Scholarly Open Access

I have added Elixir Online Journal to my list (above) of questionable journals that publish independently of any publisher.

The journal published its first issue in January, 2011. Its “Contact us” page provides no information and only includes a web form for handling inquiries. There is no indication on the site where the journal is based.

Its articles are open access and cover practically all areas of knowledge. There’s no focus whatsoever. However, to access the full text of the articles, you have to register for a (free) account and sign in.

I assume that the journal charges author fees upon article acceptance, but I cannot find this stated anywhere. Some publishers like to drop this on authors at the last minute, i.e, after the article has been revised and accepted.

Its logo appears to be a rough copy of the Elsevier Logo, and indeed the journal’s name, Elixir, vaguely resembles Elsevier. This deception is unprofessional.

The Elsevier logo (top) and the Elixir Online Journal logo (bottom).

I recommend that authors and researchers not conduct any business with this journal. While it may contain some quality articles by those authors who have been fooled, I recommend that readers remain skeptical of the journal’s content.

Thank you for Prof. Akhlesh Lakhtakia and Prof. Isa Daudpota for informing me about this journal.

This entry was posted on Monday, February 6th, 2012 at 6:43 PM and is filed under Scholarly Open-Access Publishers. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.