Last week, a U.S.district judge ordered three “online open-access predatory journal” publishing houses with ties to India to halt all deceptive practices — including establishing “sham editorial boards,” making false claims of “rigorous peer review,” and holding accepted papers “hostage” over undisclosed publication fees that can run into the thousands of dollars. The U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) requested such an injunction in August 2o16, charging that the
[1] OMICS Group Inc.,
[2] iMedPub LLC,
[3] Conference Series LLC, and CEO Srinubabu Gedela also lured scientists to “attend conferences (of course attendees must pay their own travel, room and board, plus registration fee) with bogus attendee lists” and “advertised deceptively high journal impact factors.”
It is unclear to me what impact “such an order/injunction from a U.S. district judge” will have on these “companies” in a distant country (although these ‘companies,’ in all their email messages online, pretend to be based in the United States).
Science 1 Dec 2o17; 358: 1113