(25 Nov 2024) From Retraction Watch:
We’ve cataloged over 300 such cloned journals in the Retraction Watch Hijacked Journal Checker, a small number of which involve major publishers like Springer Nature, Elsevier and Wiley. For example, earlier this year the Journal of Academic Ethics and Machine Intelligence Research, both published by Springer Nature, were cloned.
But earlier this month, William Black, founder and CEO of PSIref, an online platform aggregating scholarly publication data which offers advertising opportunities for publishers, sent me evidence of a new, more sophisticated scam.
The company “Springer Global Publication” – which is not affiliated with Springer Nature – has published dozens of papers cloning the websites of journals officially published by Elsevier, Springer, the American Medical Association and more. The company had advertised a variety of services on its website, including finding a writer for research papers, editing manuscripts, developing research proposals, analyzing data and managing the peer review process. This collection of services is a classic attribute of a paper mill.
Read more here.
