FTC Charges Academic Journal Publisher OMICS Group Deceived Researchers

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  Posted by Megan Wacha (they/them) on August 26, 2016 at 2:07 pm

  “The Federal Trade Commission has charged the publisher of hundreds of purported online academic journals with deceiving academics and researchers about the nature of its publications and hiding publication fees ranging from hundreds to thousands of dollars.”

  See the press release at: https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/press-releases/2016/08/ftc-charges-academic-journal-publisher-omics-group-deceived

• jean amaral

  Participant

  August 29, 2016 at 6:08 am

  Thanks for posting the article about the OMICS charges, Megan. Two questions come to mind for me that I’d love to hear SCRTers responses to:
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  • Should we (on our individual campuses) alert chairs and faculty generally to OMICs, using the opportunity to provide resources and consulting services on predatory publishing for faculty?
  • If we know faculty who have published in OMICS journals, should we let them know about the charges?

  At BMCC, I expect we’ll use this as an opportunity for outreach and education of chairs and faculty. We haven’t made a decision about contacting individual faculty who have published in the journals.

  What are you planning for your campus?

  Thanks in advance for any thoughts?
  Beth Evans

  Participant

  August 29, 2016 at 2:31 pm

  Hi Jean,

  Definitely something to consider. How did you identify faculty authors who published in OMICS journals?

  The time does seem right to educate researchers, both as readers and writers, to be careful out in the world of scholarly communications. For example, we can promote the Think, Check, Submit web site and and any one of the Libguides created around CUNY that instruct on Author Rights and choosing a publisher (like Nancy Foasberg’s – http://qc-cuny.libguides.com/EvaluatePublisher).

  Concurrently, there is also a lot of discussion going on right now on how to educate researchers (as readers) about using SciHub. The University of Utah, as you may know, has developed a LibGuide on the topic:
  http://campusguides.lib.utah.edu/scihub

  A lot of messages to get out there about being careful.

  Beth
  Monica Berger (She/her/hers)

  Participant

  August 29, 2016 at 2:36 pm

  Maybe we should work together on a one- or two page handout as well. I have one we could start with.
  Madeline Cohen

  Member

  August 30, 2016 at 11:04 am

  Lehman has a Research Guide that has a recording of a workshop by Monica and Megan, as well as handouts:
  http://libguides.lehman.edu/selecting_quality_journals_faculty

  Maybe someone would volunteer to put all these great resources on a LibGuide here?:
  http://guides.cuny.edu/

  We could offer it to CUNY Libraries as well as Teaching and Learning Commons: https://commons.gc.cuny.edu/groups/ctl/

  Just an idea…
  jean amaral

  Participant

  September 6, 2016 at 4:38 pm

  I identified BMCC authors with a site search:

  “borough of manhattan community college” site:omicsonline.org

  Imperfect, but gives a sense of what’s there.
  Beth Evans

  Participant

  September 6, 2016 at 4:48 pm

  Thanks, Jean.
  Monica Berger (She/her/hers)

  Participant

  September 7, 2016 at 10:19 am

  Ah. I just checked City Tech. Glad to say no one/nothing came up.
  Jill Cirasella (she/her)

  Member

  September 7, 2016 at 12:37 pm

  Here are two helpful pages:
  http://www.omicsonline.org/universities/The_City_University_of_New_York/
  http://www.omicsonline.org/universities/City_University_of_New_York/

  They lists all CUNY people who contributed to OMICS journals, proceedings, or conferences. All who included “The City University of New York” or “City University of New York” in their affiliations, anyway. (Given how many ways there are to write CUNY affiliations, there could be more not included here.)

  The combined counts on these pages (but understanding that there could be overlap, and some things might be double-counted):

  Editors, Contributors and Speakers: 39 + 57 = 96
  Publications: 27 + 11 = 38
  Proceedings: 24 + 18 = 42

  (I see that some people authored for them multiple times.)

  Has anyone decided whether to contact contributors individually? (I haven’t made up my mind yet.) If you do, will you share the email you send them? I imagine it’d be a delicate message to craft!

  Jill
  Monica Berger (She/her/hers)

  Participant

  September 7, 2016 at 5:25 pm

  Oh, oh. Found some colleagues. Thanks for giving these details Jill.