Inside India’s fake research paper shops: pay, publish, profit

Despite UGC blacklist, hundreds of ‘predatory journals’ thrive, cast shadow on quality of faculty and research nationwide.

In the world of academia, getting published in an international research journal is almost the holy grail, it helps bump up the CV for hiring and helps in the competition for tenure or promotion. It takes rigorous research, an original contribution, exhaustive peer or expert reviews, and dogged persistence.

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But then, there’s also an easy way — pay and publish.

An investigation by The Indian Express shows that India has emerged as one of the biggest markets for a business in which over 300 publishers manage what are called “predatory journals” that claim to be international and publish papers for a listed “charge” or “fee” that ranges from $30-$1,800 per piece.

From a plush office in the heart of Hyderabad, home to one of the world’s largest such publishers, to a one-room, one-man, one-laptop office at Richha in Bareilly, The Indian Express found that most of these publications exist online, claim to have a list of experts as editors, and employ minimal or no editorial checks before publication.

Hyderabad-based OMICS is, in fact, facing legal action by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) in the US for fraudulent claims — a charge the company denies.

“These so-called predatory journals have brought a bad name for the country and also for many of its sincere researchers,” S C Lakhotia, professor emeritus at Banaras Hindu University, told The Indian Express.

Ten months ago, Lakhotia resigned from a committee set up by the University Grants Commission (UGC) to assess publications recommended by universities for inclusion in an approved list of around 32,000 journals maintained by the regulatory body. “The list had many bogus or dubious journals,” Lakhotia said.

On May 2, the UGC removed 4,305 journals from the list, saying they were of “questionable” nature or lacked mandatory information on their websites.

To read the full article, please visit:

https://indianexpress.com/article/india/inside-indias-fake-research-paper-shops-pay-publish-profit-5265402/ (Accessed on July 23, 2019)