Research Institute or Vanity Press ?
The Journal of Academic and Business Ethics is one of 19 journals published by the Jacksonville, Florida-based Academic and Business Research Institute (AABRI). The institute appears to be chiefly a one-man operation headed by entrepreneur Dr. Russell K. Baker, who is an Associate Professor of Management Information Systems at the Davis College of Business, Jacksonville University .
One of the journals this outfit publishes is called Journal of Academic and Business Ethics. This journal has an article entitled, “Eminent Domain: In Theory – It Makes Good Cents” (see volume 5), written by Benjamin A. Neil from Towson University in Maryland. [Update, 2013-03-08: The article has been retracted and no longer appears on the publisher's website].
Unfortunately, this article, published in March, 2012, contains a lot of text that originally appeared earlier in other publications. The copied text completely lacks attribution in some cases and lacks proper attribution (quotation marks) in others.
The example below is one instance of unattributed copying in the article. The top box is from the article in question; the second one is from a 2005 government hearing entitled Supreme Court’s Kelo decision and potential Congressional responses. There is no citation, and the long sentence is copied verbatim.
The original text is on the bottom; the copied text is on the top.
There are numerous other examples of pirated content in the article. There are also examples of passages being copied without quotation marks but with citations.
This begs the question, Why on earth would someone plagiarize in a business ethics journal? What were they thinking?
The answer is that people submit articles to such journals just to get credit for a publication. It’s done to pad their resumes. They can assume that few or no people are going to read the article and observe the misconduct.
We think that the other journals published by the Academic and Business Research Institute are just as bad as this one. We recommend against submitting papers to this publisher.
Hat tip: David Sullivan. His blog: http://facultytrustee.blogspot.com/2013/02/home-grown-s.html
Appendix
List of 19 journals published by the Academic and Business Research Institute as of February, 2013:
- Journal of Academic and Business Ethics
- Journal of Aviation Management and Education
- Journal of Behavioral Studies in Business
- Journal of Business Cases and Applications
- Journal of Case Research in Business and Economics
- Journal of Case Studies in Accreditation and Assessment
- Journal of Case Studies in Education.
- Journal of Contemporary Counseling and Research
- Journal of Criminal Justice Research
- Journal of Finance and Accountancy
- Journal of Instructional Pedagogies
- Journal of International Business and Cultural Studies
- Journal of Legal Issues and Cases in Business
- Journal of Management and Marketing Research
- Journal of Sport Management Research
- Journal of Sustainability and Green Business
- Journal of Technology Research
- Research in Business and Economics Journal
- Research in Higher Education Journal
One man running 19 journals. Surely, you can’t be serious. I cannot even manage to be on the editorial board of a journal which can snow me under despite my desire to perform services gratis.
[...] would appear that it’s manuscript 11902 that was the offending one, according to a February 26 blog post by Jeffrey Beal. Beal highlights plagiarized passages from paper — “Eminent Domain: In Theory — [...]
Very good information. I agree that to many times people are writing articles and only worrying about the search engines and not the little things about the article that are more important. Things in the interenet marketing world are changing and now it requires a little more effort than before.
Not meaning to be pedantic, but “begs the question” really is not what you meant.
Thank you for raising that question. I have already been raked over the coals on another blog for saying that.
See: http://retractionwatch.wordpress.com/2013/03/08/oh-the-irony-business-ethics-journal-paper-retracted-for-plagiarism/
If you thoroughly read the website for this organization it would appear a manuscript can be assured publication for the right fees..
Does one pay “under the table?”
[...] 18 of the potential plagiarism by University of Colorado, Denver librarian Jeffrey Beall, who first wrote about Neil’s paper in The Journal of Academic and Business Ethics in late February. What he found in that paper prompted him to look at others. Three have now been retracted, in [...]
Interestingly, as of today (April 23, 2013), Neil still lists the retracted article as a publication, on his webpage:
http://fusion.towson.edu/www/cbe/DigitalMeasures/faculty_profile_main.cfm?FacMem=bneil
(The page makes no mention of the fact that that the paper was retracted.)