As these GEITP pages have discussed numerous times –– during the past decade at least 15,000 “predatory online open-access” journals have suddenly popped up and the “publishers” are flooding our email inboxes every day, 24-7-365, with requests that we “submit a research article or short essay of ANY length, on ANY topic, as quickly as possible.” And it will be allegedly “peer-reviewed” within 24-48 hours, and then it will be published in their inaugural issue, or their next issue, and then the corresponding author will be “hit” with a substantial “page-charges” bill. And the “publishers” are becoming wealthier by the day –– with very little effort on their part.
Whereas most respectable, established journals have Impact Factors ranging from 3.0 to 20 or 40, these journals of course have real Impact Factors of 0.5 or much less. Therefore, to “enhance” their believability, some of these “predatory online open-access” journals have now established a new version (a fake version) of the Impact Factor, which they have named the “PIF Impact Factor.” This is a convenient way to elevate the journal’s prestige by at least 10-fold –– if any researcher is not aware of this huge difference. A colleague of mine recently pointed out this new deception. For more details, please read the short article online, written by Bruno Leuesne of IEEE.org (the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers):
http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?arnumber=6105963