The African Journal of Business Management
In an earlier blog post, I described a scam involving the African Journal of Business Management, a journal that is published by Academic Journals, in Lagos, Nigeria.
The scam involved the review process. An author submitting a paper was asked to provide the names and email addresses of two potential reviewers. Some authors reportedly abused this process and created two fake identities, along with two new email addresses, submitting these names and emails as the two reviewers.
Not surprisingly, these bogus reviewers praised the papers they reviewed, and the papers were published in the journal. Eventually some began to learn of and reveal the scam.
One description of the scam appeared on the Dawn.com website.
After I wrote my original blog post, I learned how the journal, despite being a scam, had gained legitimacy in the eyes of some.
The journal appeared on the Thomson Reuters Master Journal List for science. This listing is selective, but the requirements for getting a title on the list are not that difficult.
The list itself is open access; you don’t need a subscription to it like you do for Web of Science or Web of Knowledge. The vast majority of the world’s population does not have access to Web of Science or Web of Knowledge, so for them, the free Thomson Reuters Master Journal List really functions just like Web of Science. Inclusion on this list, despite the low barrier, effectively confers legitimacy in the developing world.
The home page of the African Journal of Business Management boasts that it is “covered by ISI Social Science Citation Index,” citing the name of a proprietary list, not the free one.
Also, as a result of my earlier blog post, and more importantly the Dawn.com article and the work of others in Asia, the journal has been de-listed from the Thompson Reuters list, a victory for all who demand high standards in scholarly open-access publishing. Seeing the scam Thomson Reuters removed the fraudulent journal from its list.
I have no concern on the quality and rigid referee-process of the AJBM. I state this support as a reader, not a publisher of the journal. I have only managed to publish two articles in the AJBM and therefore does not base this support on a fact that I get to publish easily in this journal. Prof Werner Havenga.
I could not understand that the AJBM currently not covered by the ISI index. Some time back on the home page of the journal it was indicated that the journal covered by ISI Social Science Citation Index but the editor or publisher has removed this form the home page of the journal. I sent email to the editor b for clarification but so far they did not reply.
I got reply from editorial office of the journal “AJBM”, they said that they are working very hard to re-admit the journal in ISI Social Science Citation Index but it is not certain that when it will be re-admitted.
NOT only AJBM, this is also for other journals under CAdemic Publisher. They are busy to make money, not quality.
Breaking News!!!!!!!!!!!!
Already they (All journals) are dropped from ISI and SCOPUS database. It will be re-evaluate on late 2014 and will be available (may be) early 2016….
This is really bad news! They must stop collecting money for article publication!
My published paper in 2007 in Journal of Intellectual Capital was plagiarized in this scam journal. There are sentences copied word by word in this journal. It is indeed a fake journal and it is embarrassing for Thomson Reuters to include this journal in its journal list. It would definitely puts credibility of the list under question.
I could not imagine that the “419″ culture has penetrated the sacred temple! It is shameful and disgusting that prospective scholars would devise devious means to sneak into the club they are unqualified to be in. Where are the ethics and morality of the profession? Whatever happened to the miscreants who perpetrated the scam? They have no business in academia.
Prof. Felix M. Edoho
I am disappointed to learn all this about a jurnal in which I published my paper. What an embarassment.
Godfrey T.
Recently, the Ministry of Education, Government of Malaysia has declared that this journal declared as black listed journal due to much scam and fraud. Now the journal has withdrew the ISI indexing.