Fraud Journals
A large number of fraudulent journals have appeared recently. They will often write and send you a flattering email, saying that we found your great paper on the internet and we would like to publish it. These journals publish almost anything that is sent to them, and they do it quickly, but require a fee which can be between $50 to $500 or even higher. They make big claims for themselves, which are often not valid. It is harmful for researcher to publish in these journals for many reasons. A publication in a fraud journal shows the researcher in a very poor light, and deprives him of a possibly legitimate publication. This page lists some signs by which you can recognize fraudulent journals.
Some Examples of Advertisements of Fraudelent Journals are listed here:
Note also that there are FRAUD CONFERENCES, for the report of one WASET, see LINK -- be careful before submitting registration fees to any conference which advertises itself to you.
A list of fraud open-access publishers: [link]
Journal of Social and Development Studies (JSDS)
South Asian Academic Research Journals (SAARJ)
Zenith International Journal of ...
African Journal of Business Management
LIBRARIAN Jeffrey Beall has compiled a list of 300 journals which is an OFFICIAL BLACK LIST of publishere -- all journals on it are bad. But it does not cover ALL bad journals. Jeffrey estimates that out of about 4000 Open Access Journals, at least around 1000 are PREDATORY (which is his word for what I have called FRAUD). There is a separate list Predatory Journals
MY LETTER TO HEC ABOUT THE PROBLEM:
It is extremely important to take notice of a new development among journals. There is a collection of journals which have been launched recently, within the past five years, which have the sole purpose of making money. Our current criteria for eligibility for HEC approval are quite lax. They are:
1. International Editorial Board.
2. Regular Publication.
3. Citation Index.
4. [Impact factor – not required for approval]
The process for getting a journal listed with a citation index like ECONLIT or equivalent is quite simple. The journal does not have to meet any ACADEMIC quality criteria at all. It is similarly easy to put names on the editorial board – many professors if approached properly would be happy to lend their names to a newly launched journal. If the selection criteria for articles are lax, then there is no difficulty in getting sufficient articles to publish regularly. As an example, I attach the webpage for the journal Journal of Social and Development Sciences (JSDS). It fulfills all the criteria for HEC approval. However, it appears likely that this is not a legitimate academic journal. Here are the warning signs:
WARNING SIGNS FOR FRAUDULENT JOURNALS:
1. Perhaps the most important sign is the PUBLICATION FEE. Since this is a money making operation, currently all fraudulent journals of this type charge a publication fee. JSDS charges only $90, which is rather low for such journals. However, the costs of running an electronic journal are VERY low, and hence substantial profits can be realized even with such a low publication fee. Other journals like this can charge upto $300, but this scares off contributors. Of course, legitimate journals also charge such fees, so this can only be considered as indicative, and not a final decision criterion.
2. The second sign is a BROAD field, which permits submissions from almost any areas. This allows the journal to maximize the number of contributors. Note that readership for a journal with such broad scope is necessarily small, since most academics read articles only within their own discipline, and would not subscribe to such a broad ranging journals. This sentence from the description of objectives and scope is a clue to the fraudulent nature of the journal: “JSDS encourages submission in but not limited to subjects of sociology, psychology, anthropology, economics, political science, international relations, linguistics and history.” That means they will take virtually ANYTHING.
3. The third sign is a nearly 100% acceptance ratio. As long as the article is properly formatted and has an academic appearance, the journal tries to accept ALL articles submitted to it. Obviously, this is the money maximizing strategy. This is a little hard to discover directly. I have not yet discovered any author who has had a rejection from this journal. One way to test this would be to have a set of highly substandard articles at hand and submit them as test cases, if we want to find out for sure.
4. The fourth sign is either NO referee reports or generic referee reports. I attach two different referee reports that I have been able to obtain. Both are sufficiently generic that they could be sent to virtually any paper at all. Neither makes any specific comments about any issue particular to the paper at hand, which would make clear that the report deals ONLY with the paper being refereed, and not to any submission at all. See page on JSDS
5. The fifth sign is a WEAK editorial board. Contact information for this journal lists:
Prof N T Ran, Chairman IFRD, info@ifrnd.org, Daira, PO Box 93181, Dubai, UAE
I could not find any information about this professor on the internet. The associate editor is Nek Kamal Yeop Yunus. He appears to be a legitimate academic.
Nek Kamal Yeop Yunus: Sultan Idris University of Education, Malaysia
For another example, which can be identified by the same marks described above, see [example]
An average researcher without experience in the process of publications could easily be deceived into thinking that this is a legitimate journal. Therefore, I suggest that at HEC, we should start putting up a list of DISAPPROVED JOURNALS. We also should widely circulate information that authors should clear journals with us prior to submission. Also, I have devised an alternative list of criteria that we could use that would make it easier to screen out such fraudulent journals. I will submit this list of criteria separately.
Letter from HEC confirming the existence of the problem.
A lot of International Journals can be considered as HEC Recognized Journal but the quality is really very low. They are publishing the journals on monthly/bi-monthly basis and covers almost all disciplines.
They charge $50-400 and can publish a paper in 2-3 weeks’ time. As per criteria of HEC for international Journals they can be categorized as HEC Recognized Journals.
This business is going in the subjects of Education and Business Education(Management, Marketing, HRM)
For example
Interdisciplinary Journal of Contemporary Research in Business (IJCRB) ISSN : 2073-7122
The latest issue of the journal is of 2038 Pages and 175 research papers??????
International Journal of Academic Research (IJAR) ISSN : 2075-4124
http://www.ijar.lit.az/en.php?go=archives
The latest issue of the journal is of 900 Pages and 115 research papers????
International Journal of Business and Social Science ISSN 2219-1933 (Print), 2219-6021 (Online)
http://www.ijbssnet.com/current.html
The latest issue of the journal is of 302 Pages and 34 research papers????
For every query I am asking everyone to publish their research in Impact Factor Journals only and sending lists of journals to them.
I am compiling lists of IF journals in Social Sciences (JCR 2010) and will circulate among the faculty.