(5 Dec 2023) Scopus, a widely used database of scientific papers operated by publishing giant Elsevier, plays an important role as an arbiter of scholarly legitimacy, with many institutions around the world expecting their researchers to publish in journals indexed on the platform. But users beware, a new study warns. As of September, the database listed…
(4 Apr 2023) The hijacking of the Hong Kong Journal of Social Sciences started in 2019, when the web domain of the clone journal was created. This fraudulent journal could continue to publish dozens of papers, charging 300 euros each, while the genuine journal, according to the information on one Chinese website, ceased publishing…
(7 Feb 2023) Have you heard about hijacked journals, which take over legitimate publications’ titles, ISSNs, and other metadata without their permission? Hijacked journal: Linguistica Antverpiensia, New Series – Themes in Translation Studies What happened: The journal became a perfect target for hijackers when it expanded its title from “Linguistica Antverpiensia” and changed…
(29 May 2022) Hijacked journals mimic legitimate journals by adopting their titles, ISSNs, and other metadata. Usually, hijacked journals mirror legitimate journals without permission from the original journal. In rare instances, publishers will buy rights to a legitimate journal but continue the publication under considerably less stringent publishing protocols and without clearly noting to the reader the…
International action needed to eliminate ‘cloned journals’ that prey on early career researchers, says Indian research integrity advisor. (30 Aug 2021) Fraudulent journals that hijack the identity of legitimate scholarly publications are becoming one of the biggest problems for India’s research system, with millions of dollars a year being “siphoned” into international publishing scams, a…
(26 May 2021) There was the case of Talent Development and Excellence, which cloned an existing journal and managed to index hundreds of articles in Scopus, one of the world’s leading databases for scholarly literature. The Transylvanian Review did the same thing, and so did Test Engineering and Management. These journals — which can make millions of dollars for…