Not starting a debate with you, Alexander. The following comment is for the people ending up on this page by accident, the way I did.

Most publishers nowadays have multiple journals. When an article is being rejected from a high-impact journal, it has become standard procedure that the journal will offer the author to transfer the manuscript to a lower-impact journal. Most often, the latter journals are open-access, and as such, the publication fees tend to be higher than in the traditional, non-open-access journals.

Heliyon, along with PLOSone, Scientific Reports and several others all operate under this business model. Hence, if your manuscript is rejected by PLOS Biology, you will be offered to submit it to PLOSone. If it is being rejected by one of the Nature journals, you will be offered to submit it to Scientific Reports. And so on.

It actually presents with advantages for authors, mainly the fact that the whole documentation associated with the submission is transferred from one journal to the other without additional actions to be taken.

And of course, the authors are free to refuse and resubmit the manuscript wherever they want to, which is what Alexander did.

Regarding the cost of publishing at Heliyon, it is comparable and actually smaller than with most journals of the same type.

Regarding the "corruption" allegations, they are ludicrous. I've been an editor at Heliyon for the past 3 years and the way manuscripts are handled and peer-reviewed is exactly the same as in other journals.

I wish everybody good luck in publishing their research work.

LB

Send an email to the Journal Editor and copy the Elsevier ethics office, telling them that you want your research data and manuscript deleted from their server which you uploaded. This should solve this problem.

Last two years, I submitted some papers to Elsevier. Some were rejected while a few was accepted. But I declined to submit  any more manuscripts to journals from Elsevier. Two months ago, I received a mail from Elsevier asking me to submit to Heliyon journal. I read the aims and scope of the journal, and realised that the journal is new and is using aggressive marketing  to market the journal to authors with rejected submissions. Initially, the unsuspecting author would think that heliyon journal is a much easier journal with lower review standards until they submit their manuscript and are then require to accept the open access fee. As an open access journal, they want authors to pay $1250 which is practically impossible for independent authors. So yes, I have faced a similar issue. Going forward, I reckon you submit your manuscript to other journals attached to other publishers like Emerald, Taylor and Francis, Wiley or Jstor etc, if you wish to stop sending articles to Elsevier Journals. However, you can try submit to other journals in Elsevier too.

I hope this helps

Peterson

This is outright an academic crime. Thanks for sharing your experience. Its a warning for all of us. Experiencing is believing.

Thanks for sharing your experiencesearch.  I actually also planned to send a manuscript to an Elsevier based journal.

Thanks for the warning.  I never trust any of them anyway but your experiences are very informative.

Alexender, 

Thank you for sharing your experience. One of a senior friend was also planning to submit a paper to Heliyon. She has asked my opinion about the journal and said let me search on this and look what I found. Your experience is worthful for me and colleagues also.

Very true Rahul , Thank you very much.

Yes Alexander  I also faced the same problem in publishing my paper at Elsevier. Thank you very much for raising this issue.

Three days ago when you typed 'Elsevier cheating' in Google

https://www.google.de/#pws=0&q=elsevier+cheating

this page was on rank. three.

In the meantime Elsevier contacted Google and you no longer get this result with this combination.

Interesting connection of the two: Elsevier can make Google removing a research result.

Remark on September 6th: Elsevier+cheating is back on rank 4 (attachment)

That's really alarming. As these people managing things this way. However, such kind of cheating should be reported anyhow.

Thanks  for warning.

thanks for sharing.

Alexander, this may be of interest to you and your readers:

https://www.researchgate.net/post/Elsevier_and_the_expanding_metrics_and_or_open_access_culture_in_academics_quo_vadis

I am sorry but I do not really see where is the cheating everybody is talking about? Most of Elsevier journals are high quality journals with good impact factor and the editorial team of every journal have the right to accept or reject any manuscript regardless of authors perception of the quality. Heliyon is a new journal by Elsevier and because it is still growing it could have a higher acceptance rate. The journal has APC mentioned clearly and it is the authors decision to pay the fees and submit their work to the journal or choose another journal if they feel their work is really good and deserve better journal. With all respect; I do not see a cheating, I see a made decision followed by self blame.

I have submitted to Heliyon and was quite impressed with their peer review.

Although I didn’t like the fee, this was better than the other journals who rejected my manuscript without proper reviews. Even reputable journals charge fees for open access publications nowadays although I don’t know why.

i submit my two papers to Elsevier editorial service i pay 500$ for that, then i submit my papers to many journal and all of them they reject because there are grammar mistake and the language below the stander . when i contact with them and send them the papers back they ask me to wait and now more then three month no result

Thanks for the awareness this is quit scary.I wish the best for all

After two years I would add that there is a double cheat:

1) The entire corruption of academic endorsement

2) The alleged 'academic' journals building on it

I therefore decided to publish either through media coverage of my work

http://commons.ch/wp-content/uploads/Handelsblatt_Investing_in_the_SDG.pdf

or through books:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2DrdRQ5k2JQ

The Academic recognition doesn't help you as an independent scientist because your alleged academic fellows will be the more destructive to you the more your work will being considered in media and politics. So it gets even worse when you enter 'their' journals.

Not starting a debate with you, Alexander. The following comment is for the people ending up on this page by accident, the way I did.

Most publishers nowadays have multiple journals. When an article is being rejected from a high-impact journal, it has become standard procedure that the journal will offer the author to transfer the manuscript to a lower-impact journal. Most often, the latter journals are open-access, and as such, the publication fees tend to be higher than in the traditional, non-open-access journals.

Heliyon, along with PLOSone, Scientific Reports and several others all operate under this business model. Hence, if your manuscript is rejected by PLOS Biology, you will be offered to submit it to PLOSone. If it is being rejected by one of the Nature journals, you will be offered to submit it to Scientific Reports. And so on.

It actually presents with advantages for authors, mainly the fact that the whole documentation associated with the submission is transferred from one journal to the other without additional actions to be taken.

And of course, the authors are free to refuse and resubmit the manuscript wherever they want to, which is what Alexander did.

Regarding the cost of publishing at Heliyon, it is comparable and actually smaller than with most journals of the same type.

Regarding the "corruption" allegations, they are ludicrous. I've been an editor at Heliyon for the past 3 years and the way manuscripts are handled and peer-reviewed is exactly the same as in other journals.

I wish everybody good luck in publishing their research work.

LB

I don’t see any cheating either. Elsevier is a publishing house. Decisions about acceptance and rejection are made by editors who are affiliated with a universities and do not work for Elsevier. Note that they are replaced every 3-4 years with new ones. Many high impact factor journals desk reject a high percentage of the papers due to the high number of submissions they receive. Then Elsevier just introduces Heliyon which is open access and new where researchers have higher chances of getting published. The publication fees and everything is clearly stated and authors can also apply for waivers.

@Lionel: Well, this a debate - even if you don't want. You are reclaiming that PLOsone and others are doing the same downselling, which doesn't make a change.

@Purya: You reclaim Heliyon to being "Open Access" while Lionel confirms it to being "peer-reviewed" as well.

The corruption I mention is the corruption of peer-reviews in my field. I don't know how it is e.g. in medicine, biologics and other natural sciences. In Social Sciences it's only about gated communities that decide on funding, careers and publications. And never any scientist who's not part of these faculties will be allowed to publish, to get funded or to become a professor.

I call this corruption. Of course they don't see it in that way and believe to having scientific merits. Well, these merits come from Elsevier and their peer-reviewers.

Hi.

The same happened to me right now, but with Taylor and Francis.

After a review process of six months (!!) I was asked to make "major changes" in a manuscript sent to International Journal of Phytoremediation. It took me a lot of time to do them. After a new review process of 15 days, it was suddenly refused because " There is really no new information in this manuscript ". I was strongly encouraged to send it to Gogent, ( afer paying ) and now the status is " Reject with transfer offer, email transfer@cogent OA.comfor more information. (29-Jun-2018) "

UN BE LIE VA BLE !!!!

we also faced the same problem. Our paper was turned down by CEJ and the editor asked us to submit it to Heliyon which of course wanted enormous amount of money. Heliyon has no Impact factor so far as can be seen from its homepage. I think Elsevier is just making money from this which is completely wrong. This pracice should be stopped. I would call this as academic bullying.

Thanks for sharing your research experience.

The couple high-end suscription journal - low-end open access journal is understandable and how mentioned bellow, it can be useful to authors. However i think that it is necessary to put the review procedures very clear so that nobody comes to believe that it is possible to compensate lack of quality in a work with more money (open access fee).

Heliyon!!!

It seems "Hail-yawn". Et tu Brutus!

Welcome to the club Alexander.

The whole publication process is very bad, well it works but we and science as well deserve better.

e.g. it is a disaster to wait for 13-15 months to get a rejection with some silly comments, at the same time publish elsewhere in a better journal and accepted in 3 months! something is WRONG.

back to your question,

Q) Who legitimize Heliyon?

A) Elsevier

Q) How?

A) By indexing it at Scopus, by doing this it becomes reliable by most of the Universities and research centers all over the world.

Q) So, the question is how much Heliyon pays Elsiver?

another question, what about me, Apoor researcher from a poor university, but active researcher, how can I publish my work?

What is your work? Please send it to me.

It is a strange situation which can happen by mistake. No one is perfect and you should ask them to delete your data after they rejected your article.

I believe that all journals covered by Elsevier name care about their reputation like other publishers and mistakes may happen, but we should not accept it and efforts should be made to correct them and inform others about them thank you and other colleagues for sharing their experience.

Yes, today i face this problem, they even dont give any value of our work, and say simply "we can tranfer you article" without any big reason. They trying to demoralize the biggener, i really dont expect such level of cheating. Thanks sir for share such kind of information.

We submitted to Annals of Physics which is Elsevier. The editor did not inform us for 8 months that he has been unable to find a referee. The status wrongly showed that it is under review so we kept on waiting. Finally the editor confessed that he was unable to find a referee and this meant the paper is not suitable for Annals. I told him that that is a call the editor has to make immediately upon scrutinizing the paper, not wait for 8 months. The referee has no business to decide this, it is the editor who decides this. Then he suggested that he can transfer the paper to Heliyon which is basically a predatory journal. I told the editor that I have no interest in publishing in predatory journals. The editor in chief did not reply to my complaints. These people should be thrown out of academia in my view.

Dear Garankumar, dear Girish,

in fact these journals publish articles from a few networked scientists only. I know one scientist in my field who can publish any article in any referred journal within a few weeks. He's a professor at Zurich's ETH. His work is only considered within Academia and has zero political or societal impact.

But when he adds his publication list of 300! articles in his application he's immediately published with whatever.

So hundred thousands of scientist are excluded in this system and can never bring their research to the public.

What I did was to publishing books and to releasing research on political issues. So I got relatively big recognition in media including TV which you can easily find out by inserting my name in the web search.

So I would recommend:

• Release a contemporary statement based on your research to the press/media
• Write and publish a book. Even an E-book is better than no book.

Of course for an academic career both do not count at all. Why? Media and books disrupt the corruption chain of the "referee"-system of Elsevier and their colleagues.

Have you thought of becoming an independent researcher? Think of it. If you conduct science only in the framework of the universities agenda and corruption, the results of your science are put in question.

Who is really researching - meaning: achieving scientific progress - in medicine and health? In peace? In education? In overcoming poverty and injustice? In most of the societal issues zero science happens at the universities and their dumb journals.

By the way: Researchgate is not publishing questions mentioning political issues. So any political discussion only happens beside an alleged 'scientific' question.

Nevertheless this thread is now on place three when you enter 'Elsevier'+'cheating'. Hopefully the thread will be kept alive by you and your colleagues.

We need a revolution in science against the corruption of the universities and journals!

Many thanks Alexander for making us all aware of this, I was about to submit a paper to Heliyon but stumbled upon this first.

Many thanks for the share. I am being directed by Elsevier to submit to Heliyon too. It is showing an impact factor of 1.23 now, but would it ask 1250$ again for the open access, I think so.

Should we say "NO" to review requests from these types of journals?

I suppose

Well, I think it is a matter of choice. This should not be a big deal. However, the high impact factor journals sometimes reject paper without any convincing reasons. I see it as a cartel.

Heliyon is not that bad. With time their impact factor will improve. Lets support them.

Thanks

The rejection letter seems to be a template for some of the journals.

I had two papers being rejected by a particular journal two years apart.

Yet the contents differed by just the titles of the papers.

The reasons for the rejection and the suggestion to " Try another journal within the SCOPE" were exact.

I believe it is PREJUDICE.

It reminds me of my interview in the army, in my youthful days. When they can't find any explainable problem with you, they just say, you are not ARMY LIKE. Same seems to be the problem with some journals these days. Your article is not in our scope and yet you promote and boost about the multi-disciplinary research covered in your journal.

Dear Waqas,

it's exactly like that. Journals are a peer-to-peer thing.

Legitimate open-access journals, like PlosOne, will offer to waive the open access fee for quality papers and PhD candidate students. If you receive an invitation to publish and they don't offer this, I would be wary.

There's a big difference from open-access and predatory journals, and its this financial aspect.

It would be a shame if all open-access journals are tarred by the same brush.

I just received a Heliyon email (prompting me to look into it, and finding this discussion). For the record,

Heliyon does (information on its fee waiver programme is on their website), and they note that they prioritise quality research or that from an institution/country that doesn't have the financial resources. That doesn't sound like a scam to me.

Dear Jakub, dear David! Thank you for your engagement first. As you can see in the screenshot attached the fee has been required in the last step of the application process.

So I have been cheated. And of course - after every cheat - somebody may telling you that you could have been knowing this before and that you haven't been cheated of course if you knew before.

This is bullshit, because you cannot browse the Helyion website if you don't know there's a fee. The link I got from Heliyon was an application link.

Here is the mail I got from Elsevier:

Version:1.0 StartHTML:000000227 EndHTML:000002979 StartFragment:000000338 EndFragment:000002947 StartSelection:000000338 EndSelection:000002947 SourceURL:wlmailhtml:{3EFFA1E2-952A-470F-B8AE-3F25C0F32294}mid://00000220/ This message was sent automatically. Please do not reply. Ref: HELIYON_2016_1631 Title: Redundancy, unilateralism and bias in international Indices beyond GDP – results of a Global Index Benchmark Journal: Heliyon Dear Dr. , You kindly agreed to complete the following task: Complete Submission. I would like to remind you to complete this task by 22/Sep/2016. To view this request, log into EVISE® at: http://www.evise.com/evise/faces/pages/navigation/NavController.jspx?JRNL_ACR=HELIYON and click on the title of your manuscript, located under 'My Author Tasks' on your homepage. Please complete the required steps and click on 'Complete Submission' to submit the manuscript. What happens next? After you submit your manuscript you will receive an email confirmation that your submission is complete. To track the status of your manuscript throughout the editorial process, log into EVISE® at: http://www.evise.com/evise/faces/pages/navigation/NavController.jspx?JRNL_ACR=HELIYON and locate your submission under the header 'My Submissions with Journal' on your 'My Author Tasks' view. Kind regards, Heliyon Have questions or need assistance? For further assistance, please visit our Customer Support site. Here you can search for solutions on a range of topics, find answers to frequently asked questions, and learn more about EVISE® via interactive tutorials. You can also talk 24/5 to our customer support team by phone and 24/7 by live chat and email. ------------------------------------------------------------- Copyright © 2016 Elsevier B.V. | Privacy Policy Elsevier B.V., Radarweg 29, 1043 NX Amsterdam, The Netherlands, Reg. No. 33156677.

So you folks tell me where a fee is mentioned there.

Elsevier is cheat and corruption, nothing else!

Down with cheat and corruption in sciences!

No, it couldn't been checked before because a fee was never mentioned in our conversation. Neither in their advertising nor in the application process any fee has been mentioned.

https://www.evise.com/profile/#/HELIYON/login?resourceUrl=%2Ffaces%2Fpages%2Fnavigation%2FNavController.jspx%3FJRNL_ACR%3DHELIYON%26_adf.ctrl-state%3D9d8yoelcn_14

Yes this happened to me recently and they said that my article do not match the scope of the journal and I should submit it in Heliyon

I have also experienced this just this week. I submitted a manuscript to one journal and said my submission is not appropriate for the journal's readership. They offered me Elsevier's Article Transfer Service (to which Heliyon is a participating journal). It said Heliyon waives publication charge for all transferred articles (for a limited time). Good thing that I was able to enjoy this promotion.

As to your issue, I believe there is really no cheating that happened because in the first place, Heliyon is a full open-access journal. OAJ usually collects publication charge. Anyways, you have the choice not to transfer your manuscript to Heliyon.

I wish you the best in your future publications!

This is quite shocking. The well established regular journal Material and Design has been converted into a full fledged OPEN ACCESS journal with an article processing fee of 2000USD from next year on wards.

https://www.journals.elsevier.com/materials-and-design/announcements/materials-design-open-access-2019

General decline of Science I must say, and with thousands of research papers to handle on daily basis, I cannot blame all on the Editors. Every problem ends on population. Soon we might need to shift our science to another planet, where *It fits with the Journal Scope of that planet*

I had submitted a review article to Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews Journal of Elsevier few months back. The Editor requested to revise the article based on reviewers comment which were minor. The revised article was accepted by the reviewers as they were pleased with the revised version. In the mean time, the Editor was replaced by some new lady Editor. Even though the revised article was accepted by the reviewers the new Editor directly rejected the revised article mentioning that it is not suitable for the journal. This entire process took around 14 months. I am still wondering all the time, why the article was reviewed and why the revised version was accepted by the reviewers if it was already decided to be rejected at the end.

Elsevier is the symbol of excellence.

Dr. D.B. Jani

Elsevier muddying waters, the 36th

https://gitlab.com/publishing-reform/discussion/issues/93

RELX (the group behind Elsevier) referral to EU competition authority

https://twitter.com/brembs/status/1055808787485986816

My condolences @Asif Afzal. Infact my current article at RSER, is going through the same procedures as yours. I have received acceptance from the reviewers, but the Editor has been too quiet since last month. I hope they dont change the editor again

Well this just happened to me with SAGE....not sure if I should explore the tranfer desk option but might--after all i can refuse it...

Yes, this week I'd the same "indication". I'd chosen to send the article to another journal too.

Well this might not exactly be classified as cheating Feriha. They are making an offer, its eventually your decision isn't it.!!

@Nelson, isn't SAGE a Brasilian post doctoral scholarship forum? I remember one of the professors whom I was in contact with, him and I actually applied for the scholarship in his lab via SAGE system, and I got the scholarship offer (after about 6months), but didn't move on with it since my circumstances had changed. Is it legit?

Agreed, as a reputed publisher, that must be their responsibility.

I feel there is so much decentralization now, with the extra load on editors and publishers, it is difficult to maintain quality.

They have to start thinking about paying reviewers, something atleast. Otherwise they would keep struggling in finding good reviewers, delayed responses will suffocate authors, and they will keep on forcing it towards business side of publication, which is to support low quality journals like the one you mentioned

And its a two edged sword, sometimes (and I am not pointing fingers here) the reviewer might hold a paper containing a novel idea, for its own benefits. If ou understand what I mean. One will have to involve transperancy and reward system to ensure high quality reviewing.

Regards

Waqas

@Alexander

As far as I know, they waive publication charges. As such, the journal might not be predatory.

By accepting to pay the publication charge, it all depend on whether your paper will be accepted or not, it is not automatic. You can also decline the offer as well.

Transfer Service is a service provided by Elsevier to enable you to easily transfer your paper to another Elsevier journal if you are unsuccessful in your original submission.

The Editors of the journal you originally submitted to, feel your paper may be suitable for consideration in another journal; the details of these are listed below.

To initiate the transfer of your paper to a new journal, please select the journal you would like to submit to from the options below and click the 'Accept Transfer' button.

If you do not wish to submit your paper to any of the listed journals, please decline the offer by clicking the 'Decline Transfer' button.

HELIYON

Heliyon is an open access journal from Elsevier publishing quality research papers across all disciplines. Heliyon’s team of experts provides editorial excellence, fast publication, and high visibility for your paper. Your article will be immediately and permanently available for readers to read, download, and share on both Heliyon.com and ScienceDirect. Special offer - Heliyon is waiving its publication charges for all transferred submissions.’

Once your paper has been transferred to the new journal you will receive a confirmation email detailing any further instructions/required steps for finalizing the submission.

If you want to find out more information about the Article Transfer Service please visit http://www.elsevier.com/authors/article-transfer-service

For help and support please visit http://help.elsevier.com/app/answers/list/p/7923

@ Ajitanshu Vedrtnam, are you saying that Heliyon will waive publication charges for all transferred submissions.

No, Now it is weaving off publication charge for all transferred submissions for a limited time.

Rest, I guess we can't call this as cheating if they are clearly indicating they will be changing, it's up to author if he wish to submit.

Is the Heliyon journal ISI Index

Thanks in advance for answers

Dr. Mohammed M. Al Moaleem, no, it is not an ISI indexed journal.

Is it SCOPUS indexed journal?

Yes it is scopus indexed with impact factor near to . I wanted to ask whether Plos One is better than Heliyon? How to chose?

Quite disappointed reading such negative comments. As per my experience Elsevier has high standard editorial process including Heliyon journal. Maybe it is useful for others if I share my own experience. We first submitted a paper to a "non-open" Elsevier journal; it was rejected, and I got an email asking if I'm interested to submit the paper to another Elsevier journal (in this case Heliyon- a open journal). It was clearly mentioned in the beginning that the journal will change publishing fees as it is open to access for all. The paper finally accepted and we are being waived from publication fees as we initially submitted the paper to a "free" Elsevier journal! So, I do not see any con here! But, if you are thinking that it might be easy to get accepted to Heliyon as you are paying for publishing, let me disappoint you! It was one of the hardest peer review process we have had (4 major revisions) in Elsevier journals!

Elsevier journals are known to delay formal publication of your paper unless you pay the open access fee. For example, a paper accepted by Elsevier's Mitochondrion was "Available online 15 June 2018", but still not assigned volume and page numbers after eight months:Article Is there a mutation gradient along vertebrate mitochondrial ...

it is becoming so difficult publishing papers with all this open and non open business.What was the main idea initially? Has it all been lost in the business. I am telling you as a student from LMIC,its so difficult to pay even the" nominal fees "with no funding from the institutes

I got the same offer to transfer of my paper to elsvier sister journal I did it gracefully and published it in Heliyon. However right now I am getting email stating that I have overdue balance of 1250 USD if not paid account being suspended. This is completely insane and ridiculous.

I am worried now, are they going to suspend me from Heliyon or from all Elsevier journals?

This is neither insane, nor ridiculous: that's the reality of capitalism. Cheat at every corner.

I think there is no cheating when published in journals with a good impact factor

Dear Dibya, you need to check with them. Sometimes, this type of emails auto-generated by the system that could be stopped once you complain to them. After that, if they still insist on payment, then only we can comment. They also rejected my research article from Food Chemistry and referred me to Heliyon (with free of charge option), but I simply refused.

Secondly, you don't need to worry, this is their business and they are not going to suspend your account from all the journals....as each and every customer is important for them. Unfortunately, we are their customers and they are running business and that's all.

Usually Elsevier ask if you want your submitted article to be send to another of their journals, if the one that you choose decides not to accept it. Also, they indicate if the journal is open access, or a mix; you would need to communicate to them your choice. As a whole, Elsevier journals are of high quality, with good reviewers and editors, which is a warranty. Personally, I like their well established journals rather than their too new ones, like Heliyon.

Hello Dante,

As stated by Lionel, this is now standard operating procedure, although I also cynically suspect that journals are shifting papers on purpose to improve utilization and awareness of their newer, lesser read journals. Just go elsewhere. As also in the previous answer, many new journals are open access which means you pay for publication and making the paper freely accessible to all. It used to be that the earliest journals doing this seemed to have higher impact factors, but with the competition it appears they have dropped precipitously as far as I can tell so i'm not sure that I see the value to paying out for this "service". As I recall, this was started with PLoS One and was a brilliant way to haul in the cash too. If I recall correctly, profit numbers were published a while back that showed PLoS One making a lot of money. I'm not sure that this approach is really the best approach considering they are making big profits off the backs of cash strapped academics and government funds, but I would welcome someone to give me the latest figures on cash flow for the open access model. I agree that the older, more well read journals are better, but it seems that they are getting harder and harder to publish in and reviewers seem much more peevish and restrictive, if not downright ridiculous in their expectations. For example, I just sent in a paper for a new chemical library for screening and a nutty reviewer said that a low micromolar active from the set would not be a drug candidate - WHAT???

Relative to earlier answers regarding an inability to pay open access fees, I also meant to add that one can request a waiver of these fees as I understand it. I have heard anecdotally that the journals rarely waive their fees though so I'm not sure that's a viable strategy. Do any of the journal people in this answer trail have real statistics and advice on what works concerning a fee waiver request?

I also got the same suggestion, once i sent my research article to a well impact Elsevier journal, then after some days I got a rejection email having suggestion to transfer the article to a Heliyon Journal, which i accepted, and now my article is under the first review.

Unless you are desperate to get something published very quickly (e.g., for graduation), stay away from these new, open access journals like Heliyon. Not only they charge you high fees, the publication would not help you too much in advancing your academic career. Don't waste years to work on your research and then get in something that cost you big bucks and help you nearly zero in advancing academic career.

Adolf K. Y. Ng , I wish I could disagree with your stance but I completely concur. The temptation of wanting to publish and finish the degree is usually very high. I stumbled on this thread because I wanted to check the credibility of of this journal. I have been invited to review a paper for them. Will you then review for these journals? I guess we should, so as to make sure there's a review process really taking place.

Dear Pascaline,

thank you for your contribution here. In the meanwhile my question is three years old yet and I'd like to tell the following for our discussion:

1) Such as most of the young people as well young scientist seek to achieve a well paid and secure job if possible at the University/Administration.

2) They learn, that they only get this job when they do no innovative research colliding with the professor's, the University's and the administration's agenda.

3) They now got into an ongoing paradox: becoming a professional scientist while doing zero original research.

4) The 'Scientific Journals' - as well those with review - offer a solution for this paradox.

5) The articles appearing there mostly only quote the scientific community and do not offer any innovation.

6) Both the reviewers and the authors are happy with that procedure: being recommended scientists without a single scientific progress.

I got offered to transfer my manuscript there for free. It was not a very pleasant experience to get my work rejected with only one reason "I feel that your paper may be better suited in our sister-journal, Heliyon". The journal accepting papers from all fields, of course it would be suited. I refused the offer since I doubt publishing in such journal would help my career.

it is not cheating definately, but not a good way to advertise a new journal.

I think this is brcoming a standard procedure with big publishers and you are free to withdraw your article if you don't want to pay.

I actually had a great experience with Heliyon. My article was transferred to multiple journals suggested by Elsevier, and I ended up submitting to Heliyon which offered a fee waiver for a transferred article at that moment. After 3 months, I revised and re-submitted. Now, my paper is published online. Well, free of charge!