I found out recently that my name was listed as a member of the editorial board of a predatory journal. What will be your reaction if such happens to you?
Thank you very much for invitation, Really, you have to publicly announce, that you are out of this predatory journal in all academic platforms and inform this fake journal to delete you name. This situation is commonly spread in many fake journals.
Thank you very much for invitation, Really, you have to publicly announce, that you are out of this predatory journal in all academic platforms and inform this fake journal to delete you name. This situation is commonly spread in many fake journals.
The core principles of ethical journalism set out on your permission, I am so sorry for this case. I think you should write to the editor of journal as soon as possible.
You are welcome dear colleague Dr.Mourad, really I have no idea about such kind of punishment. Really, I received many emails from predatory journals but I immediately delete all of them without any response or agreement. Do not worry my colleague Dr. Emeka W. Dumbili , you are well-known respected academician. Emad
Me too are inviting me to participate in the editorial committee of various journals. I usually accept, after a while the magazine sends me articles to review them. I did not think I should be careful about irregularities.
This is against the law. In my opinion, in addition to publicly communicating what they did, I would go to court to seek public reparation for the misuse of the name!
In such a case, I will write a message to the editor in chief of the journal strongly to protest against what they did and to request deleting my name from the editorial team.
You have to write a message to the Editor of this journal to request deleting your name from the editorial team. And it is better to announce that you are not editor member of this predatory journal in all academic platforms.
It would be an academic plunder for predatory journals to do that. Therefore, I would formally write to the journal registering my displeasure and the need for them to take out my name and affiliation with immediate effect, giving them timelines to that effect.
Many thanks for your impeccable answers and advice. The serious problem is that each time I try to gain access to the Journal's website, I will be blocked. I am not sure whether this is intentional or a coincidence. This makes it very difficult to take any immediate action.
Thank you Prof Emad for your very useful answers. I truly appreciate you. I have tried to reach the journal's website, but I don't know why Google keeps displaying that the website cannot be reached. Does it mean that the journal is defunct or that it programmed its website that way? I am not the only member of the so-called editorial team but I don't think others consented too. I was not even informed in the first place. This is too bad at practice.
Dr Dickson, thanks too for your invaluable contribution. I will take necessary action against the journal when I gain access to their website. Once again, thank you.
My problem is that many predatory journals are indexed within Thomson Reuters and Scopus!!!!!!!!!!
The second problem is that Profesors and thesis supervisors encourage publishing in such journals and get awards as the most productive researchers without any punishement!!!! It's very hard to live for me.
As a first step you can edit your question. Instead of "predatory journal" you may write the name of the journal. then you can add a sentence explaining why you don't feel honored to be in the editorial board of the mentioned journal.
I understand your situation very well. Of course it is unacceptable without your consent to put your name somewhere. But it is another case if you are listed as a member of an editorial team of a “predatory scientific journal” without your consent. If I were you I would do all my best to use this opportunity to improve the quality of publications in this periodical. Because we cannot force them to close this “predatory scientific journal”.
Predatory journals are characterized by a common practice of sending repeated emails to large numbers of individuals, asking researchers to provide manuscripts and rapid publishing promising and at a lower cost than those issued by legitimate magazines. Sometimes predatory magazines collect publishing fees, but published articles are never shown on the magazine's website.
Researchers who publish in such journals recognize that these journals do not meet accepted standards but nonetheless choose to publish them anyway, and therefore are not "prey". Therefore, the term "pseudo-magazines" is more accurate in expressing them.
The identification of such journals is important for authors, researchers, reviewers and editors, because scientific work that is not properly examined should not contribute to and be recorded in the scientific record.
The boldness of these journals in taking different ways to reach researchers and reviewers, be careful in dealing with them and remove affiliation when mentioning the name of the researcher within the editorial board of those magazines. These magazines have become a false scientific reputation that may harm the researcher and his scientific record.
Many commenters may have misunderstood my question. I have never submitted a paper or published in the said journal. I only learned about this inclusion while doing a different thing via Google.
@Oluwafemi Samson Balogun, I was not in any way invited to be a member. They just listed my name without my consent. The same may have happened to other people in their list.
Certainly, I will publicly announce that I am in no way associated with the journal - blog post, on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn and then contact the journal to remove my name.
On another note, fortunately you found out, you can imagine many others may not know how their names are being used. I often suggest the need to set up Google alert for your name, at least you get notified when ever your name is being mention on the internet and you can act accordingly.
Many thanks for your suggestions. It was by chance that I found out. I can imagine how dubious businessmen use innocent and/or unsuspecting people to enrich themselves.
How do I set the Google alert that you mentioned? That will be nice to do. Thanks once again.
Thanks for sharing this question, Dear Emeka. The case you shared seems to be a case of legality and of police common or criminal and with little or no relation with scientific contents.
It looks that the term “predatory publishing” was defined and introduced by the librarian Jeffrey Beall with respect to open journals. Sometimes it looks that some “Meta-Experts” are against the freedom of expression, advocate the need for censorship and some sort of pseudo-scientific police? Unfortunately junk exists everywhere and is not exclusive of open journals.
See the WIKI LINK BELOW, A little EXCERPT
“Beall's List
University of Colorado Denver librarian and researcher Jeffrey Beall, who coined the term "predatory publishing", first published his list of predatory publishers in 2010.[17]
(…)
On January 17, 2017, Beall's List and accompanying blog were taken offline.[21] In a statement, a spokesperson for CU Denver said Beall made a "personal decision" to take down the website.[22]”
Here is a link to create Google Alert - https://www.google.com/alerts
I used my names as keywords and it often sends me an email when ever my name is mentioned on the Internet. Especially when someone cites my paper.I must submit that sometimes it might bring irrelevant alerts especially if your name is very common but I find it useful to know that my name is mentioned in something authentic.
Thank you Prof Yuan-Yeu. That is exactly what I have done. I later got access to the journal's web after several attempts failed, and wrote the Editor/publisher do just that, otherwise I will institute a legal action against them.
Recently DOAJ, found more than 995 predatory journals published from India. It may happen, But my observation is not only predatory but even regular journals have the editors who cannot even understand the concept or subject. Every master degree holder is editor some where or other.
If my name is there as editor of predatory journal, i am confused to answer.
I just saw your message and if this editorial team of the journal is a respected team, why they are adding your name without your permission? It is really strange. I think legally you have entire right to take a legal action against this team and charge them for misusing your name.