I agree with Hussin Hejase. The first priority is for researchers to maintain a high ethical standard and take advantage of submissions to ethical journals. We have a responsibility to publish findings and help each other advance in our domains. Poor publications that either have no review process, or do not apply it properly, are soon unmasked and should be avoided like the plague - this will automatically cause them to crash in the rankings and shrink their readership.

However there is a second problem in the review process which can be found even in the top journals. That is the tendency of many to give more positive reviews to known researchers even with incremental results, and poorer reviews to young researchers that tend to have views different from the mainstream. This occurs even if the new views have sound arguments and it slows down the careers of young researchers.

To fix both problems, journals should track the performance of their reviewer pool, and reviewers should not see the authors' names or affiliation (university, institute..) on the submitted manuscript. - totally blind reviews are best even though references etc do provide clues. Journals without a real review process are not journals, they are magazines of personal opinion! On the other hand Open Access Journals can meet both ideals - broader readership access for all and strict/fair reviews.

Have a look at this: http://pdos.csail.mit.edu/scigen/

It is an automatic paper generator! Authors mention: "In fact, one of our papers was accepted to SCI 2005!"

The paper is available through different links!

http://www.scribd.com/doc/167706815/EVALUATION-OF-TRANSFORMATIVE-HERMENEUTIC-HEURISTICS-FOR-PROCESSING-RANDOM-DATA

Unfortunately, some predatory open access journals are just using the principle 'pay and we'll publish whatever rubbish you'll send us'. It's better to avoid them, they'll be closed down if nobody pays them to publish their stuff.

One of the professors is our colleague, member of ResearchGate. I was glad to locate him here on RG!

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Boris_Delibasic/

I won't even go that far. I will give you examples from MY publications. Two of my publications have been plagiarized in five or six different "journal" s , if you can call them that . The citations are so bad, they were photocopied from my papers !!!, and some of them are CUT OFF in the middle, and some of my figures are photocopied and scanned and put into "their" paper.

I searched for the authors in Google Scholar, no such name exists, I wrote a complaint to one of the journals, and they took that specific publication offline. However, the journal still continues to publish plagiarized stuff full force, I am sure ... I have never seen a worse COPYRIGHT CHECK in my life !!! JAW DROPPING !!! I guess, these "journal" s make $50 or $100 from each submission and throw them right in the next issue, even if it has Mickey Mouse in it !!! Let alone severe copyright violations !!!

I used to get furious, now, I just laugh. Who really respects those publications ? what benefit do the authors really get ?

@Tolga Soyata. Ok, basically it is 'mafia'. It does not exist only in Italy, it exists in all the world. Open access journals are not often good in my opinion, but I guess that any good open-access journal exists.

In any case, I don't see any reason to do it. Probably, it seems easy to have an "article" published and gain more fitness. In any case, you increase only the number of papers, and not the quality. As far as I concerned, I prefer traditional journals, although there may be behaviors inspired by 'mafia' (as I experienced). But it is another tale.

Thx for sharing, Ljubomir. I can't access scribd now, but reading the Abstract is enough to suspect something esoteric. I certainly share the authors indignation.

PS - a similar hoax, yet nspired by completely different motivations:

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokal_affair

Ironically, Sokal's hoax is his most cited paper according to Google Scholar (considering papers in which he appears as first author):

http://scholar.google.com.br/scholar?hl=pt-BR&q=alan+sokal&btnG=&lr=

My fascination is how GOOGLE Scholar indexes this junk ????????? and, how this stuff is allowed to show up on Google Scholar ??? Seriously ?? May be somebody should let Google know ...

ebay had huge issues with illegally-listed products. They realized it, and hired personnel and started working with authorities to strictly work on this ... Now, the listings get removed if they are illegal ...

It looks like, Google Scholar should pay attention to this stuff. May be there already IS a mechanism to let Google know about this stuff. Is there ? Any plagiarized material should be immediately removed !!!

Keep in mind that Google Scholar is just a flavour of Google search and is therefore indiscriminating regarding these things. It indexes everything it can find to look anything like a journal article (has abstract, some headings marked 1, 2, 3... and References section with a certain RegEx rule being satisfied when a reference item is found in a list.

Regarding journal selection, Google doesn't really want to bother with all that. All those headaches that would be caused by skipping a journal which has the time and does the necessary effort to fight back at Google for being skipped. To them it is just not worth it.

And regarding the part about having plagiarized material removed... well, that is fine, but getting all the required proof, analysing it, all that correspondence, time needed, number of employees put to work on that single task... a product that needs so much work put into its support and operation would be troublesome, so Google just skips the skipping... or, should I say filtering journals and publications and instead, indexes all, both good quality and plagiarized rubbish.

Ljubomir, Vitaly and friends; what we are doing on this thread is good. Besides doing our 'legitimate' research, we must expose what is junk or fake. Just like when we go to see the doctor for some ailment. The physician will first of all, ask all the 'negative' questions, right? Before suggesting the 'positives' that we should do. But who are the ones in a position to take counteractions??

Ljubomir, friends, I admire YOU, the honest researchers, not so much the ones who outsmarted the journal or the predator journals!

Yes, some open access journals publish articles that are not of good standard. Such journals ask for page charges.

However, in China and Korea for example, there are open access journals which do not ask for publishing cost. For example, the International Journal of Energy, Information and Communications published from Korea, do not ask for page charges. This is an open access journal, and it is peer reviewed.

In most of the cases, journals that ask for page charges are actually published with the intention of earning some money.

Anyway, what about the IEEE journals? They are of good standard, and yet they ask for page charges too.

Dear Professor Ljubomir Jacić

I am late comer, nothing is left to discuss more. Anyway:

Things are good if its serving the purpose. In current situation, research and publishing both has deviated from their objectives (don't take it as a generalized statement). As I grown with the name of publishers like IEEE, IEE, ...but when experienced ..realized that it is not that.

Most of researches are linked with projects and publications are turning and shifting towards business.

I see one problem that makes me feel bad here. Sometimes, these "page charges" become so large that, a respected researcher from a resource-deprived country might not be able to afford to publish in one of these high-priced (but, well-respected) journals.

I feel privileged that, I can publish in one of these journals, since, the research funding budgets in the USA allow us to do so. But, I would love to see a fellow scholar from a different country to have the same chance. If we remember the French revolution, it was due to the aristocrats having a higher chance at academic success ...

Although, nothing justifies plagiarism, copyright infringement, or any other kind of scholar dishonesty for any reason, I would hate to see a very talented academician forced into considering only junk journals, because, that's all (s)he can afford to publish in ...

The problem becomes 100x worse, when you consider the fact that, these academics cannot even access the publication without paying, let alone, publish in it. Am I too unrealistic in thinking this ? Can anything be done about this ? I know Elsevier, for example, allows free access to even paid journals in resource-deprived countries ... We have to applaud this ... But, I don't know what else can be done to give everybody an equal chance ?

I appreciate your views very much, @Tolga. One thing you personally could do is to actively look for appropriate researchers residing in countries with low-budget funding. This would include ideas from different directions and, BTW, would not cost much. Isn't ResearchGate the perfect venue for coming together?

@Hemanta, you've mentioned IEEE, which is an example of how to make money (= profit). Most OA journals do not charge fees at all (around 60% according to www.doaj.org publish with zero fees). The rest does, but only from one of the authors not from all of the readers. The high-quality paper will be read by many. Now compare the overall costs for society/community: from all people involved nobody or only one pays (OA publications) and many pay (closed publications). Please correct me, but I see IEEE earning money from IEEE membership fees, IEEE conferences, authors they publish AND libraries (on behalf of us, the readers).

So, I think, the real answer to Tolga's last (and important) question is to take our fate into our own hands and start editing of and publishing in high quality fee-less OA journals. Let's follow Nobel Laureate Randy Schekman . . .

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

Dear Michael,

No. no, I have not said that IEEE journals are interested in making money. I said that even IEEE journals ask for page charges, and that does not mean that they are bad journals!

Dear Ljubomir,

It is a very funny story. Of course, reality sometimes surpasses fiction. There are too much predatory journals the only aim of which is gather money. There are some ways to publish without any referee and free o charge. Researchers have to avoid any relation with predatory journals. In this site you have a list of them.

http://scholarlyoa.com/2012/12/06/bealls-list-of-predatory-publishers-2013/

Dear Vasile,

Well, I did not know that. I have no article in any of the IEEE journals. In fact, I have avoided them because they charge too much in terms of rupees! However, I have gone through certain articles published in such journals, and I have found that the works published are of standard. That is why I said so.

@Vasile, the main actors are brave scientists from Serbia and the Romanian Journal was the collateral selection, but good one. Such fake Journals exist all over the world! The point is in their intention! They succeeded in their intent as I explained before.

@Fotios already gave the link You have mentioned for randomly generated papers at the early beginning of this thread!

@Juan, thanks You very much for Beall’s List of Predatory Publishers ! It is very useful, no doubt. Last few days the cite of the Journal mentioned above is under construction!

http://www.metalurgia.ro/

Fake publications of any kind and similar problems (including fraude, see the Sokal affair) are not new, they have only become easier to create AND easier to detect by modern information technology.

Common hidden causes are the upheld belief in the peer reviewing system as well as in the gatekeeper function of the publishing world. I may remind you, redundantly I hope, of the shocking experiment many years ago testing the hypothesis that peer reviewers - of course - remember the manuscripts they have reviewed just a year ago. They didn't! Worse: their recommendations were inconsistent!

Elsevier is experimenting with improved peer reviewing systems (see their research site), other publishers will certainly follow, but it may take some more years until these will have been accepted by the inherently slow moving scientific community (paradigm inertia).

@Ljubomir, please pass my congratulations to your brothers from Serbia for their highly level sense of humor! For the serious part of the question now: I agree that Beall's list is a good first step to avoid the existence of such 'journals', but all authors have to be cautious when they apply to something like 'International Journal of Nothing'...

@Demetris, thanks a lot. I will do it with pleasure. In my yesterday answer, You will find link for RG profile of Boris Delibašić!

Ljubomir, I think, Serbian brothers are rather brave and intelligent. They could reveal true essence of the adventurers. But where are editors, reviewers in the journals? I remember my first publication when I was a student. It was almost wonder to be published. Nowadays we can read a lot of rubbish. May be it's useful to analyze such a material for young researchers so that they can "separate gold from sand". On the other hand, there are a lot of ads in the Internet, besides a lot of proposals to be published we get through e-mailing. The names of the journals are "Advanced...International...Academic...Canadian...British" Every of us can be hooked by these "gentlemen of the pad"

@Irina, they are rather brave, yes! They do avoid publicity, but they achieved the goal!

Is there something like a register or ineligible journals where one can report certain "flaws" in publication selection and editing, or possible lack of filtering of plagiarized papers?

Great job. Journals are for science not science for journals.

Milan, other than possible legal action (in cases of plagiarism, fraudulent peer review, etc), and supporting, however that might be possible, sites like the one posted above by Juan-Esteban, the problem can sure be a good object of study for sociologists of science, and people in the field studying S&T policy. This seems to have become quite a serious matter, and, together with denounciations of the unreproducibility of scientific results (e.g. The Economist, mid October), it is worth the attention of specialists. I hope people from these disciplines can get interested in investigating these issues.

Thanks Tolga, Michael. I'm one of those who do research without a grant. My college is under Ministry of Education. Lecturers within Ministry of Higher Edu get research grants, but not us. After the last election, 2012, the 2 ministries were merged; and called Ministry of Education (Kementerian Pendidikan), but I still don't have research grant. I still get on with the research :) Sometimes, it's not the money that is the motivation. The motivation is from something more important.

Thanks for very crucial issue in research area. This process comes because of intense pressure from th education bodies may be department or college authority or university. At these places incentives depend on publication.

Some reputed publisher bounce back articles without review or they publish articles of some researchers only.

Open access is also one factor. Those who do not have funding support they will divert towards this road.

I feel we established researchers should encourage new publishers by our research.

Creating a public register could be one of the first steps in suppression of this problem. As long as the inclusion in the register is not corrupt in a way to damage a legit journal. This certainly is big problem.

First of all, a researcher should have integrity and understand that what is published is for the benefit of the scientific community in particular and the society at large. Even within an environment of publish or perish, the researcher has to abide by the strictest codes of ethics and avoid any misleading moves.

Whenever, certain persons plagiarize a work and claim it is theirs, it may work on the short run but sooner or later the truth will hit them hard in the face!

@Hussin, please, give some comments on funny, but worthy publisment of an article that was given on the beginning of a thread. Thanks!

@Ljubomir, @Hussin: The cited publication at the beginning is worth to be published if it helps to improve the reviewing process even if the content is funny and nonsense.

I agree with Hussin Hejase. The first priority is for researchers to maintain a high ethical standard and take advantage of submissions to ethical journals. We have a responsibility to publish findings and help each other advance in our domains. Poor publications that either have no review process, or do not apply it properly, are soon unmasked and should be avoided like the plague - this will automatically cause them to crash in the rankings and shrink their readership.

However there is a second problem in the review process which can be found even in the top journals. That is the tendency of many to give more positive reviews to known researchers even with incremental results, and poorer reviews to young researchers that tend to have views different from the mainstream. This occurs even if the new views have sound arguments and it slows down the careers of young researchers.

To fix both problems, journals should track the performance of their reviewer pool, and reviewers should not see the authors' names or affiliation (university, institute..) on the submitted manuscript. - totally blind reviews are best even though references etc do provide clues. Journals without a real review process are not journals, they are magazines of personal opinion! On the other hand Open Access Journals can meet both ideals - broader readership access for all and strict/fair reviews.

Well Ljubomir, I usually do not like to make fun of something so serious as the research-publication process even if there is a point to be made. Like calling the attention by planning for a bogus paper. However, there was years back a major case against IEEE conferences where someone prepared an abstract about the role of women which was accepted for presentation and then it appears that the author sent erotic pictures etc...

A big fuss was made then, and if you google it you may find the case. See main page of many other claims

http://iaria-highsci.blogspot.com/2012/03/impressive-big-scam-fake-ieee-journals.html

So, overall the intention is to reform but the means in my opinion are drastic.

In the culture of publish or perish, one may opt for drastic moves just to publish a paper even if it is haphazardly done. In our institution, once your paper is accepted or published the researcher receives an incentive or gets promoted. Now to avoid quantity over quality, the publication must be in a high-ISI indexed journals only. Otherwise your effort in publishing will be in vain. In my case if I will submit a paper to any journal I understand that it will either "make or unmake" me. In other words I have a responsibility to the information that I am sharing because the credibility of my name is at stake. I know all of us researchers are aware of that. But I think some of the journals' priority is more of readership. They will also do some tricks. And for this Romanian journal, it will certainly go down because the scientific community already knew its credibility.

Ljubomir, do you think there is no other way to bring to light the actions of those predator journals? The action of the professors was bizarre; drastic as Hussin said. Also, it has only exposed 1 such journal. What about the others? Isn't there some action that is legitimate that scientists can take because it is still not right to challenge a wrong condition with a wrong action.

How can we be more creative? Let's all put our heads to think about it.

@ Miranda Yeoh : Although I sympathize as a matter of fact with your idea of 'exposing predator journals and get rid of them', that won't solve the underlying cultural-psychological problems, so eloquently summarized by Elmer Irene. As long as 'we' take this culture for granted, nothing will happen: predator journals may go away, but the stakeholders (both researchers and publishers) will find other even more drastic ways.

First thing to do, IMHO, is - strangely enough - a linguistic turn: don't ever talk about such phenomena in a passive or quasi-passive voice, because in that way the real culprits are left unnamed and unblamed.

It is not an autonomous, anonymous system we are talking about, we are always talking about one group of people (here: institutional research administrators) forcing another group of people (here: institutional researchers) to behave in an unscientific, even unethical way. The system, or culture, is upheld by both parties, whether they know and admit it or not.

And then there is of course a third group of people, which is responsible for issuing the 'rules of the system' behind which the first group may be hiding itself. This third group probably, no definitively, has had its own goals (stakes) in mind, no less selfish and myopic as any other one.

It's a triple bond of stakeholders working together against each other.

On an individual level a radical solution may be: drop out of the 'system'! However, this will not solve the problem on a social level. For that we need, in the end, people with a lot of authority and courage, people like Ghandi, Mandela, etc.

Here, I am thinking of e.g. winners of prestigious scientific awards (there are hundreds of them ... ), who do not need the 'system' any more and set the first steps.

Happily, such a first step has been done just this week by a Nobel laureate (see the press). Let's see what happens ... or even better ... actively participate in the discussion started on WWW!

Rightly said, Paul. As I posted in another thread (https://www.researchgate.net/post/Black_market_for_academic_papers_Can_this_be_true), 'I share the views of Randy Schekman on publicly 'paid publications', could we call them the Dark Side?, see link below.'

Another quote from the link above: 'Do we need a revolution in doing science? Yes, we do. Is it possible? Yes, it is. And I think it has already begun. Open Access is a major threat to the 'aristocratic' system of managing the academic community. It's in its infancy and, unfortunately, does harm to innocent researchers by cheating, plagiarizing, you name it. But, after the honest academics have struggled effectively against fraud and greed in OA, we are free from self-confinement, closed groups and peer-to-peer publishing.'

https://www.researchgate.net/go.Deref.html?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.dailycal.org%2F2013%2F12%2F11%2Fnobel-laureate-schekman-boycotts-top-tier-science-journals%2F

Michael: "after ... honest academics have struggled ... in OA, we are free from self-confinement, closed groups and peer-to-peer publishing."

Cheers to those principles! I guess there are too many fields in which science tends to be a crucial element in society's reflexive character. One can suspect that, in such fields, an introspective, abstractly autonomous science will probably show decreasing relevance.

It happens ! and the act from which this question originated proved it. I think this is an information and well it is worth receiving it. But I don't think this proof or our discussion on the same will ever change the scenario. There will be journals that will publish papers of no use. As it is already mentioned that number of publications has an important role in getting promotion to a higher post. I feel quality should get more importance than number. It should be the responsibility of experts in the selection committee to judge the merit of the publications of the relevant candidate. Too much dependence on NUMBER GAME should be stopped.

You are right Anup. However, when decisions depend on University policies, then we cannot influence those decisions directly. However, indirectly, Luckily, at least one expert in the selection committee is reading our posts which may trigger future policy changes.

@Anup and @Hussin, I share Your views in all. Just, I do want to add one more fact concerning selection committee. There will be always political influence , friend influence...! Some people will get the positions no matter they deserve it or not, someone BIG decided! To many formalities in bad selection procedure enabled bad selection!

Yes @Hussin, it would be nice if selection committee's member(s) read our posts, but there is always "behind the line" !

Politics may be a passport for any thing on earth. That will supersede logical aspects of every situation. However, some effort to combat such interventions may be useful at least as an eye opener. Previously experts used to judge a candidate using some subjective reasoning. It worked at least in some cases to achieve correct selection. Apprehending the presence of politics we tried to impose some objective methods by associating points for each publication. Candidates scoring more points have better chance to be selected and thus the number game started. Academic business came into existence – numerous new journals were launched for accommodating papers prepared by aspirant candidates for such academic posts. Since “number” is the only consideration no body cared for quality. Authors could meet the target by publishing against some moderate page charge and the journal owners remained happy with there earnings. Quality was never a consideration in this business. My feeling is we must go back to subjective evaluation procedure for academic selection else this scenario will never change.

Anup, let us leave some space to a mixed system rather than moving from one end to another.

Agreed

What do you think, whether there will be discussion about the upcoming holidays slow down or on the contrary! We will see! Happy holidays!

Happy holidays!

Happy holidays and keep reading (:-)))))

Merry Christmas and Happy new year to all.

Dear Ljubomir, dear all, may God bless, keep, help and give His love and peace to you and your families! Thank you for sharing your amazing world!

Dear Ljubomir,

I could not read the entire pseudo-article only the abstract. Unfortunately, it was enough even to see the content s and the list of authors. I am afraid there may be many similar quasiscientific journals with highly sophisticated brain products. I think one can uncover invaluable hack works very effectively with the help of satire. It would be good to read the entire writing.

Dear All,

I wish merry Christmas, good health and a better new year for everybody.

Happy holidays and Happy new year to all.

I am going to be present for holidays at RG! I will be glad to follow your answers and comments! Good luck!

Hello friends, my Christmas break is just 2 days, 24-25th. When I left the Malaysian school system for Matriculation system, my holidays got reduced from 10 to 5 weeks in a year! The advantages are that I now teach students who are slightly more mature and I get a chance to do more research, although that is also decided by the college.

Research facilities are not so advanced here, as in your countries, and there is no one Malaysian who ever got a Nobel Prize, so far. Similarly, no one plays a joke on journals, as in the original question.

For me, one of the good things is RG; because my proceedings and data-sets can be uploaded and reach more students. Rg also allows me the opportunity to interact with folks like you all :)

I share your points Miranda and time is our witness, a Malaysian will get a Nobel Prize. As for RG, indeed, it has brought a community of people who care, together.

No, RG members from other part of the globe will continue to work... So RG can not ask for any vacation...

Wish you All Happy New Year...

Nita and friends, it seems that RG has brought together all WORKAHOLICS from around the globe :-) Happy New Year 2014, may we have peace on earth so that we may continue to contribute to our communities and enjoy the things we do, our teaching, research etc...

@Miranda, the word WORKAHOLIC is a real one for all of us who are gathered around the RG ! You hit the center! Happy New Year to all our colleagues! Hope 2014 will be healty and better!

Ljubomir and friends, each one of us brings our background and home culture to RG. When I was a kid, I memorized the Bible. One of the verses says, 'those who do not labor shall not eat'. Perhaps this is a motivation to me to work very hard. But it's the same with many of my friends, we do our professional work, house work and church work; all are workaholics. But please remember also to Exercise :)

Dear Professor Ljubomir Jacić,

I believe that we should publish may be in form (patent, highly reputed journals, ..).

Vesele Vanoce a Stastny Novy Rok! Prominte bez hacek.

Http://scholarlyoa.com/2012/12/06/bealls-list-of-predatory-publishers-2013/

Dear Vukica, thank you for sharing.

How one can measure his / her research work as good without making it transparent. How recommendations for related future work can be communicated for further research.

@Afaq, could You be more specific, please?

Dear Professor Ljubomir Jacić,

My point is how can we make our work visible to others. Every research includes what is difference in my work and what others did. Also, some suggestions for the scope future investigations. Hence, to publish the good work is better practice than not to publish.

Here, in my institution they are very serious about this Bealls list as I heard. It might serve as a guideline how to distinguish what counts what does not...

My dear contributors, try to remember Yourself what was the original intention of this thread! December 14th was not so far! I do understand that threads having more than hundred responses are not easy to follow! Thanks!

http://ip-science.thomsonreuters.com/cgi-bin/jrnlst/jlchange.cgi?Full=Metalurgia+International

@Vukica, You do celebrate, don't You!

Dear friends, we celebrate Christmas in Serbia, as well as many of the Eastern Orthodox Church, according to the Julian calendar. Today is Christmas Eve! Merry Christmas to all who celebrate! I wish you all the best! We shall be in touch soon!

DEAR LJUBOMIR, DEAR ALL RESEARCHERS,

MERRY CHRISTMAS! One of my 4 jobs is a job in Sunday school. We' (with my English group - students from poor families) will sing songs and recite poems in English. There are a lot of invalids among them, and all of them are fans of English.You see, it will be a special program, which is very popular among our Russian believers.Today orphans celebrate Christmas in our Sunday school.They eat tasteful food, receive presents,dance, sing songs, pray for peace. Our Sunday school helps orphans in their hard life not only during Christmas.Our Cristian leaders and our staff are highly humanistic persons.May God bless all the children, especially orphans, our staff, and all kind people!

Thanks a lot for a wonderful wishes!

Dear All,

According to my opinion, if some is publishing is a paper, so that It is always worthy, because he did some thing for himself and academics. That is another aspect that journal belongs to SCI list or not. If some one published a paper, so we should appreciate him/her, because in future he/she will do some thing much more valuable and worthy, and also there should by some impact factor credit. Because some journals have the ISSN , number but not have impact factor. I do not why it is so?

MERRY CHRISTMAS and HAPPY NEW YEAR, 2014 to all RG members, (Amin).

Dear Vukica

I wrote one of the mentioned journal's editor about his inclusion in the Beall's list. He sent me the following site where a major debate is ongoing against the blog. I include it here to see the other side (suspect predators!) arguments.

http://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2013/05/20/high-noon-a-publisher-threatens-to-lunch-a-criminal-case-against-librarian-critic/

Dear Professor Ljubomir Jacić,

In students' project presentations we ask "what is your contribution", "how your work is useful for society", "what are constraints....", "How your work can be expanded ..".

When we teach such ethics as a teacher then we must follow those and publish our work.

I believe that the "market place" of ideas will, overall, function properly and eliminate the dross, it just won't necessarily happen quickly. That is, I think that this is an arbitrage opportunity that the ethically challenged are exploiting. That said, the prevalence of these dubious organs does seem to suggest a serious "market distortion" which I'd guess is directly related to the metrics that researchers are being evaluated with. This is a well known phenomena in organizational behavior - people will perform to metrics not necessarily to the desired objectives.

Eloquently stated Richard: "...people will perform to metrics not necessarily to the desired objectives.." Could we retain some optimism and, perhaps say that people may...? I think the discussion addresses the issue of personal, as well as collective ethics and whether we genuinely adhere to an ethical standard.

@Richard, yes, it takes time to eliminate the dross! It creates dissatisfaction and anger with honest researchers. Systemic inertia, isn't it?

My dear friends, both followers and contributors, why the difference is so big between the followers and contributors! Maybe we should define new term, expression for difference or what so ever to Research Gate officials!?

Dear Prof Ljubomir, some of us follow this thread, because we are interested to know more. But our experience concerning journals is limited, so we can't talk or contribute much. So we follow quietly. We are here, on this thread, to learn.

We have different backgrounds. In my place, it is so hard to find a journal that we must treat journals with Great Respect :)

But yes, it takes time to eliminate the dross, for most things even journals, then the Gold will shine more brilliantly.

My dear @Miranda, what do you think about this journal from my country! Patrick Low have ssent me the information about! :(

http://scholarlyoa.com/2014/06/12/serbian-journal-accepts-paper-in-24-hours-with-no-peer-review-demands-eur-1785/

Dear Prof Ljubomir, It's an amazing journal, but not the one I will choose!

Because I like the Journals that make me do a lot of corrections, and has truly helped me to improve my scientific communication! It's not just the number of papers that is important to me, but my own improvement as a researcher, and communicator of research.

I Agree with Dr. Miranda. I will send my paper only from where I get feedback about quality of my research. I am never worried about rejection.

It seems that the academic community is in process of erosion of ethics and integrity, as money is playing the major role!

It is Power of Money and Greediness of the Position !!!

That is good description my dear @Nita! Unfortunately, it is present nowadays all over the world! :(

Henrietta Galiana has shed the light on a very important point within this thread and that is manifested by editors responses to fresh graduates quoting her:"that is the tendency of many to give more positive reviews to known researchers even with incremental results, and poorer reviews to young researchers that tend to have views different from the mainstream." For sure I will avoid such journals!

Thanks dear @Hussin, I like this quote of @Henrietta! I will avoid such journals also, but we do have first to "clean up our backyards" ! Let us fight first with bad examples in our countries.Thus, the synergy of our actions will give results in research community at international level!

Be careful! Article Spinning: A Plagiarism Technique for the 21st Century!

"Article spinning is chiefly used as a dishonest tool for search engine optimization (SEO). There are software packages and websites that will spin text for free in some cases. Its use as described here is a re-purposing of the technique and offers researchers a way to get scholarly publications without having to do any real work."

http://scholarlyoa.com/2015/09/22/article-spinning-a-plagiarism-technique-for-the-21st-century/

Such spinned papers would not be accepted if reviewers are vigilant and honest.  Dishonesty doesn't pay at all.  From mobile.

Dear Ljubomir and all, I just received a message concerning 'Medicine', now an OA journal.

"The Decline of Medicine, a Wolters Kluwer Health Megajournal

Medicine, a journal published by Wolters Kluwer Health, switched from a subscription model to gold (author pays) open access in late 2014. Since the journal transitioned the pay-to-publish mega-journal model, Medicine has declined in quality and published at least one questionable article."