Impact factors for sale
A bogus organization called the Global Institute for Scientific Information has a new website that allows journal publishers to “apply” for a ranking they call the “Journal Impact Factor.”
The website is a fraudulent attempt to get money and perhaps content out of scholarly journal publishers.
The site says:
- At least 1 or 2 article [sic] must have been published in the first issue before you submit the journal in online or print
- Please send print issues of journals to us if it is not available in [sic] online
- We don’t include newsletters that mainly inform about an institution.
- We are charging nominal [sic] fee for processing your journal to get Journal [sic] Impact Factor
I can’t tell where this site originates but suspect that it is from South Asia. The site attempts to create a new scholarly citation measure similar to the proprietary one owned by Thomson Reuters.
The website is spare and many of its links don’t work. I study predatory publishers and find it fascinating that someone is now preying on them.
Hat tip: Kishor Patwardhan
Jeff, the address of the website (118.91.232.74) is traceable to the following geographic location:
Country: India
State/Region: Tamil Nadu
City: Coimbatore
Latitude: 10.9925
Longitude: 76.9614
Hosted by a local ISP ABTInfo Systems Pvt Limited
Thanks — that’s helpful information!
Not only is this a threat to Scholarly publishing, but to your web browser as well!
AVG just detected the website as a “Blackhole Exploit Kit”, see more at http://www.avgthreatlabs.com/webthreats/info/blackhole-exploit-kit/
I suggest to remove the link from the website link from the post above.
I am having my University’s IT Dept. check that link. Thanks.
I just went through the website of The self-styled Global Institute for Scientific Information (GISI) and I instantly noticed endless irregularities, which made me conclude at a glance that the guys behind it must be dunces and asshole.