These days research workers fall prey to fake or cloned journals available online. They accept research papers and articles against payment from the research workers. Some articles do get published in such fraud journals. It is also called predatory publishing which charges fees from authors without vetting the articles for quality and legitimacy. These journals are of poor quality or fraudulent. At times, even the authors are aware of their true nature. Some-times, they accept money and vanish.
Cloned journals are counterfeit. They are mirror copies of the authentic journals. They exploit the tittle and ISSN of the authentic journals. Sometimes, these cloned journals chase the authors luring them with an open-access publication fee.
There are citation databases which identify such journals. Scopus and Web of Science are such databases. UGC too publishes a list (VGC-CARE) of authentic journals. It is updated quarterly.
Digitisation has accelerated the pace of fraudulent journalism. There is lack of understanding of open-access (paid access) research and predatory publishing. Some open access journals are sponsored by institutes.
India’s research output is good but its citation is poor, say barely above 3 per cent. A large output is lost in predatory publishing.
It is necessary to give importance to peer reviews. It is a better approach than the publication in the journals.
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