It is a good habit to ignore all kind of paid journals for many reasons, despite their quality level, imho.

Dear Sundara,

First of all, as the acceptance of paper will be sent within 7 days from date of submission of paper, I don`t complete reading the e-mail.

Then, as author will receive print journal copy within 15 days after payment of publication charges and submission of copyright form, that means the journal is of low-quality. 

In fact, we receive many e-mails containing such misleading information.

As far as  people are interested in publishing their papers there will be some econommic interest from such journals. I guess when one journal is open access it should pay some taxes for domain, editors, peers etc. However the impact factor is the most important factor when judging a magazine. As a young researcher I am very keen my work to be visible, but when considering publication in such journal there arises another question- who reads this jounal?

The purpose of these journals is only earning, rather than providing quality literature.

Dear Prof. Mahfuz Judeh - I am sorry for not mentioning the name of the 'paid journal' in the query as I gave the extracts from the email only as a sample. There are many more paid journals which routinely send me invitation to publish papers with publication charges and ensuring fast publication. However, I have messaged you a PDF of the e-mail I received today morning from the paid journal in my query. Thank you!

In recent days so many number of Journals as international ones are existing, but there is no quality ..simply they publish whatever the author submits.. are purely running as business..No quality at all. 

I feel that certain strict regulations should be there for journal publishers to create a new one as well as to maintain the existing one to ensure quality researches to be published. 

It is a good habit to ignore all kind of paid journals for many reasons, despite their quality level, imho.

Dear Prof. Sundara,

Thank you for sending the PDF of the e-mail received by you from that journal.Once, I received an e-mail from a journal with volume No. 1, and stated that its impact factors is 5.

All of our colleagues, especially young researchers, must be cautious in dealing with this type of journals.

Maybe it's not Scopus-indexed? Some "predatory publishers" lie about indexing (state that they are indexed althought they are not, or invent their own "indexes"). These are "money-making machines", not real journals, thus they should be ignored.

Dear Tiia Vissak  & Juha Altatalo: As I sent the PDF of the e-mail I received to honourable friend - Prof. Mahfuz - I can also send you the PDF by private message. I just don't wish to state the name of the journal publicly, as there are many more paid journals like this which do fast publication by accepting publishing charges. As you have correctly pointed out, one week is too short a time for peer-review! The surprising thing is - contents of this journal are indeed Scopus-indexed, and it is shocking. This journal published around 20 issues in the last 2 years and with each issue consisting of so many papers. In fact, Vol. 9 of this journal (2014) starts with page 1, and this volume has crossed 13,000 pages now.

With best wishes,

Sundar

Dear Juha - I just sent the pdf to you by message - thanks for your interest.

This is shocking. May be the indexing agencies should take a note of this. Could the agencies representatives or may be someone could be monitoring discussion forums like ours. Or at least any of us could report to them.

All paid journals are not bad. Some have very high standards and very good quality papers. However, most of the journals now have come up to exploit the "publish or perish" norm, offering quick publication and making money.

Wish the authors and researchers would be sensible and wise enough not to fall prey to these "predatory" journals.

Kindly read the editorial  entitled Of predatory publishers and spurious impact factors.by Sohail S in J Coll Physicians Surg Pak. 2014 Aug;24(8):537-8. doi: 08.2014/JCPSP.537538. I hope this will clarify your doubts about predatory publishers

Dear Juha : 820 papers per 2014 (Vol9 - 13,000+ pages) of this paid journal is a big number .. Hope Scopus monitors the quality of this journal while indexing? How could the Editorial members review and publish 820 papers per one year?! 13,000+ pages?

Is this paid journal trying to set up a new publishing record in Guinness Book of World Records? With a Malthusian growth rate of papers appearing in this paid journal, it may publish 20,000+ pages in its Vol. 10 (2015) with over 1,000+ papers.

Dear Shamim,

Tried to read the Editorial by Sohail S. I am not able to get the full text.

regards,

Animesh

I prefer to ignore these low-quality paid journals.

My account also gets such emails ... works that cannot find authentic / conventional publisher often ends up in such journals along with people who wants fast track but do not know much about about this. I agree with Demetris Christopoulos and Abedallah M Rababah ignore them completely.

One week reviewing time seems to be too short.  As editor  of an open access journal, I can say from our practice, that the minimum time to collect two reviewer's opinion is 2 weeks, evenif we send the papers to the reviewers even at the day of the arriving of the paper.

Some concepts caused suspicion of not being real and the way to hand them is very ambiguous. The problem is only one: trashing "a priori" or after consulting Scopus?

Dear Ierardi,

I fully agree with you that the problem is only one: trashing "a priori" or after consulting Scopus. Very nicely said.

I know most of us do not give credit to the open access paid journals but some of them are pretty good though. The quality depends on many things but one week turn-around time may be too short. Each week I can receive 20-30 requests from these journals and 5-10 requests to review manuscript for them. It is kind of interesting that some will send me message that they do not need me to review any more if I fail to respond in 7 days. Do not forget some of them now have their own decent impact factor. My rule is to trash them when they ask me to submit a manuscript but the journal has nothing to do with my research work.

I think the best to do when you receive an email from those predatory journals is to send the pdf of the article: http://www.scs.stanford.edu/~dm/home/papers/remove.pdf

They will never bother you again.

How the peer review process of this journal happens at this short time?

I receive every day many emails from journals like this e mail and i move them to spam  

Dear Soheil Soroushnia :

I welcome your views on this topic, and I fully agree with your conclusions:

Returning to the subject of my query, it is an easy talk for us to ignore such mails or move them under SPAM folder, and get along with our daily work. Perfectly all right. But the problem is that the journal in question is indeed a Scopus-indexed journal, and this is verified by friends like Juha Alatalo (I detailed info in a private message). Friends - the journal in my query is indeed indexed by Scopus and it has a very low SNIP (Source Normalized Impact per Paper) (2013) : 0.034.  How this journal got Scopus indexing is  a mystery. For the last 2 years, it is publishing an enormous list of papers (kindly check Juha's reply in this query), and with Vol. 9 (2014) crossing 13,000 pages already.  Scopus needs to constantly cross-check the quality of the journals that it is indexing and avoid predatory journals. This is our wish!

We authors receive on a daily basis, messages and invitations from "scientific" journals in our email boxes. Journals that have been launched recently do not have impact factor and therefore, we cannot use this indicator  (IF) alone to decide if a journal is serious or not. The editorial board, database the journal is indexed, publisher, the policy for publishing should be taken into account. Currently, there are journals, for instance, with editorial boards formed only by PhD students!

It is true that Open Access journals require payment of fee for publishing, but this fact does not define the quality of a journal. Nowadays, there are many good Open Access journals. We shall remember that printed journals with limited access are all paid but in a different way. 

Such email(s) are disturbing. Obviously they are junk emails advertising junk or predatory journals that spring up like mushrooms after the rain. All you have to do: "Ignore them." Even i delete them and send them to Trash for good every time I check my mailbox. Unfortunately it seems junk journals are growing in numbers, and some public awareness and campaign against them is needed, although clever scientists won't get fooled. Also, be suspicious when you are looking at Volume 1 Number 1 of a journal!

For the last 2-3 years, predatory open access publishers exploded and numbers continue to grow at a rapid pace. With increasing pressure on young researchers and PhD students to "publish or perish", it may be easy to get attracted by some of these low quality/predatory journals. Hundreds of open access journals, including those published by industry giants are accepting very low standard papers for money. The hoax raises concerns about poor quality control and the 'gold' open access model and calls attention to the growing number of low-quality open access publishers. As such researcher should just ignore such journals and delete all such junk offers/massages flooding their Inbox. 

Dear Yogesh and Prof. Mahfuz:

For the last one year, some predatory journals use a new tactic - they start the e-mail like saying they read a recent research paper published by me (with title of paper, journal published, vol/issue nos., page nos., etc) and praising warmly  that it is an excellent research work. Then the e-mail will invite me to publish a paper in their upcoming issue with publishing charges info, and ensuring quick processing of 7-10 days after receiving the submission. When I checked my co-authors, they told me they got similar mails too. I advised them to ignore such e-mails.

With regards, Sundar

Over the years, the number of these predatory journals has exploded. Instead of printing each issue and making money by selling subscriptions to libraries, these journals re proving free online access and supporting themselves largely through fees paid by the actual researchers submitting work to be published. Still, new ones pop up constantly, and it can be hard for a researcher to track which journals are bogus. Some of these are now buying fake impact factors from fake rating companies to seem more legitimate. Researcher’s need to be cautious while selecting journals for publishing their valued research papers..