Study by two Spanish researchers exposes Oxbridge Publishing House’s ‘invasion’ of the editorial industry
(31 Jan 2025) A shady business network apparently run by Pakistani and Indonesian citizens from a mansion on the outskirts of Birmingham, United Kingdom, has launched an attack on the Spanish scientific journal industry. The group is buying up long-standing publications and converting them into fast-money machines by increasing the price they charge researchers for publishing, in addition to increasing the number of studies published with little regard to their quality. Alberto Martín and Emilio Delgado, two University of Granada professors who have been investigating the phenomenon, compare what is happening to the movie Invasion of the Body Snatchers, in which people are secretly replaced by emotionless clones born from mysterious alien pods.
The two Spanish experts say the epicenter for this takeover is 62 St. Bernards Road, an imposing 1879 mansion located in Solihull, in southeast Birmingham. The house serves as the headquarters of Oxbridge Publishing House, a business that plays with the names of the prestigious universities of Oxford and Cambridge, but in reality, has nothing to do with either. Muhammad Haseeb, a 38-year-old Pakistani citizen, is registered with the British Companies House as the company’s owner. Since 2020, his business has acquired 36 scholarly journals, according to research by Martín and Delgado. Among them are five U.S. titles, including the American Journal of Health Behavior, Tobacco Regulatory Science and Journal of Commercial Biotechnology, as well as seven journals in Spain. The latter, which include Cuadernos de Economía, Comunicar and Profesional de la Información, once a showcase for Spanish research, have suddenly begun to publish large numbers of studies by Asian scientists, particularly from China, Malaysia, Indonesia and Saudi Arabia.
Find out more here.
