Dear collegues,
last month I received mail from my algerian colleages that they finally submitted an article on which we worked together for a long time.
Only a few weeks later I received a notification that the article has been accepted for publication. For me it was really surprising (and unbelievable) and therefore I asked my colleagues to send me the name of the journal --- it was Ponte: Multidisciplinary Journal of Science and Research.
According to the internet it is an hijaked Journal (original Journal is Il Ponte).
Actually my colleagues thought to publish in an ISI listed journal (it is written on their homepage that Ponte is ISI listed but actually this is only true for the original journal Il Ponte).
I explained to my colleagues that the IF of the journal is fake and that there was no scientific peer review process; however, the manuscript is published now and my colleagues lost a few hundred dollar.
What should we do now? Is it possible to retract the article?
Thank you in advance
I don' think that you can legally retract the article, especially after paying the publication fee. Legally, they are right, you sent them the article, they 'reviewed' it, accepted it and published it. Just be more careful next time and better coordinate with your colleagues. The existence of this publication scam is regrettable and your just involuntarily contributed to it...
I don' think that you can legally retract the article, especially after paying the publication fee. Legally, they are right, you sent them the article, they 'reviewed' it, accepted it and published it. Just be more careful next time and better coordinate with your colleagues. The existence of this publication scam is regrettable and your just involuntarily contributed to it...
Alexander is, unfortunately, correct Oliver. Other than 'politely' requesting to the editor/publisher there is no way of 'forcing' retraction. The journal is highly unlikely to grant such a request - as they would have to publish a correngium to support.
As Alexander also points out - it's important for academics to do 'background' homework/checks on the credibility of journals before submitting - especially fee-charging journals.
Its really pathetic...
Maybe it is not possible to retract the paper from the journal... But, I think you should contact the editor of this journal and ask him for withdrawing the paper...
It is a better learning for other researchers too...
Please be careful in future submission...
I am really sorry to learn what happened to you. I don't think you can retract the paper. You can ask the journal. However, you could possibly completely re-write the paper with some addition to your analysis and submit it to a better journal. Don't mention the fake journal on your profile.
Wish you all the best!
Dear Oliver Wiche ,
Indeed a sad example of a hijacked journal.
The journal “Ponte: Multidisciplinary Journal of Science and Research” is again an example that has a (wrong) link in SCImago. So as I recently discovered this is another example where a fake journal managed to pollute the SCImago database. See for other examples:
https://www.researchgate.net/post/New_very_misleading_type_of_scam_Anyone_with_recent_examples
In SCImago you see (that wrongfully so mentioned in: https://www.pontejournal.online/ as still Scopus indexed) the journal is no longer covered (it stopped in 2017). But the homepage link mentioned in SCImago:
http://www.pontejournal.net/
refers to the fake journal instead of the link that corresponds to the legit journal:
https://www.worldcat.org/title/ponte/oclc/829718688
Unfortunately the real journal has no (real) online activity. When search in Google Scholar you can find (citation) mentioning’s of publications of “Il Ponte” (and see enclosed file sometimes a downloadable paper) proving that the real journal is still active as a subscription based journal focussed on Literature and Social Sciences in exclusively Italian language. So both open access links are really fake.
Well back to your question. It is a shame that these criminals still can be active online. It is sad that those who do not follow the law (pretending you are a real journal belonging to someone else while you are not) cannot be treated as not existing and you are not allowed to publish in another journal according to a basically illegally obtained copyright matter.
So sad. Hard to say what to do with such a publication. It is written with the best intentions and still contains the material of hard work. So with explaining what happened whenever and to whoever when needed I tend to say that you still should consider it as a publication of your own. At least this way you preserve the study you performed.
For example upload the paper in RG (and Xenodo for example) and add a disclaimer mentioning the matter as a irreversible event but state that you still believe in the content and message of the publication.
Best regards.
Hi I am sorry to hear that Oliver!
No, you cannot reverse the process of article publication. But, it is good to alert others, and I suggest that scholars should work together to create a periodical list of credible journals and conferences.
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