This article from "The Hindu" claims that
there are scams involving Open Access Journals. I do not know how
accurate its information is: http://www.thehindu.com/sci-
The above article concludes, "With no organisation or system in place to check the entry of counterfeits, the onus is on researchers to decide the reliability of what they read, and where to publish their work."
The article indicates that quite a few researchers/authors based in India seem to have published in these alleged "scam" journals. Perhaps their research work loses some/most value as it has got published with journals which are being labeled as scam journals! I think researchers need to be pretty careful about not getting caught up in such scams.
Here are some links regarding such alleged scam journals.
1) http://scholarlyoa.com/
Here's Beall's Criteria for Determining Predatory Open-Access Publishers, http://scholarlyoa.com/2012/
2) http://sust.academia.edu/
3) http://blog.pokristensson.com/
The Hindu article states that names of academics/researchers are advertised as members of the editorial board without the knowledge of these academics/researchers! That is Identity Theft, pure and simple! This is horrifying.
I think this is where the brand name of the publisher is so vital. For computing areas, top brand names like ACM and IEEE must be having top peer reviewer panel quality, decades of experience in publishing and a sophisticated publishing organization in general. Besides being top quality publishers they certainly seem to be safe publishers as well. Initiatives like ACM Author-izer, http://www.acm.org/
The above article concludes, "With no organisation or system in place to check the entry of counterfeits, the onus is on researchers to decide the reliability of what they read, and where to publish their work."
The article indicates that quite a few researchers/authors based in India seem to have published in these alleged "scam" journals. Perhaps their research work loses some/most value as it has got published with journals which are being labeled as scam journals! I think researchers need to be pretty careful about not getting caught up in such scams.
Here are some links regarding such alleged scam journals.
1) http://scholarlyoa.com/
Here's Beall's Criteria for Determining Predatory Open-Access Publishers, http://scholarlyoa.com/2012/
2) http://sust.academia.edu/
3) http://blog.pokristensson.com/
The Hindu article states that names of academics/researchers are advertised as members of the editorial board without the knowledge of these academics/researchers! That is Identity Theft, pure and simple! This is horrifying.
I think this is where the brand name of the publisher is so vital. For computing areas, top brand names like ACM and IEEE must be having top peer reviewer panel quality, decades of experience in publishing and a sophisticated publishing organization in general. Besides being top quality publishers they certainly seem to be safe publishers as well. Initiatives like ACM Author-izer, http://www.acm.org/
A recent Nature article gives superb insight into science/research publishing business and how Open Access is making significant inroads into it, Open access: The true cost of science publishing.
ReplyDeleteAn interesting extract from it:
The number of open-access journals has risen steadily, in part because of funders' views that papers based on publicly funded research should be free for anyone to read. By 2011, 11% of the world's articles were being published in fully open-access journals.