Parent company | OMICS Group Inc |
---|---|
Status | Active |
Founded | 2007 |
Founder | Gedela Srinubabu |
Country of origin | India |
Headquarters location | Hyderabad, Telangana |
Distribution | Worldwide |
Publication types | Open access journals |
Nonfiction topics | |
Revenue | US$11.6 million (2016) [1] |
No. of employees | 1500 [2] |
Official website | www |
OMICS Publishing Group is a predatory publisher of open access academic journals. [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] It started publishing its first journal in 2008. [1] By 2015, it claimed over 700 journals, although about half of them were defunct. [10] Its subsidiaries and brands include Allied Academies, Conference Series LLC LTD, EuroSciCon LTD, Hilaris Publishing, iMedPub LTD, International Online Medical Council (IOMC), Longdom Publishing SL, Meetings International, Prime Scholars, Pulsus Group, Research & Reviews, SciTechnol, Trade Science Inc, Life Science Events, Walsh Medical Media, and IT Medical Team. [11] [12] [13] [14] [15] [16] [17]
OMICS has come under attack by numerous academics and the United States government over the validity of the peer review by OMICS journals, the appropriateness of its fees and marketing, and the apparent advertising of the names of scientists as journal editors or conference speakers without their knowledge or permission. [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [ excessive citations ] The U.S. National Institutes of Health sent a cease-and-desist letter to OMICS in 2013, demanding it to discontinue with false claims of affiliation with U.S. government entities or employees. [7] In August 2016, OMICS became the first academic publisher to be sued by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) for deceptive practices; nearly three years later, the FTC was awarded a summary judgement of over US$50 million.
OMICS has responded to criticisms by avowing a commitment to open access publishing, claiming that detractors are traditional subscription-based publishers who feel threatened by their open-access publishing model. [10] It responded to the FTC suit by maintaining that their practices were legal and claiming that corporate interests were driving the suit. It has also threatened a prominent critic, Jeffrey Beall, with a $1 billion lawsuit for defamation. [18]
OMICS Publishing Group was founded in 2007 by Gedela Srinubabu, [18] who remains the company's director. [19] [20] He founded OMICS because of his difficulty in accessing high-cost journal contents as a PhD student. [1]
It started its first open-access journal, the Journal of Proteomics & Bioinformatics, in 2008. [1] In 2012, OMICS Group had more than 200 journal titles, about 60% of which had no content. [18] By 2015, it claimed over 700 titles, but about half of them were defunct. [10] Several OMICS journals have names similar to existing publications. For instance, BioMed Central established the Journal of Biomedical Science in 1994, [21] while OMICS established the Journal of Biomedical Sciences in 2012. [22]
OMICS employed around 2,000 people. In 2016, the company had revenue of $11.6 million and generated a profit of about $1.2 million. [1] The Government of India has waived taxes whilst granting subsidized land for the construction of new headquarters. [1]
OMICS operates on a gold open access model, wherein the author pays for publication and the publisher makes the articles available for free. As well as publication fees, OMICS charges a withdrawal fee for manuscripts that are withdrawn five or more days after submission. [23] [24] Such withdrawal fees are not levied by non-predatory publishers, and have been criticized as unethical and as discouraging researchers from making post-submission corrections to their work. [25]
In addition to publishing journals, OMICS also organizes conferences. In 2017, about 3,000 such conferences were organized. The conference arm makes up about 60% of OMICS' revenue. [1]
In 2012 OMICS launched an additional group of 53 additional journals under the brand name 'SciTechnol', [26] [27] however as of 2021 the SciTechnol website does not disclose this relationship.
OMICS is widely regarded as a predatory publisher. [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] It has been subject to widespread criticism, notably by Jeffrey Beall, who included OMICS in his list of "potential, possible, or probable predatory" publishers. Among the criticism leveled at OMICS are that its journals are not actually peer-reviewed as advertised, often contain mistakes, and that its fees are excessive. [18] OMICS says that its activities are legitimate and ethical, and that the quality of its editorial control does need improvement. [4] [19] Other criticisms of OMICS include the publication of pseudoscientific articles, [4] deceptive marketing practices, [18] [7] targeting of young investigators or those in lower-income regions, [7] [8] and holding papers hostage by disallowing their withdrawal (preventing them from being published by other journals). [28] [29]
It has also been suggested that OMICS provides fake lists of scientists as journal editors to create an impression of scientific legitimacy, even though they are not involved in any review or editing process. [4] [1] One such editor-in-chief was contacted by Science, and he stated that he had never handled any papers; [7] in an interview with The Hindu , another said he had not been informed of his purported editorship. [8] Other academics have said that OMICS published articles unaltered in spite of their request for revisions. [10] The company has also been slow to remove the names of editorial board members who requested to terminate their relationship with OMICS activities, in some cases taking almost two years. [19] [10] One author received an invoice for $2,700 after her paper was accepted; this fee was not mentioned in the email message OMICS sent her to solicit a submission. [6] In 2012, while one OMICS journal rejected a paper after the reviewer noticed it was plagiarized from one of his own co-authored papers, another OMICS journal published the same paper later that year. When the reviewer again pointed this out, the paper was removed from OMICS' website in 2014, but no official retraction was posted. [30] In 2013, an OMICS journal accepted a bogus and obviously flawed publication submitted as part of a sting operation by Science . [31] [32] Critics assert that the main purpose of the publisher is commercial rather than academic. [4] [5]
In September 2014, PubMed Central blacklisted OMICS journals, claiming serious concerns over OMICS' publishing practices. [7] In 2017, Scopus delisted several OMICS journals for "publication concerns". [33]
A Bloomberg News investigation in 2017 noted a tendency of pharmaceutical companies to publish in these journals, which might have stemmed from a self-interest in skipping rigorous review procedures. [1] They were also the major sponsors of OMICS conferences. [1]
In 2013, Jeffrey Beall reported that OMICS has added conducting "predatory meetings" to its publications activity [34] including under the ConferenceSeries banner. [35] Beall criticised the financial arrangements for OMICS conferences and urged all scholars to refrain from any dealing with these conferences. [34]
An example of such a meeting is the 2016 International Conference on Atomic and Nuclear Physics, organised by ConferenceSeries, and to which Christoph Bartneck, an associate professor in Information Technology at New Zealand's University of Canterbury, was invited. With little knowledge of nuclear physics, Bartneck used iOS's autocomplete function to write the paper, choosing randomly from its suggestions after starting each sentence, [36] and submitted it under the name Iris Pear (a reference to Siri and Apple). [37] A sample sentence from the abstract for the resulting manuscript was: "The atoms of a better universe will have the right for the same as you are the way we shall have to be a great place for a great time to enjoy the day you are a wonderful person to your great time to take the fun and take a great time and enjoy the great day you will be a wonderful time for your parents and kids," [36] and the 516-word abstract contained the words "good" and "great" a combined total of 28 times. [37] Despite being obvious nonsense, the work was accepted within three hours of submission and a conference registration fee of $1,099 requested. [36] [37] Bartneck commented that he was "reasonably certain that this is a money-making conference with little to no commitment to science," a comment he based on the poor quality of the review process and the high cost of attendance. [36] Gedela said that Bartneck's paper "slipped through" for being submitted "so close to the deadline". [1]
In another example, Tom Spears of the Ottawa Citizen repeatedly submitted to OMICS conferences several sting abstracts that included "Evolution of flight characteristics in avian-porcine physiology" and "Strategies for remediation of benthic and pelagic species dependent on coral reefs: Cases of T. migratorius and G. californianus" which respectively claimed to explain how pigs fly and claimed roadrunner birds lived underwater. [38] In yet another case, OMICS accepted a paper plagiarized from Aristotle and "garbled to remove any clear meaning" to an ethics journal, and later accepted the same paper to a conference on geriatrics and nursing. [39]
It has been also found that many academic or government scientists are advertised as speakers or organizers for OMICS conferences, without their agreement. [7]
In April 2013, OMICS received a cease-and-desist letter from the United States Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) after a complaint filed by Ken Witwer, who said he had been fooled by OMICS's deceptive marketing. The letter alleged that OMICS used images and names of employees that either no longer worked at NIH or did not provide permission, and asked OMICS not to use the name of its agencies institutes or employees for anything other than "true factual statements". [7] OMICS responded by modifying its website and providing emails and letters from the NIH employees ostensibly agreeing to serve as editors of OMICS journals. Those employees later said that while they did agree to serve as editors, they did not provide permission for their names to be used in marketing materials; furthermore, they had not actually handled any manuscripts. [7]
In August 2016, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) filed a suit against OMICS, two of its affiliated companies and Gedela, charging them with deceptive publishing practices [28] and seeking an unspecified monetary reimbursement for academics duped by them. [1] In its first-ever suit against an academic publisher, [40] they alleged OMICS' peer-review processes to be a "sham" and their claiming of renowned academics in their editorial board and/or as speakers at its conferences without their consent to be intentionally deceptive. [1] The FTC also noted a failure to disclose publishing fees prior to accepting pieces, citing of dubious impact factors and false assertions about their journals being indexed in PubMed, when they are not. [1]
In response to the lawsuit, OMICS rejected the various allegations, maintaining that their processes were legal and claiming that corporate interests were driving the suit. [41] [42]
The United States District Court for the District of Nevada handed down a preliminary injunction in November 2017, preventing OMICS from "making misrepresentations" about their journals and conferences, as well as requiring that OMICS clearly disclose all article processing charges. [42] The FTC won a summary judgment (ECF No. 86) on 29 March 2019, with the court finding that OMICS made false claims about manuscripts being peer-reviewed, used the name of prominent researchers as editors of journals without their consent or knowledge, used misleading impact factors for journals which had not been calculated by Clarivate Analytics, made false claims about being indexed by PubMed, was not transparent about the publication fees charged per manuscript until after it had accepted an article for publication, and often did not allow researchers to withdraw their articles after submission. OMICS was ordered to pay a fine of $50,130,810 as well as change some of its publishing methods. [43] [44] [45] OMICS plans to challenge the ruling. [46] On September 11, 2020, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit upheld the grant of summary judgment and the $50.1 million award. [47]
In 2013, OMICS Publishing Group sent a letter to then University of Colorado librarian Jeffrey Beall stating that they intended to sue him and were seeking $1 billion in damages. In their six-page letter, OMICS stated that Beall's blog is "ridiculous, baseless, impertinent", and "smacks of literal unprofessionalism and arrogance". [18] Beall said that he found the letter "to be poorly written and personally threatening," and that he thought: "the letter is an attempt to detract from the enormity of OMICS's editorial practices". [48]
OMICS' law firm said it was pursuing damages under India's Information Technology Act, 2000, referring to section 66A, which makes it illegal to use a computer to publish "any information that is grossly offensive or has menacing character" or to publish false information. It stated that three years in prison was a possible penalty, although a U.S. lawyer said that the threats seemed to be a "publicity stunt" that were meant to "intimidate". [18] An editorial in the New Delhi-based India Today cited the incident as evidence that Section 66A should be discarded to eliminate its use in "stifling political dissent, crushing speech and ... enabling bullying". [49] In 2015, Section 66A was struck down by the Supreme Court of India in an unrelated case. [50] [51]
In late September 2016, OMICS acquired two Canadian publishers—Andrew John Publishing and Pulsus Group—and sixteen journals published by them. [52] The acquisition led to a decline in publishing standards for these journals, [53] caused concern that the names of the publishers were being hijacked to lend credence to bogus science, and led to six of the sixteen journals stating their intention to terminate their publishing contracts with OMICS. [52]
In 2023, Mike Downes stated that to the list of fraudulent practices undertaken by predatory publishers "must be added the invention or compilation of articles ostensibly written by academic scholars but in fact crafted by the publishing house in question", noting that "the majority are created under a fake name by compiling a set of plagiarized passages extracted from the specialized literature or cannibalized from within the journal's own archive". Downes's research showed that all of OMICS's subsidiaries and imprints have created and published such articles, arguing that this was evidence that "the directive to carry out this fraudulent scheme appears to have been a chosen policy coming from the top management" of OMICS. [17]
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is an independent agency of the United States government whose principal mission is the enforcement of civil (non-criminal) antitrust law and the promotion of consumer protection. The FTC shares jurisdiction over federal civil antitrust law enforcement with the Department of Justice Antitrust Division. The agency is headquartered in the Federal Trade Commission Building in Washington, DC.
Medknow Publications also known as Wolters Kluwer Medknow or simply Medknow, is a publisher of academic journals on behalf of learned societies and associations. Previously an independent Indian publisher, Medknow is now part of within Wolters Kluwer's Health Division, and is part of Wolters Kluwer India.
Hindawi was a publisher of peer-reviewed, open access, scientific journals active in scientific, technical, and medical (STM) literature. It was founded in 1997 in Cairo, Egypt, and purchased in 2021 for $298 million by John Wiley & Sons, a large US-based publishing company.
Daniel G. Bogden is an American attorney who served as United States Attorney for the District of Nevada.
MDPI is a publisher of open-access scientific journals. It publishes over 390 peer-reviewed, open access journals. MDPI is among the largest publishers in the world in terms of journal article output, and is the largest publisher of open access articles.
Pulsus Group is a health informatics and digital marketing company and publisher of scientific, technical, and medical literature. It was formed in 1984, primarily to publish peer-reviewed medical journals. As of 2023, Pulsus published 1400 hybrid and full open-access journals, and a few of which had been adopted as the official publications of related medical societies. Pulsus Group also conducts conferences in association with scientific societies.
e-Century Publishing Corporation is a publisher of seventeen open access scientific journals based in Madison, Wisconsin. 11 of them are indexed in the Web of Science, including the American Journal of Translational Research, the American Journal of Cancer Research, the International Journal of Clinical and Experimental Medicine, and the International Journal of Clinical and Experimental Pathology. The publisher was included on Beall's list before it was taken down in 2017.
Bentham Science Publishers is a company that publishes scientific, technical, and medical journals and e-books. It publishes over 120 subscription-based academic journals and around 40 open access journals.
Scientific Research Publishing (SCIRP) is a predatory academic publisher of open-access electronic journals, conference proceedings, and scientific anthologies that are considered to be of questionable quality. As of December 2014, it offered 244 English-language open-access journals in the areas of science, technology, business, economy, and medicine.
The World Academy of Science, Engineering and Technology or WASET is a predatory publisher of open access academic journals. The publisher has been listed as a "potential, possible, or probable" predatory publisher by American library scientist Jeffrey Beall and is listed as such by the Max Planck Society and Stop Predatory Journals. WASET's estimated annual revenue in 2017 alone was over $4 million, with other estimates ranging from $8.9 million to $11.9 million for the years 2014 to 2019 combined.
Predatory publishing, also write-only publishing or deceptive publishing, is an exploitative academic publishing business model, where the journal or publisher prioritizes self-interest at the expense of scholarship. It is characterized by misleading information, deviates from the standard peer review process, is highly non-transparent, and often utilizes aggressive solicitation practices.
Beall's List was a prominent list of predatory open-access publishers that was maintained by University of Colorado librarian Jeffrey Beall on his blog Scholarly Open Access. The list aimed to document open-access publishers who did not perform real peer review, effectively publishing any article as long as the authors pay the article processing charge. Originally started as a personal endeavor in 2008, Beall's List became a widely followed piece of work by the mid-2010s. The list was used by scientists to identify exploitative publishers and detect publisher spam.
"Who's Afraid of Peer Review?" is an article written by Science correspondent John Bohannon that describes his investigation of peer review among fee-charging open-access journals. Between January and August 2013, Bohannon submitted fake scientific papers to 304 journals owned by fee-charging open access publishers. The papers, writes Bohannon, "were designed with such grave and obvious scientific flaws that they should have been rejected immediately by editors and peer reviewers", but 60% of the journals accepted them. The article and associated data were published in the 4 October 2013 issue of Science as open access.
Jeffrey Beall is an American librarian and library scientist, who drew attention to "predatory open access publishing", a term he coined, and created Beall's list, a list of potentially predatory open-access publishers. He is a critic of the open access publishing movement and particularly how predatory publishers use the open access concept, and is known for his blog Scholarly Open Access. He has also written on this topic in The Charleston Advisor, in Nature, in Learned Publishing, and elsewhere.
Future Medicine is a privately owned company based in London, England, United Kingdom. It is part of Future Science Publishing Group, primarily to publish peer-reviewed medical journals. Future Medicine publishes hybrid and full open access journals.
Predatory conferences or predatory meetings are meetings set up to appear as legitimate scientific conferences but which are exploitative as they do not provide proper editorial control over presentations, the topics covered can diverge substantially from what has been advertised, and advertising can include claims of involvement of prominent academics who are, in fact, uninvolved. They are an expansion of the predatory publishing business model, which involves the creation of academic publications built around an exploitative business model that generally involves charging publication fees to authors without providing the editorial and publishing services associated with legitimate journals.
Jacobs Publishers is a publisher of various international journals based in Hyderabad, India. Jacobs Publishers has been included on Beall's List of predatory open-access publishers and has faced other criticisms of its publishing practices.
The American Journal of Biomedical Science and Research is an open-access medical journal for scientific and technical research papers. It is published by BiomedGrid. The journal has been included on the updated Beall's List of potential predatory open-access journals, and has faced other criticisms of its publishing practices. In 2020, it published a fake scientific paper which claimed that a bat-like Pokémon sparked the spread of COVID-19 in a fictional city.
Gedela Srinubabu is an Indian businessman, scientist and politician. He is the chief executive officer Pulsus Group and founder of its parent company the OMICS Publishing Group, a scientific journal publishing company that publishes science findings online for free for readers.
{{cite book}}
: |work=
ignored (help)