A selection from the journal’s website.
This is the story of the Journal of CENTRUM Cathedra (JCC): The Business and Economics Research Journal (a journal with a subtitle). This is a relatively new business and economics journal published out of a ritzy suburb of Lima, Peru. The publisher is CENTRUM Católica, otherwise known as the Centro de Negocios de la Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú.
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author fees | Tagged: open access, Peru, Retraction | 
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Posted by Jeffrey Beall
Published by UNESCO.
Swan, Alma. (2012). Policy guidelines for the promotion of open access. (Open guidelines series). Paris: UNESCO. ISBN: 978-92-3-001052-2 Available: http://bit.ly/LXaiKK
This is a book about using mandates and sanctions to promote open-access publishing. Read the rest of this entry »
3 Comments | Mandates, Open-access policy, Open-access sanctions, Scholarly Open-Access Publishers | Tagged: open access, review | Permalink
Posted by Jeffrey Beall
The cover of the Asian Journal of Banking and Finance showing a woman drinking coffee on a bed and checking her email on a laptop.
The Asian Research Consortium is an open-access publisher that is probably based in Chandigarh, India, but this is only a guess as the publisher does not reveal its location on its website.
The publisher’s current scholarly journal portfolio currently includes five titles:
1 Comment | Scholarly Open-Access Publishers | Tagged: India, open access, publishers | Permalink
Posted by Jeffrey Beall
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.
5 Comments | Scholarly Open-Access Publishers | Tagged: elixir, elsevier, journal logo, open access | Permalink
Posted by Jeffrey Beall
One of the most recent additions to my list of questionable publishers is Scientific & Academic Publishing. This publisher claims to be from Rosemead, California, but when I look at the address on Google Maps, it shows an intersection with parkland on either side.
The publisher offers 133 journal titles, all in the area of STM. Many of the titles begin with “American” or “International.” Few of them have any content yet, and many are seeking editors-in-chief and editorial board members. Under the site’s “Latest news” feature, it says “SAP has been established May 8, 2011.”
3 Comments | Scholarly Open-Access Publishers, spam email | Tagged: new, open access, publishers, unethical | Permalink
Posted by Jeffrey Beall
Virology Journal is an open-access journal published by BioMed Central, a division of Springer Science+Business Media. The journal uses the author-pays model (gold OA) to finance its publishing, charging USD $1935 per article published, with discounts granted to member institutions.
The journal’s editor is Dr. Robert Garry of Tulane Medical School in New Orleans.
Recently, it has been observed that three individual authors have had numerous articles published in the journal in a short time period.
Here is the data:
1. Sajida Hassan 14 articles published in Virology Journal since 2010
2. Muhammad Idrees 24 articles published in Virology Journal since 2009
3. Sadia Butt 10 articles published in Virology Journal since 2009
The URLs under the names generate a search in BioMed Central listing each link to a search that brings up each author’s articles. In each case, the articles have five or more authors.
The obvious questions are: How can these authors be so prolific? How can their institution afford all these author fees? Why do they elect to publish in the same journal all of the time?
It appears that the Higher Education Commission, Pakistan may have bankrolled the author fees. The authors are affiliated with the Centre of Excellence in Molecular Biology (CEMB) in Lahore, Pakistan, an organization known for corrupt practices.
Many of these authors’ articles seem to be variations on a theme, and it appears that they are taking the “least publishable unit” approach to scholarly publishing.
I don’t imply that any unethical practices are occurring here. I am trying to understand how open-access publishing has changed scholarly communication. I see a perhaps unhealthy connection between a system that judges researchers by the number of their publications and a system that generates revenue by charging researchers for each publication.
Most of these authors’ articles cite their earlier articles in the same journal, a practice that lifts up the journal’s impact factor. The impact factor is the proportion of cites to recent items to the number of recent items. In this case we have authors publishing over a dozen articles per year in the same journal, each citing his or her earlier articles in the journal, a situation that drives up the journal’s impact factor.
This augmented impact factor, along with the revenue generated by author fees, motivates the journal to accept articles on the same topic by the same authors, as is the case here.
1 Comment | Scholarly Open-Access Publishers | Tagged: author-pays, Impact factor, open access, Virology Journal | Permalink
Posted by Jeffrey Beall
