Dear colleagues,
Have you ever faced a problem of the fake journal articles published under your authorship without your permission by the unknown people? I’ve recently found a suspicious short paper containing information about a past conference, which is published in the "Journal of Medical Research & Health Education" with me as a single author.
https://www.imedpub.com/articles/awards-asian-dermatology-2020-awards.pdf
I have never attended such a conference and never published in this journal, but all the information there is published under my authorship and e-mail, and is easily available in open access. I tried to send a formal request to the editorial office of this journal, but all the contacts given at the website appeared to be invalid, so there is no feedback at all. Do you have any idea, what is the aim of such publications, and how can I remove my name and affiliation from this dishonoring edition and prevent further illegal use of my personal information in such trash journals?
Thank you all in advance!
Oleg V. Gradov,
Senior Researcher
FRC CP RAS
Dear Oleg Gradov ,
The publisher behind this ‘journal’ is iMedPub (Insight Medical Publishing) is mentioned in the Beall’s list: https://beallslist.net/
This is a red flag for dealing with a (potential) predatory publisher (and consequently journal(s)). Additional red flags are:
-It is part of OMICS see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OMICS_Publishing_Group and https://www.emeraldcityjournal.com/2015/12/watch-out-for-insight-medical-publishing-imedpub-www-imedpub-com/ a notorious predatory publisher
-They claim that certain prominent researchers do peer review for them while it is not: https://sciwriting.blog/what-is-a-predatory-journal-looking-at-the-extremes/
Why they do fabricate fake papers? Well, I noticed that the journal you mentioned hardly has content and that is the only reason I can come up with: creating content in order to persuade others to do publish with them (in exchange for paying some fee of course…).
I am afraid not much can be done about it. Looking at the fact that even criminals behind hijacked journals cannot be stopped (or at least nobody seems to do anything about it) I think no chance that a request for withdrawal will be awarded. As far as I can see the affiliation is vague (Sorbonne University France is mentioned no address, no department nothing) and as far as I see has nothing to do with your own affiliation (and a Gmail address that is presumably fake too?).
It is all sad indeed, but it is amazing what these criminals do and get away with (create fake identities, plagiarize papers, steal journal titles, by the way iMedPub looks to me like a misleading attempt to suggest a link with the well-reputed PubMed indexing/database service).
It is frustrating but try to forget and move on.
Good luck and best regards.
Dear Oleg Gradov ,
The publisher behind this ‘journal’ is iMedPub (Insight Medical Publishing) is mentioned in the Beall’s list: https://beallslist.net/
This is a red flag for dealing with a (potential) predatory publisher (and consequently journal(s)). Additional red flags are:
-It is part of OMICS see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OMICS_Publishing_Group and https://www.emeraldcityjournal.com/2015/12/watch-out-for-insight-medical-publishing-imedpub-www-imedpub-com/ a notorious predatory publisher
-They claim that certain prominent researchers do peer review for them while it is not: https://sciwriting.blog/what-is-a-predatory-journal-looking-at-the-extremes/
Why they do fabricate fake papers? Well, I noticed that the journal you mentioned hardly has content and that is the only reason I can come up with: creating content in order to persuade others to do publish with them (in exchange for paying some fee of course…).
I am afraid not much can be done about it. Looking at the fact that even criminals behind hijacked journals cannot be stopped (or at least nobody seems to do anything about it) I think no chance that a request for withdrawal will be awarded. As far as I can see the affiliation is vague (Sorbonne University France is mentioned no address, no department nothing) and as far as I see has nothing to do with your own affiliation (and a Gmail address that is presumably fake too?).
It is all sad indeed, but it is amazing what these criminals do and get away with (create fake identities, plagiarize papers, steal journal titles, by the way iMedPub looks to me like a misleading attempt to suggest a link with the well-reputed PubMed indexing/database service).
It is frustrating but try to forget and move on.
Good luck and best regards.
Dear Oleg Gradov ,
This sounds like a very worrying development and you have my sympathies. There are different ways you could view this issue:
* To contact the publishers directly might not be very fruitful as they presumably know what they are doing
* To report the publishers to their local authorities might work but could take time
* I would recommend maintaining an ORCHID id of all your publications and putting a disclaimer on other places where your publications are listed, directing readers to your ORCHID account
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