Journal Scam Targets Top Science Publishers (retractionwatch.com) 8
Major academic publishers including Elsevier and Springer Nature are grappling with a sophisticated new journal hijacking scam that precisely mimics their websites to deceive researchers.
The fraudulent operation, reported by Retraction Watch, has cloned at least 13 legitimate journals through fake domains, according to Crossref data. The scam, the publication reports, features high-quality website clones that replicate even cookie consent popups. The operation assigns its own DOI prefix to published papers and offers paper-writing and peer review services typical of paper mills.
The fraudulent operation, reported by Retraction Watch, has cloned at least 13 legitimate journals through fake domains, according to Crossref data. The scam, the publication reports, features high-quality website clones that replicate even cookie consent popups. The operation assigns its own DOI prefix to published papers and offers paper-writing and peer review services typical of paper mills.
It's their own fault. (Score:5, Insightful)
They have only themselves to blame. Their ridiculously high prices literally invite this kind of stuff.
Spams and Scams (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Spams and Scams (Score:5, Interesting)
Oh, it is very easy to understand. You would not fall for that because you (if googling your login point to the right person) have been doing research for 30 years.
There are many universities which at this point require students (PhD, but also some MS) to have published papers to graduate. So if you are a not too bright student, you might be tempted to pay for publications in these venues. If no ones pays too much attention, it will appear legitimate enough, you'll graduate and move on with your life.
There are also a set of third world country students who are trying to get in a program in the US. And they believe that having papers on their resume will increase their chance of getting into a US PhD program. Now they often don't understand how the whole thing work and so think that all published papers count the same. And so these type of venues are pretty straight forward.
The third type I have seen is from companies trying to pretend they are doing science. Send a paper to these garbage places, it will be published. You will be able to say that there is a scientific paper that validates that what you are doing make sense. And that can help you finding customers or investors. In general, I see that locally at $LOCAL_UNIVERSITY, my students may doubt a random blog post. But they believe a lot more easily something that is latex formatted. (That usually leads to lots of discussion on how to verify validity.)
Re: (Score:3)
You would not fall for that because you (if googling your login point to the right person) have been doing research for 30 years.
Yes, but even when I was junior I would not have fallen for these things either since, due to talking with my PhD supervisor, experimental colleagues etc. I knew the journals to publish in and I would not have trusted some fancy spam telling me otherwise, or at least not without talking with someone more knowledgable about it first.
So if you are a not too bright student, you might be tempted to pay for publications in these venues.
Again I do not get this. First PhD students have no funds to pay for publication, your supervisor does that if needed, and second since your supervisor is almost certainly a co
Re: (Score:3)
My slashdot-specific email is the one that receives the scam conference mails. That has been going on for almost the entire time I have had this account.
Re:Spams and Scams (Score:4, Insightful)
I've complained about this before. I have colleagues who work at universities in 2nd and 3rd world countries who are desperate to publish. Their job depends on it. Their university gives them almost zero resources, they have almost no legit graduate programs, the local students that attend are mostly subpar because any halfway decent STEM student flees the country at the first opportunity. There's civil war with artillery and missiles going off within a few tens of kilometers of the campus and government is nearly broke. Forget research equipment. They can't even keep the lights on.
However, their university still requires them to publish X articles per year, and Y% of those articles need to be in a "Q1" or "Q2" journal, and they need to have "evidence of prominence in their field at the international level".
That is simply not going to happen. Publishing in the top journals is very competitive and these people are going toe-to-toe with all the R1 institutions across the planet. It's like they're playing in a pro-tennis match and their country sends them with a ping-pong paddle.
So, an entire ecosystem of fraudulent or semi-fraudulent journals and conferences have evolved to meet their needs. I'm not justifying it. However, if you demand that a person publish or perish but give them zero resources or support, and send them out to compete with the pros, they will use whatever tools they can get their hands on, in order to survive. Ethics, rules, laws, and morals be damned.
If you put people in stupid situations, you'll get stupid results.
Yawn! (Score:4, Insightful)