Predatory journals face intense scrutiny

In a great example of collaborative journalism, The Indian Express partners with several other big names in the news business to shine a bright and harsh spotlight on predatory journals. Its global partners include broadcasters NDR and WDR (Germany), and newspapers Suddeutsche Zeitung (Germany) and Le Monde (France), and the magazine The New Yorker (USA); IE says International Consortium of Investigative Journalists provided the platform for the over 60 journalists to share their findings.

There is just way too much that has been brought to light, so I will just provide a link to the stories [Update: Links to the entire series of news stories in The Indian Express are collected at this page]:

• From The Indian Express, a whole bunch of stories, an explainer and aan interview, all by Shyamlal Yadav:
  • Inside India’s fake research paper shops: pay, publish, profit. "Despite UGC blacklist, hundreds of ‘predatory journals’ thrive, cast shadow on quality of faculty and research nationwide."
  • V-Cs, AIIMS, IIT professors on list: ‘Students sent it, we don’t know’. "Most of them figure in publications brought out by Hyderabad-based OMICS and Turkey-based WASET, which claim to organise research conferences across the world."
  • How the pay-and-publish business works. "The pressure to publish, and to present papers at conferences in order to collect the marks needed for recruitments/promotions often incentivises pay-to-publish practices."
  • Fake Science: 1 journal to 1,500 in 10 years, Hyderabad is hub of pay & publish. "Fake Science part-II: Most of these journals exist online and are operated by companies based across the city, including the posh Banjara Hills, but flaunt addresses from abroad on their websites, mostly in the US and UK."
  • Fake Science, Part III: Energy cure, God university get prime space for money. "The Indian Express accessed over 90 articles published by Trivedi and found similar claims in all. He also claims to have developed 'Trivedi Water', which is listed on Amazon but is 'currently unavailable'."
  • An iterview with Jeffrey Beall, the man who first came up with the description "predatory" to describe these journals and publishers: Jeffrey Beall: ‘Predatory publishers threaten scientific integrity, are embarrassment to India’. "Beall said that universities need to re-examine how they evaluate faculty and should not give credit for publications in fake journals."
• Scilla Alecci in ICIJ Blog: New international investigation tackles ‘fake science’ and its poisonous effects. Has links to some of the other articles from other countries, notably Germany and France.
• NDR: More than 5,000 German scientists have published papers in pseudo-scientific journals. It has a lot of info about articles and news stories from the other partners, but without providing links!