
The 2nd is:
===Dr. Steven R. Lindheim Professor of Obstetrics & Gynecology Wright State Univeristy (the spelling mistake is not mine, they cannot produce a portal free of typos). He is also editorial board member of SciTechnol (
https://www.scitechnol.com/
). A super-broad scope Journal with a webpage just as suspicious. When you look for his papers, you find publications form at leat 1973 with his name and the most recent has a multiple address affiliation:
Steven R. Lindheim M.D., M.M.M. Wright State University, Dayton, Ohio; School of Medicine, Shanghai; Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, People's Republic of China; Shandong University, Jinan, People's Republic of China.
The 3rd
===Dr. Antonio Siniscalchi, Neurologist, Annunziata Hospital. He is an RG member, and he also appears as Board Member in a second Journal "International Journal of Spine and Neurosurgery" from "Jackobs PUblishers"
For the 4rd,
===Dr. David Altschul, MD, SUNY Downstate College of Medicine, I could not find papers (there may be, and I did not look carefully).
Overall,
I does not look a reliable publisher. Most likely a predatory journal.
Best wishes,
Rogelio
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