These days many fake journals are in existence and many of the students are publishing their research in such. As a result the value for the work done will not be endorsed at what it is deserved. Is there any chance to report such journals and If yes, to whom to report and how?? Can somebody help in this regard??
'Fake Journals' - journals that are not committed to the cause of knowledge creation and dissemination. I am assuming such a definition to answer your question.
Such journals are usually share certain characteristics: collect money for publication; no real peer review; have instantaneous turnaround times on reviews; unknown or inappropriate editors; run from unrecognised institutions; don't have a focus on subject or type of research or quality; at times keep re-starting their operations under different names; run many parallel journals to maximise market share in this trade.
The best way to avoid these journals is to target journals such as: journals which have a long standing in the field; journals run by eminent editors who will not commercialise their reputation; journals hosted by reputed institutions; journals where high quality researchers in your field write articles; journals where there is a clear purpose of existence; journals where peer review / feedback is encouraged; journals which require researchers to rewrite and resubmit articles; (and many suggestions offered by Dr Anneal above).
Researchers must come to terms with the fact that it takes effort to conduct and publish good quality research work. Publishing in good journals takes time and patience to go through the review and rewriting process. If one does not engage in it, there is no learning even for the researcher. Research methods courses must highlight the importance of evaluating journals prior to submitting work. Ethics courses must also instil the values of contributing to the cause of knowledge accumulation through research.
The best way to put the 'fake journals' out of business is to not publish with them. The ethical issue around this business cannot be solved unless researchers become more ethical. Institutions must reduce the overrated importance given to volume of publishing and encourage true research. Senior researchers must handhold / apprentice younger researchers to go through the rigorous process of high quality publishing.
The number of quality outlets for publishing needs to be also increased. With the growing volume of research across the world, senior researchers must move from doing research to spending a fair portion of their time on editorial, review and mentoring roles.
All of these will reduce the 'fake journal' publishing phenomenon. It is important for improving the health of the research profession.
It might not be too late in this posting thread....,
but I found most of RG-postings on Fake- or Hijacked Journals only today:
Only as an example (since it concerns "an AUSTRIAN Web-/Online-JOURNAL"):
today I received again a message
(from: )
advertising "MITT-Mitteilungen Klosterneuburg" as potential source for publication....
since I was a bit surprised to get ANY message from there after - say - 6 or 7 months I had written to that Journal (via the given e-mail) without any reaction I tried to verify again...
did search in Google for the mentioned "Editorial Board"-Persons: BUT could not find ANY TRACE in the web for any of the persons mentioned there (not even in SALZBURG, my home city!).
When I searched then for:
I found some websites INDICATING that the "Journal MITT" has been hijacked some year ago! (pl. cf.:
http://www.mehrdadjalalian.com/index.php/updates-of-hijacked-journals/20-the-journal-mitteilungen-klosterneuburg-is-hijacked?hitcount=0
Naturally I am upset.... and/but - more interestingly - in RG there are a lot of postings regarding fake and/or hijacked Journals:
see: https://www.researchgate.net/search.Search.html?type=question&query=fake+journals
Best wishes and regards: Wolfgang
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