African Journal of Business Management
An edited version appear as a Dawn Op-Ed - see below.
Management Sciences Publishing Racket
Q. Isa Daudpota
As an internet user you will have experienced the Nigerian lottery scam. But surely you have not heard of the academic scam of the “African Journal of Business Management” (AJBM). That is unless you are in one of countless management schools that have sprung up in Pakistan since the 1980s. It is tops in their popularity list. The Higher Education Commission’s (HEC) PhD approved supervisors in management sciences have published nearly 50 articles in it.
Should one be proud of the four Pakistanis who are on its editorial board? No, even though it appears in the (previously reliable) Thomson Reuters listing of journals.
This is how the most popular business journal works among Pakistani academics. Its reviewers are recommended by authors. It does not check the relationship between the reviewers and the authors, nor verify the reputation of the reviewer. If submitting a paper you can create a fake email, nominate a professor X who does not exist, and use the email address you created, where the paper is sent for reviewing, if at all. The journal gets USD 500 for an ‘accepted’ paper.
The mechanism ought to be clear by now. AJBM, a member of a large family of similar fake publications (this one is headquartered in Nairobi controlling over 100 such journals), sends out spam mail to academics globally. Friends of friends join their editorial board. Members of these boards probably get to publish their own articles for free or at a discount, while recommending the journals to others, and perhaps collecting commission.
Africa is not the only continent maligned by such operations. Down under is the “Australian Journal of Business and Management Research” on whose board is a Pakistan Assistant Professor from Islamabad – let’s call him Prof A. [For all we know this journal may have its offices in our Faisalabad, which is the hub of many such fake publications, and of which the HEC was informed 8 years ago, but it decided not to pay any attention to it.]
Our Prof A does not operate in isolation. I learned this after informing Prof Susan Taylor, Chair of Human Resource Management & Organizational Change, University of Maryland, who without her knowing, had her name displayed as the Editor of the “International Journal of Business and Social Research”. Her university’s attorney got its website squashed. This journal had another Pakistan on its board – let’s call him Prof B – who as a prolific paper-producer churned out 20 international publications in 18 months in such fake journals. What’s even more interesting is that these two professors, A and B, did their PhD under the same supervisor, a Prof C.
Prof C clearly practices what he preaches; he is a prolific contributor to such journals. In recognition of his work, the HEC gave him, with 56 others, the 2010 Best University Teacher Award.
Such gross violation of academic etiquette prompted me to download the resumes of all 71 HEC- recognized PhD supervisors in management sciences to do a rough analysis of their publishing record in HEC-recognized journals. The result is mind-boggling!
These academics fall into two categories: about 20 who did their own PhD in Pakistan and 50 who went abroad (to largely second or third grade universities).
Of these 71 academics there are 39 (18 with PhDs from Pakistan and 21 from foreign universities) submitted 180 articles to fake journals. 80% of those with Pakistani PhDs contributed to such publication. Having had relatively better training and learned better research ethics, about 40% of the overseas-trained persons contributed to such publications. The 39 person involved in this activity bagged an average of 4.6 publications per person.
Undergraduates and postgraduates students trained by such academics are unlikely to learn high ethics of publishing, and honest business practices. This is something that ought to concern the business community and our universities. Information about such fake publications has been provided to the HEC and is available for review or downloading by clicking on www.tinyurl.com/c9fk93c. The documents may also be obtained by contacting the author at his address below.
The author is an independent researcher. Email: daudpota@gmail.com
<The edited version of the article appeared in Dawn at www.dawn.com/2011/12/26/publishing-scam.html. The editor needed to clear the text with their attorney and he suggested that 'fake' in the above be replaced by 'dubious'! Yet, an earlier op-ed in Dawn, www.dawn.com/2011/12/01/scourge-of-fake-journals.html is titled, "Scourge of Fake Journals".>
Isa Daudpota
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You can't fake quality any more than you can fake a good meal. ~William S. Burroughs
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