Scholarly Open Access

Why the quotes around “peer reviewed”?  Also note the typo: “Disease and addition.” Doesn’t add up.

OA Alcohol is the title of one of 140 new medical-science journals launched recently by the brand-new predatory publisher called OA Publishing London. While we love the idea of free drinks, we are frightened by the appearance of this sloppy new publisher.

If this new enterprise is being run by surgeons, we would not let them cut on us. The website is filled with careless mistakes including spelling errors, word choice errors, grammatical errors, dead links, broken image links, and more. The fleet of journals includes two that the publisher claims were transferred from BioMed Central: Head & Neck Oncology and Hard Tissue. BMC states regarding Head & Neck Oncology that,

Whilst conducting an internal audit, BioMed Central has discovered a number of apparent major irregularities in the journal Head & Neck Oncology. In order to maintain the integrity of the BioMed Central portfolio of journals, we have taken the decision to close the journal with immediate effect and are currently conducting a detailed investigation.

It appears that something dramatic has taken place, but we are unable to determine what it was. Did the editors defect from BMC and bring their journal with them? What did they do to spur BMC’s investigation? We also observe that several of the journal’s editors have had an unusually high number of articles published in it. One, Mr. Tahwinder Upile, has had over fifty articles published in the journal in the past four years.

We can find no evidence that BMC ever had a journal entitled Hard Tissue, so it’s possible that this new publisher is not being completely honest. The publisher has a range of article processing charges (APCs) for its journals. The website states the range is from “£100/€125/$162 to £750/€925/$1200.” Only a very few of the journals currently contain any content.

We are suspicious of any new OA startup that begins with 140 new journals and are concerned about the murky circumstances surrounding the transfer of the BMC journals to this new publisher. The sloppy condition of the site supports our suspicion that those behind this venture lack the ability to move it forward successfully and ethically.

We think this new publisher is really just out to separate authors from their money, and we recommend against submitting manuscripts to the publisher or serving on any of its editorial boards.

Appendix: List of OA Publishing London Journals as of 2012-11-12

1. Hard Tissue
2. Head and Neck Oncology
3. OA Alcohol
4. OA Alternative Medicine
5. OA Anaesthetics
6. OA Anatomy
7. OA Applied Physiology
8. OA Arthritis
9. OA Autism
10. OA Autoimmune
11. OA Behavioural Medicine
12. OA Biochemistry
13. OA Bioinformatics
14. OA Biology
15. OA Biotechnology
16. OA Blood Transfusion
17. OA Bone Marrow
18. OA Breast Disease
19. OA Cancer
20. OA Cardiology
21. OA Case Reports
22. OA Cell and Tissue
23. OA Clinical Pathology
24. OA Clinical Pharmacology
25. OA Clinical Trials
26. OA Conservative Dentistry
27. OA Critical Care
28. OA Dental Implantology
29. OA Dentistry
30. OA Dermatology
31. OA Diabetes
32. OA Drug Design and Delivery
33. OA Elderly Medicine
34. OA Embryology
35. OA Emergency Medicine
36. OA Endocrinology
37. OA Endodontology
38. OA Endoscopic Surgery
39. OA Epidemiology
40. OA Evidence-Based Medicine
41. OA Experimental Medicine
42. OA Family Medicine
43. OA Forensic Medicine
44. OA Gastroenterology
45. OA Genetics
46. OA Gynaecology
47. OA Haematology
48. OA Hand
49. OA Hepatology
50. OA Immunodeficiency
51. OA Immunology
52. OA Infectious Diseases
53. OA Inflammation
54. OA Integrative Medicine
55. OA Interventional Radiology
56. OA Lasers
57. OA Leukaemia
58. OA Lymphoma
59. OA Medical Education
60. OA Medical Ethics and Law
61. OA Medical Hypothesis
62. OA Medical Leadership
63. OA Medical Physics
64. OA Medical Simulation
65. OA Medical Statistics
66. OA Medicine
67. OA Metabolic Disease
68. OA Microbiology
69. OA Minimally Invasive Surgery
70. OA Molecular and Cell Biology
71. OA Molecular Oncology
72. OA Musculoskeletal Medicine
73. OA Nano-Bio-Technology
74. OA Nephrology
75. OA Neuro-Oncology
76. OA Neuroradiology
77. OA Neurosciences
78. OA Neurosurgery
79. OA Nuclear Medicine
80. OA Nutrition & Dietetics
81. OA Obesity & Bariatric Medicine
82. OA Obstetrics
83. OA Ophthalmology
84. OA Optical Diagnostics
85. OA Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery
86. OA Oral Medicine
87. OA Orthodontics
88. OA Orthopaedics
89. OA Osteoporosis
90. OA Otolaryngology
91. OA Paediatric Dentistry
92. OA Paediatric Medicine
93. OA Paediatric Surgery
94. OA Pain Medicine
95. OA Palliative Care
96. OA Parasitology
97. OA Pathology
98. OA Periodontology
99. OA Perioperative Medicine
100. OA Pharmacology
101. OA Photodynamic Applications
102. OA Plastic Surgery
103. OA Prosthetic Dentistry
104. OA Proteomics
105. OA Psychiatry
106. OA Psychology
107. OA Public Health
108. OA Quality of Life
109. OA Radiological Imaging
110. OA Rehabilitation Medicine
111. OA Reproductive Medicine
112. OA Respiratory Medicine
113. OA Rheumatology
114. OA Robotic Surgery
115. OA Sarcoma
116. OA Sexually Transmitted Infections
117. OA Spine
118. OA Sports Medicine
119. OA Stem Cells
120. OA Stroke
121. OA Substance Abuse
122. OA Surgery
123. OA Surgical Oncology
124. OA Surgical Techniques
125. OA Systematic Reviews
126. OA Thoracic Surgery
127. OA Thyroid
128. OA Tissue Engineering
129. OA Tobacco
130. OA Toxicology
131. OA Translational Research
132. OA Transplant Surgery
133. OA Trauma
134. OA Tuberculosis
135. OA Undergraduate Medicine
136. OA Uro-Oncology
137. OA Urology
138. OA Vascular Surgery
139. OA Veterinary Medicine
140. OA Virology

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 15th, 2012 at 10:56 AM and is filed under author fees, Scholarly Open-Access Publishers, Unethical Practices. 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.