Dear Friends, Predatory journals are a big menace in scholarly publication activity. The report quoted by Prof. Arun 'India is second only to Nigeria in publishing Predatory Journals' is a disturbing news and a big challenge for serious Indian Academic and Research Community. I keep getting mails from many dubitious publishers inviting me either to be in their editorial board or to submit a research papers and I am sure many of you must be getting similar mails. While I dont want to make any comments about the following examples, you can have your own inference/assessment after visiting their websites , the contact address, the so called editorial board, article processing charges and more importantly the misleading Impact factor values, etc. 1. There is one "Institute of Research In Engineering and Technology (IRET)", which publishes 10 Journals and 12 Transactions, covering almost all branches of engineering like a combined job of Societieslike IEEE, ASME, AIChE, ACM, ASCE, etc. 2. Another publishing group claims to publish with a slogan "A Monthly Double-Blind Peer Reviewed Refereed/Juried OA International Journals*, Included in the International Serial Directories"* http://ijrcm.org.in/ http://223.130.4.181/%7Emywahegu/link.php?M=2515958&N=124&L=12&F=H http://223.130.4.181/%7Emywahegu/link.php?M=2515958&N=124&L=12&F=H I tried to visit this site, but..... 3. Following is one of the example, for which I received a mail inviting me to be in their editorial board. You make your own assessment of this agency which publishes about 16 journals covering many disciplines. http://www.innovareacademics.in/index.php 4.. A good number of journals of this kind are being published including LIS in India I have received hundreds of mails of this kind either directly or through various forums like our Lis-forum, marked in a folder of my e-mail account. 5. There is an interesting report on the topic of discussion. Junk journals from bogus research center http://scholarlyoa.com/2015/04/28/more-junk-journals-from-a-bogus-research-c... 6. We keeping seeing many postings in our Lis-forum requesting for contributing a chapter for the proposed edited book to be published with ISBN number by a well known International Publisher without giving more details. Intentions are obvious for adding some API score as author/editor. (This ststement of mine is not necessarity on the issue of Predatory Journals, although has some bearing on the topic.) 7. There are some agencies evaluating journals, many a times overnight and provide misguiding different kind of Impact Factor values. For example the agency detailed in the following URL assigns 'Technical Impact Factor'. http://timpactfactor.com/index.html Following is a sentence I have just copied from it's site. Please read it and examine the spelling mistake, from an ageccy evaluating scholarly journals. "Technical factor can be added to impact factor. Technical factor is caliculated from editorial bord and journal team members". Another agency "Index Copernicus International", which releases annual list of journals with "IC Value". It claims of using various parameters for assigning this value. Please visit the following site for more details. http://jml2012.indexcopernicus.com/masterlist.php I can go on and on giving such examples. We need analyse the situation and reasons for this kind of developments. - UGC has mandated to publish two research papers before submission of PhD and obviously many take a short cut of reducing processing time from 1-6 months to 1-6 days by approaching predatory journal publishers. - While many academicians and researchers do serious research and publish in quality journals, few follow this shortcuts just for API score required for recruitment and assessment for promotion. - Unless all our authorities and research administrators including Chairpersons of the departments, BOS and guides are serious I don't think there is any solution. UGC's move of scanning research papers and ETDs using Plagiarism software for similarity check may help the situation, but may not curb the menace created by Predatory Journals totally. We need a serious and proper consorted effort by all stake holder of scholarly publishing activity including Publishers (both Commercial and Society), Academic and Research Administarors, Faculties and Scientists, Librarians, etc. I REQUEST ALL OF YOU TO REACT AND CONTINUE THE DISCUSSION ON THIS ISSUE. Regards, http://scholarlyoa.com/2015/04/28/more-junk-journals-from-a-bogus-research-c... "Access E-Resources for Academic and Research Excellence" *- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -* Dr. I.R.N. Goudar - Adjunct Professor, Mangalore University - Visiting Professor Cum Library Adviser Bangalore University Library, BANGALORE - 560056 - Ex. Visiting Professor Cum Library Adviser, UoM, Mysore - Ex. Scientist 'G' and Head, ICAST, NAL, Bangalore - Ex. Dy Librarian, IITM, Chennai - Ex. Scientist (Information), IICT, Hyderabad - Fulbright Scholar, Univ. of Michigan and Columbia Univ, USA (1995-96) - British Council Scholar (1982-83) E-mail: goudarishwar@gmail.com Tel: 080-23215510 Mob: 91+9611165781 (If not reachable pl try land line) On Sun, Oct 11, 2015 at 2:18 PM, Subbiah Arunachalam < subbiah.arunachalam@gmail.com> wrote:
Friends:
India is second only to Nigeria in predatory publishing, says this report:
http://www.punchng.com/opinion/viewpoint/the-upsurge-in-black-market-publish...
Arun http://orcid.org/0000-0002-4398-4658 http://www.researcherid.com/rid/B-9925-2009
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