Once again, someone has uncovered a scam by unsavory publishers. The Ottawa Citizen recently published an article by Tom Spears about a sham article that got accepted by several fake publishers within 48 hours of being submitted. These journals claimed that articles went out for peer review, but there is no way peer review could be done in that short of a time period – which is why I call the publishers fake. And of course, after accepting the bogus article for publication, they require a payment (usually less than the charges at reputable publishers, but still a scam) to make the article available online.
The article that Tom submitted was a mishmash of cut and pasted sentences from geology papers and hematology papers. The references came from a wine chemistry article. In short, the article made no sense at all – the abstract contained the phrase ‘seismic platelets’ which is obviously made up – and it was almost entirely copied from other articles. No reputable journal should have even sent it out for peer review.
These fake publishers make it difficult for already overworked faculty to evaluate the articles they find, evaluate potential publication venues, and evaluate the work of their peers. Jeffrey Beall, a librarian in Colorado, has a list of these types of publishers that faculty can refer to, but I wonder if there is more that libraries could be doing in this area to help the faculty and students we work with?
