The aim of this comment is not giving support to fake journals, however to show that the actual proliferation of alternative journals is a natural response to the current erroneous scientific policy of the mainstream journals.

The mainstream journals have the financial support of powerful institutions. Moreover, on selling their journals to a vast community of customers, they ever had copious financial income, so that they could exempt authors from publication fees. However, if the young scientists can publish for free, why do they accept to pay heavy publication fees? Actually, so many alternative journals proliferate, because of the deleterious ideology adopted by the establishment.

Scientists produce knowledge not for money, however pursue their natural impulse to understand the laws governing nature. This is an innate vocation and a most profound aspiration of humans. Journals are only interested in money. Obviously, knowledge becomes useful and gets value only if it is shared and discussed with the scientific community. Ideologies and dogmas are used in religions and or profited by politicians to get people under control. Ideologies all are deleterious to scientific progress, because they decide wisdom by authority. Scientific knowledge is not created, however discovered by open minded people. There is no place for authority. In conclusion, the current wrong scientific policy is the drive behind the proliferation of scientific publishers, interested in money. The goal of the true scientists is knowledge and if they are forced to pay for it, they pay.

It is disappointing that we have not learned the lesson from the many horrible anti-scientific happenings in the middle age, and now forced to revive the same stupidities in a century where we humans are beginning to understand the whole universe.

It is for sure not good, but it is uncertain if it is a fake. You should not publish with them.

Jeffrey Beall mentioned SCIRP in his reports on predatory publishers in 2014:

"The Chinese Publisher SCIRP (Scientific Research Publishing): A Publishing Empire Built on Junk Science. Another day, another report of a junk science article published by China-based publisher Scientific Research Publishing, or SCIRP. This publisher specializes in publishing junk cosmology and junk physics, but with this article, the publisher is branching out into junk medical science, specifically AIDS denialism."

Dear Dr. Henrik

Is there are other ways to distinguish between fake journals and good one except scopus site or ISI list?

Now that we lack Beall excellent list common sense is the first barrier. A journal that spam with requests for manuscripts is bound to be rotten.

I would never submit a manuscript to a journal I don't know good papers from without looking in the ISI (now Clarion) master list.

@HenrikRasmusAndersen: While the original Beall's list web site (scholarly-oa.com) does not host the list anymore, I have recently found a web site

https://predatoryjournals.com/

which claims to build on it and expand this list (see https://predatoryjournals.com/about/ ); cf. the related question

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

Another site of a similar kind is http://beallslist.weebly.com

There is also a related RG project https://www.researchgate.net/project/ETHICAL-AND-QUESTIONABLE-PRACTICES-IN-RESEARCH-AND-PUBLISHING

I agree with Henrik, but not with Jin; checking the quality of a journal by its articles is a subjective criteria.

I think it is better to check multiple criteria in selecting journal like indexing, impact factor, plus you can check the ranking of journal from this website.

http://www.scimagojr.com/journalrank.php which will give you broader idea.

I agree with the view of Dr.Henrik.

Regards

Self analysis by checking various aspects of a journal like indexing in Thomson Reuters, PUBMED, Scopus etc., quality of published articles, Impact Factor (Thomson Reuters), Open Access and the PUBLISHING CHARGE should be performed before submission of one article.

Thanks.

@HenrikRasmusAndersen: Just to make sure, did you mean Clarivate's master journal list http://mjl.clarivate.com in your answer ?

I have never publish with them but a few colleague have. I sincerely believe the scientific publisher has been label a fake or predatory not because of the material it publishes but possibly, the people behind the set up. Perhaps, the publish should consider raising the status of the editorial board. This can be achieved by liaison with top Professors from recognized Higher Education Institutions to be part of the board.

@ Artur Sergyeyev. You are correct. I ment Clarivate.

I just received a review request from SCIRP where they didn't even provide the journal's name. Usually when such information is missing I get suspicious.

But the general advice when considering a journal you haven't heard of before is to do what you're good at: research. DOAJ is a good resource for finding open access journals of better quality.

Revised UGC - approved List of Journals including Journals Recommended by

Universities during 16th to 22nd June 2017 (II Phase)

The UGC has revised “Approved List of Journals” that would be considered for the

purpose of Career Advancement Scheme (CAS) and Direct Recruitment of Teachers

and other academic staff as required under the UGC (Minimum Qualifications for

Appointment of Teachers and other Academic Staff in Universities and Colleges)

Regulation, 2016. The UGC - approved List of Journals consists of i) Journals

Indexed in WoS (Science Citation Index, Social Science Citation Index and Arts and

Humanities Citation Index) ; ii) Journals Indexed in Scopus ; iii) Journals Indexed

in Indian Citation Index ; iv) Journals Recommended by the Members of UGC

Standing Committee and Language Committee(s) ; and v) Journals Recommended

by the Universities during Phase I and Phase II (16th to 22nd June, 2017).

Recommendations for 7,255 additional journal titles were received from 141

universities during the second phase (16thto 22ndJune, 2017) of opening the

Recommendation Platform. All recommended journal titles were subjected to the

checklist devised by the Standing Committee. After removing poor - quality journals,

duplicate journals and journals that did not qualify the check - list criteria set up by

the Standing Committee, 2,405unique journal titles were included in the UGC -

approved List of Journals.

In addition, the UGC received several complains about inclusion of poor - quality

journals so on after release of UGC - approved list of journals on 2ndJune 2017 that

included 6,507 journals recommended by the universities and by the Members of

UGC Standing Committee and Language Committee(s) during the first phase of

opening the Recommendation Platform. The Standing Committee also identified

more than 800 poor-quality journal titles based on feed-back from individuals and

institutions from amongst 6,507 journals recommended during the first phase of

opening the Recommendation Platform. These 800+ journal titles were also

removed from the current list of UGC - Approved List of Journals. The UGC also

checked for duplicate titles that were inadvertently listed twice on UGC-approved list

of journals and the duplicate entries were merged to a single title. Subsequently, the

UGC received additional complaints from various sources including e-mails from

faculty, researchers, other stakeholders and newspaper reports regarding inclusion

of poor quality journals. Journal titles reported as predatory were further evaluated

by the Standing Committee and 168 journal titles were removed.

The Revised UGC - Approved List of Journals now consists of 32,659 journal titles.

Notification on the Website of UGC-approved List of Journals

The UGC has been receiving e-mail complaints about inclusion of predatory, fake or

questionable journals from Research Scholars / Students who have not identified

themselves in their mails. Although it is UGC’s endeavor to eliminate all such journals

from the approved list, the UGC would like to ensure that complaint about inclusion

of predatory, fake or questionable journals is received from universities / academic

fraternity. As such, all complaints regarding inclusion of predatory, fake or

questionable journals in the UGC-approved list of journals should be routed through

universities or through research guide or faculty in a university. It is important that

students, researchers or faculty who write to UGC about such journals, identify

themselves with their respective university or college.

Further, the UGC would also like to give an opportunity to all universities to to double

check their respective recommendations and inform the UGC, in case an un-deserving

journal has been inadvertantly included in the list submitted by them. List of such

journals may be sent through e-mail to the UGC at: [email protected]. Any

complaint about predatory journals should use the following format.

Format for submission of complaint about predatory, fake or questionable

Journals

Sl.

No.

Journal No. (No.

Assigned in the

Approved List of

Journals)

Name of

Journal

ISSN

/EISSN

Number

Publishers’

Name

Remarks

(Reason: Why do

you believe it is

predatory)

Note: A copy of screen-shot or copy of the page from the journal asking for fee for

publishing article at the time of submission or any other proof related to

journal’s being predatory, fake or questionable Should be enclosed with the

complaint

Dr. Chandan Poddar - Elaborate information regarding UGC’s initiative to eliminate predatory, fake or questionable journals. Thanks and regards

According to wikipedia, the company has some issues that do not make it a reputable publishing company. For instance it is based in China but uses a USA address. It has been accused of generating bulk mail soliciting for submission of manuscripts and has had mass resignation of members of its editorial board in addition to listing academics in their editorial boards without the academics knowledge. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_Research_Publishing

Among other things, the next time you see a questionable journal proudly announcing that it is indexed in Pubmed, chances are that the journal is predatory.

Contrary to the popular notion that only genuine and distinguished journals which take peer-reviewing seriously and follow all the norms of scientific publishing are indexed in PubMed, many predatory journals too are included in PubMed. The same holds true for PubMed Central too.

According to PubMed, more than 27 million citations for biomedical literature from MEDLINE and other journals and online books are included. And herein lies the problem. Among other journals indexed are thousands of predatory journals, and their numbers are increasing at an alarming rate.

“The PubMed database managers have irresponsibly allowed it to become a repository of citations to predatory journal articles,” Jeffrey Beall, Librarian at the University of Colorado Denver and publisher of the famous Scholarly Open Access blog that was shut down in January this year says in an email to The Hindu.“PubMed should not be used as a whitelist.”

The survey results

Now, according to a Correspondence published in The Lancet, two surveys carried by researchers have revealed that predatory journals in the field of neuroscience and neurology “outnumber those regularly indexed in the main biomedical databases”.

In October 2016, the percentage of predatory journals in the field of rehabilitation, neuroscience and neurology indexed in PubMed stood at 12%, 11.4% and 20.2% respectively. In April 2017, in a matter of six months, these figures shot up sharply — 23·7% for rehabilitation, 16·1% for neuroscience, and 24·7% for neurology.

Raise the bar

Considering that PubMed handles millions of queries daily and health researchers worldwide regularly turn to it for information, it is “worrisome that PubMed includes journals with seriously flawed peer review processes” the researchers write in the Correspondence. Dr. Beall had warned about this a year ago: “It is misleading that these potentially low-quality articles, many of which have not undergone rigorous peer review, are featured prominently in PubMed searches.”

In a blog post “Don’t use PubMed as a journal whitelist” dated October 20th, 2016, Dr, Beall had written: “I recommend against using PubMed as a list of quality journals for the purposes of finding a journal to publish in, evaluating academic performance, awarding grants and degrees, and assessing job candidates.”

“A journal’s inclusion in PubMed does not mean the journal has a stamp of approval from NIH [National Institutes of Health]. There is such a low barrier to inclusion that researchers are advised to be suspicious of any journal that boasts about its inclusion in PubMed, especially if the boasting is prominently displayed on the journal’s main web page. PubMed inclusion is not an achievement that merits boasts,” he noted in his post.

Echoing what Dr. Beall had written about a year ago that PubMed’s value would decrease as the number of papers from predatory journals increases, the researchers writing in The Lancet have also cautioned PubMed. Predatory journals would stand to gain from PubMed’s reach and when cited by reputable journals will not only gain legitimacy but also severely impact the scientific records, they say.

The Bohannon sting

Following the John Bohannon sting operation in August 2013 when a mundane paper with grave errors was sent out to 304 Open-Access publishers, including 167 from the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), 121 from Beall’s list.

If the 82% publishers who were in Dr. Beall’s list accepted the questionable paper, nearly 45% of DOAJ publishers too did not reject the paper.

The DOAJ has subsequently tightened its guidelines for inclusion. Since March 2014, DOAJ has received about 1,600 applications from Open-Access publishers in India as part of this revision process. While only 4% (74) were from genuine publishers and accepted, 78% were rejected and remaining 18% are still being processed. One of the main reasons for rejection was the predatory or questionable nature of the journals.

Dr. Chandan - A good contribution related to the topic. Regards

Absolutely!

It is better to avoid. Regards

I got an email from SCIRP:

Glad to hear from you.

As for predatory publisher you mentioned, I would like to make clarifications for you.

Just as you did, we have also noticed that our publisher Scientific Research Publishing (SCIRP) had been added to the List of Predatory Publishers 2014 written by Jeffrey Beall , however, Jeffrey Beall has also made a disclaimer that these views only represent his own personal opinions. 

There are two main problems with this list.

1. The list is based on the opinions and judgement of a single person and, therefore, subject to the errors of judgement, prejudices and conflicts of interest inherent in such an approach;

2. The list only includes open access journals, giving the impression that only this model of publication is subject to predatory and questionable practices.

In addition, compared with the traditional publishing, Open Access is a brand new mode of academic publishing. From the numbers listed by Jeffrey, it can be seen that Open Access is undergoing rapid development at present, and it will become the mainstream of future publishing.

Furthermore, Our Scientific Research Publishing (SCIRP) is one of the largest Open Access journal publishers. It is currently publishing more than 200 open access, peer-review journals. We kept learning from the precious experience of other publisher and making improvement day by day. The quality of the journals is under strict control.

You will find many questions about the list in http://www.scholarlyoa.net/. I think you will find answers there.

Materials Sciences and Applications is the best Journal in materials science or composites in SCIRP

Looking forward to your reply and manuscript.

Please feel free to contact me with any questions and feedbacks by email.

Sincerely,

Ms Jenny Donne

Author Assistant

Scientific Research Publishing

Email: [email protected]

Manuscripts can be submitted through:

http://papersubmission.scirp. org/paper/showAddPaper? journalID=682&utm_source=P2P& utm_campaign=papersubmission& utm_medium=chenwenzhen

Now, according to a Correspondence published in The Lancet, two surveys carried by researchers have revealed that predatory journals in the field of neuroscience and neurology “outnumber those regularly indexed in the main biomedical databases”.

In October 2016, the percentage of predatory journals in the field of rehabilitation, neuroscience and neurology indexed in PubMed stood at 12%, 11.4% and 20.2% respectively. In April 2017, in a matter of six months, these figures shot up sharply — 23·7% for rehabilitation, 16·1% for neuroscience, and 24·7% for neurology.

Raise the bar

Considering that PubMed handles millions of queries daily and health researchers worldwide regularly turn to it for information, it is “worrisome that PubMed includes journals with seriously flawed peer review processes” the researchers write in the Correspondence. Dr. Beall had warned about this a year ago: “It is misleading that these potentially low-quality articles, many of which have not undergone rigorous peer review, are featured prominently in PubMed searches.”

Mainstream journals are totally hermetic to new conceptions and new approaches in certain fields of fundamental physics, like gravitation and cosmology, despite the obvious troubles of the current theories. They apparently are engaging a dogmatism policy instead of promoting scientific progress in these fields. This gives researchers, seriously involved with these problems, no other way than publishing their works in other less traditional, however not less serious scientific journals. All the rest is resentment.

The aim of this comment is not giving support to fake journals, however to show that the actual proliferation of alternative journals is a natural response to the current erroneous scientific policy of the mainstream journals.

The mainstream journals have the financial support of powerful institutions. Moreover, on selling their journals to a vast community of customers, they ever had copious financial income, so that they could exempt authors from publication fees. However, if the young scientists can publish for free, why do they accept to pay heavy publication fees? Actually, so many alternative journals proliferate, because of the deleterious ideology adopted by the establishment.

Scientists produce knowledge not for money, however pursue their natural impulse to understand the laws governing nature. This is an innate vocation and a most profound aspiration of humans. Journals are only interested in money. Obviously, knowledge becomes useful and gets value only if it is shared and discussed with the scientific community. Ideologies and dogmas are used in religions and or profited by politicians to get people under control. Ideologies all are deleterious to scientific progress, because they decide wisdom by authority. Scientific knowledge is not created, however discovered by open minded people. There is no place for authority. In conclusion, the current wrong scientific policy is the drive behind the proliferation of scientific publishers, interested in money. The goal of the true scientists is knowledge and if they are forced to pay for it, they pay.

It is disappointing that we have not learned the lesson from the many horrible anti-scientific happenings in the middle age, and now forced to revive the same stupidities in a century where we humans are beginning to understand the whole universe.

I entirely agree with Jacob Schaf. Journals like for example Physical Review D are hermetic to any other other then "official " view even if material is supported by clear mathematics. Concerning deep space astrophysics and cosmology ,ignorance of hyperbolic geometry among physicists created hostile environment for any research which use hyperbolic geometry. In this situation journals like those by SCRIP are the only way. Yes I agree that 50-70 percent of content there is a garbage but what is a the solution? It is worth to say that when computed tomography method of imaging was proposed it was rejected by all "reputable journals" " Nature" and 2 Nobel Prize winners. So inventors instead to fight with idiots set up company which made the first CT scanner reality . Idiots rejected the CT imaging based on Radon transform because they never heard about it. The same way like Saul Perlmutter UC Berkeley who never heard about hyperbolic geometry, accelerated the entire Universe to get fit to observational data, and got for his ignorance Nobel Prize. See our paper "Misconceptions of Universe Expansion..." on this site on in Journal of Modern Physics from May 30, 2018 Have a nice day. Georg.

Thanks J.G. von Brseski.

Now I feel not anymore so alone in this hard battle. Jacob Schaf

The remarks of Dr. Jacob and Dr. J. G. von Brzeski are the new inputs in the discussion. They have elaborated their observations nicely - useful information. Regards

Frankly I have no idea, but I always used to depend on a well-know, trusted publisher based on field of specialty.

Regards,

Emad

One of my papers on CMB was turned down by a "reputable" journal , why? Because I used the notion of space instead of space-time. "there is no space only space-time" . Now the lecture is scheduled at SLAC Stanford USA entitled " the end of space-time" by an invited scientist from Princeton. No more space-time and what idiots will say now ? The same paper submitted to Canadian Journal of Physics was reviewed by 12 "specialists" and each of those 12 dummies declined to give his/her opinion about the paper. What does that mean? That mean idiots are unable to make a comment . They saw correct mathematics with references, but that was beyond their intellectual abilities . Paper based on Lobchevskian (hyperbolic) geometry was published by SCIRP and any one can judge for himself/herself, is paper good or bad. So called reputable journals are 60-80% junk and scientific recycled garbage. Exchange of information must be FREE , and the only censor should be an interested reader. Censorship at the input to the pipe is wrong practice and imposes intellectual terror in science world similar to political terror imposed by Hitler, Stalin and Mussolini. The sooner we get rid out of those "reputable journals " it will be the better. FREE EXCHANGE OF INFORMATION IN FREE WORLD

Fake

I disagree with Ahmad. SCIRP is just a platform making authors' work and ideas accessible for everybody. So it cant be judged in terms, fake or not a fake. Readers can judge themselves about quality and significance of published material. If an author publishes inferior papers it soon will be recognized as an ignorant to the subject and nobody will read his/her papers any more. That is self imposed natural selection process ,something like Darwinism in life sciences. On the other hand censorship imposed at the input does not guarantee that you are protected from garbage. For example Physical Review D ( Eric Weinberg editor) publishes tons of pseudo science junk , in the same more or less proportion as SCRIP. Eric himself is a guru on so called early Universe .He can tell you what weather was on Friday, 10 to -43 second after Big Bang. That is a "reputable science" in "reputable journal" .

I agree with Jacob Schaf and Henrik Rasmus Andersen on several points: Here is my more detailed answer which may be taken as just my 2 cents.

As long as there is no definite evidence that the journal is fake, it should also not be regarded as such. Even the Beall's list is to be understood as an well--substantiated, though, expression of opion, an information already expounded on by Henrik Rasmus Andersen. May be, it is not a Q1--journal, yet, it does not imply that the articles are flawed to an extent that they should be excluded from a scientific discussion. This vitally requires the ability of the authors to actually discuss their work, albeit following a peer--review process. Depending on overall journal policies, the specific design of the peer--review process varies of course and is, also in well--established journals, prone with human and non--human fallacies.

I also looked at some of the open--access publications in some journals of the publishing group in question, in the area of biophysics and applied mathematics, mainly. It is mostly not top--notch work but the publications I read are acceptable in my opinion for a scientific debate. Moreover, comparing to some of the more established journals, the quality of the work is not inferior as compared to published work in other journals. Some of the articles are definitely not my taste, still at second look they are based only on the work presented therein eligible for journal publication.

To conclude from what is known, not only limited to the info gathered in this thread, the journal qualifies at the present time as a journal in which one can publish. Some allegations have been raised but they are of negligible number or even unproven speculation on which one should not rely.

These are just my 2 cents.

I submitted a paper to the OPEN SAGE and for a period of over a year I have not got feedback. It is paid journal article processing charge (APC). Then the explanation was that reviewers are not responding. So it is up to you to decide what are the alternatives!

Read my article " Risk of publication in worthless journals " from below link. It gives you some idea about fake journals.

http://prithucollege.edu.np/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/01-Full-Article.pdf

The journal is fake and predatory if there is no adequate PEER REVIEW.

I have serious doubts about the peer review for this journal group (including "Open Access library Journal"). I think these guys will publish almost anything if you have the cash.

Actually some fields of scientific research (notoriously about space and gravitation) are very strongly politicized. In these fields, the concern of the editors of traditional and established journals about the impact and status of their journals plays a role much more important than scientific relevance. Likewise in the middle age, they adopt a dogmatism policy, in which the ultimate interest is of course money, a lot of money not paid by the authors, however by the customers. Many of, so dubbed, fake or predatory journals profit essentially from this stupid conflict of interests between authors, concerned about scientific progress, and the editors, concerned about impact, status of their journals and cash. In my view, some journals like the JMP are an option to publish works that expose the flagrant flaws of the current theories and propose new and effective solutions.

From the perspective of some comments about the JMP, Galileo should have submitted his work on the heliocentric system to the editorial house of the Vatican, which in the epoch was a leading country in cultural development. Why was Galileo so stupid and run the risk of being burned alive like many others and has sent his work out for publication to England, which, in the epoch, was not at all a leading cultural country? The reason is obvious. To confront the dogmatism of the Catholic Church was very dangerous.

Actually, publishing works that discard established views about space and gravitation is equally dangerous. You can get discredited. . .

I can say Scientific Research Publishing is not as fake as one may think. At least, i have published a paper in one of their Journals and felt the smoothness and reality of Publication. Perhaps I will discover more to that as time goes on.

I think these guys will publish almost anything if you have the cash. Therefore my recommendation is to avoid these kinds of journals as authors, editors, and reviewers.

Every journals are playground of the researchers' to publish their works, it has to give free to think or judge to the readers for evaluation of publisher. I trust, work/s will speak itself.

I submitted two modeling papers to a special issue on Vegetation of their American Journal of Plant Sciences in 2015 and got substantive reviews requesting some typo's be corrected and asking for additional explanations of a few less than transparent items before they would accept them for publication. Hence here is a counter example to the claim that these journals do not engage in peer review.

It is truly scam! I got GMail ads and checked their website, talked to a support team member who helped me finding ia journal that is related to my field.

I checked journal page for details, it claims inclusion in Clarivate database, but I checked this is Clarivate and in other sources (Scopus, ISI).. It`s not there!

Also, it`s too expensive compared to other journals. Don`t beleive them when they say their rates are average and that they offer a fund to researchers from low income countries.

We had two articles published in Open Journal of Social Sciences and they gave us substantial reduction of the APC. Also, this journal is searchable on the Publons database https://publons.com/journal/21537/open-journal-of-social-sciences

I think the Journal is negotiable

https://publons.com/publisher/5960/scientific-research-publishing-scirp

There are many fake journals. They just want earning money and they will publish manuscript very fast. So, when you enter and see the web. for these journals which have multiple disciplines, you have to avoid them.

Thanks

SCIRP is a chinese publisher. None of their journals are indexed in reputed western databses such as Scopus or PubMed. They publish a large volume of research from the developing world, but most of this research is sub-standard and does not go through any rigorous peer-review. I would suggest researchers to avoid this publisher, if possible.