| Revision as of 21:29, 12 October 2015 editGoattender (talk | contribs)53 edits →Action by US government agency: Removed sentence as it is outdated. OMICS journals are now indexed in PubMed Central. Ex: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=j+aids+clin+res← Previous edit | Revision as of 21:31, 12 October 2015 edit undoGoattender (talk | contribs)53 edits →Action by US government agency: Minor changeNext edit → | ||
| Line 59: | Line 59: | ||
| ===Action by US government agency=== | ===Action by US government agency=== | ||
| In April 2013, OMICS received a cease-and-desist letter from the ] (DHHS). It alleged OMICS used images and names of employees that either no longer worked at NIH or did not provide their permission.<ref name=science/> OMICS responded by modifying its website and providing emails and letters |
In April 2013, OMICS received a cease-and-desist letter from the ] (DHHS). It alleged OMICS used images and names of employees that either no longer worked at NIH or did not provide their permission.<ref name=science/> OMICS responded by modifying its website and providing emails and letters from NIH employees. Those employees said they did not provide permission for their names to be used in marketing materials.<ref name=science/> | ||
| ===Legal threat to Jeffrey Beall=== | ===Legal threat to Jeffrey Beall=== | ||
Revision as of 21:31, 12 October 2015
 | |
| Parent company | OMICS Group Inc. |
|---|---|
| Status | Active |
| Founded | 2007 (2007) |
| Founder | Srinubabu Gedela |
| Country of origin | India |
| Headquarters location | Hyderabad |
| Distribution | Worldwide |
| Publication types | Open access journals |
| Nonfiction topics | Science, technology, and medicine |
| Official website | www |
OMICS Publishing Group is a publisher of open access journals in a number of academic fields. It is part of the OMICS Group, based in Hyderabad, India. It issued its first publication in 2008 and currently publishes about 700 journals. OMICS is considered a predatory open access publishing company publishing journals of dubious quality by Jeffrey Beall.
According to a 2012 article in The Chronicle of Higher Education about 60 percent of the group's 200 journals had never actually published anything.
Academics and the United States government have questioned the validity of peer review by OMICS journals, the appropriateness of author fees and marketing, and the apparent advertising of the names of scientists as journal editors or conference speakers without their knowledge or permission. As a result, the U.S. National Institutes of Health does not accept OMICS publications for listing in PubMed Central and sent a cease-and-desist letter to OMICS in 2013, demanding that OMICS discontinue false claims of affiliation with U.S. government entities or employees. OMICS has responded to criticisms by avowing a commitment to open access publishing and threatening a prominent critic with a US$1 billion lawsuit.
Publishing activities
OMICS Publishing Group was founded in 2007 by Srinubabu Gedela, who remains the company's director. It started its first open-access journal, the Journal of Proteomics & Bioinformatics, in 2008. As of 2012, OMICS Group had more than 200 journal titles, about 60% of which had no content. OMICS operates on an "author-pays" model. According to The Chronicle of Higher Education, some journals that are financed by authors are legitimate, while others are vanity publishers "that accept virtually any article to collect fees from the authors." It says there is not always a clear distinction between the two. OMICS journal authors pay a publication fee of up to $3,600.
Criticism of publishing practices
OMICS has been subject to criticism from librarian and blogger Jeffrey Beall who included OMICS in his list of several hundred "potential, possible, or probable predatory" publishers that "take advantage of academics desperate to get their work published." Beall and others have "raised concerns about the practices of OMICS and the quality of its journals." They claim the journals are not actually peer-reviewed as advertised, often contain mistakes and that its fees are excessive. The company says that its activities are legitimate and ethical, but that the quality of its editorial control does need improvement.
It was also suggested that OMICS provides lists of scientists as journal editors to create the impression of familiarity or scientific legitimacy, even though these are editors in name only and are not involved in the review or editing process. An editor-in-chief who was contacted by Science stated that he had never handled any papers; in an interview with The Hindu, another said he had not been informed of his purported editorship. The company has been slow to remove the names of editorial board members who requested to terminate their relationship with OMICS activities.
Some observers have described the publisher as "predatory", insofar as authors who have submitted papers have been sent invoices after their manuscripts were accepted for publication despite the lack of a robust peer-review process. One author received an invoice for US$2700 after her paper was accepted; this fee was not mentioned in the email message OMICS sent her to solicit a submission. OMICS article-processing fees are displayed clearly on the “Instructions for Authors” web page for each OMICS journal. These observations have led critics to assert that the main purpose of the publisher is commercial rather than academic.
Other criticisms of OMICS include the publication of pseudoscientific articles, deceptive marketing practices, targeting of young investigators or those in lower income regions, and the advertising of academic or government scientists as speakers or organizers for OMICS conferences without their agreement. In 2012, an OMICS journal rejected a paper after the reviewer noticed it was plagiarized from a paper he had previously co-authored; another OMICS journal published the same paper later that year. The paper was removed from OMICS' website in 2014.
In 2013, an OMICS journal accepted a bogus and obviously flawed publication submitted as part of a sting operation by Science.
In 2015, it was reported that OMICS started charging fees for withdrawing submitted articles.
Counterpoints to Beall’s criticisms
Other librarians and academics have disagreed with Beall’s criticism of open access publishers such as OMICS. Walt Crawford, former president of the Library and Information Technology Association (LITA), a division of the American Library Association, said that: “My primary conclusion is that Beall’s lists constitute a sideshow full of distorting mirrors, having little or nothing to do with OA as a whole except to serve as a platform for Beall to take potshots at OA. I believe the lists should be ignored.”
Wayne Bivens-Tatum, librarian at Princeton University, concludes Beall's "argument fails because the sweeping generalizations with no supporting evidence render it unsound." Beall has also been criticized by London School of Economics librarians, for bias against open-access journals from less economically developed countries."
Action by US government agency
In April 2013, OMICS received a cease-and-desist letter from the United States Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS). It alleged OMICS used images and names of employees that either no longer worked at NIH or did not provide their permission. OMICS responded by modifying its website and providing emails and letters from NIH employees. Those employees said they did not provide permission for their names to be used in marketing materials.
Legal threat to Jeffrey Beall
In 2013 OMICS Publishing Group sent a letter to 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." 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."
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 was meant to "intimidate". 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".
References
- "OMICS Publishing Group :: Contact". Omicsonline.org. Retrieved 2012-10-03.
- ^ Simpson, Richard J. (April 2008). "Editorial" (PDF). Journal of Proteomics & Bioinformatics. 1 (1): i–ii. Retrieved November 20, 2012.
- List of journals published by OMICS from OMICS web site
- Beall, Jeffrey. "The OMICS Publishing Group’s Empire is Expanding".Scholarly OA.
- ^ Jake New (May 15, 2013). "Publisher Threatens to Sue Blogger for $1-Billion". The Chronicle of Higher Education. Retrieved May 15, 2013.
- ^ Stratford, Michael (2012-03-04). "'Predatory' Online Journals Lure Scholars Who Are Eager to Publish". Chronicle.com. Retrieved 2012-10-02.
- ^ Beall, Jeffrey (2010-07-01). "Update: Predatory Open-Access Scholarly Publishers". The Charleston Advisor. Charleston.publisher.ingentaconnect.com. Retrieved 2012-10-02.
- ^ Declan Butler, "Investigating journals: The dark side of publishing", Nature, 27 March 2013
- ^ Jocelyn Kaiser, "ScienceInsider: U.S. Government Accuses Open Access Publisher of Trademark Infringement", Science, 09 May 2013
- ^ "On the Net, a scam of a most scholarly kind" The Hindu, 26 September 2012.
- ^ Gina Kolata, "Scientific Articles Accepted (Personal Checks, Too)", New York Times, 8 April 2013
- "Pharma Body meeting". Deccan Chronicle. Retrieved 22 Oct 2013.
- Declan Butler, "Investigating journals: The dark side of publishing", Nature, 27 March 2013
- Paul Jump, "Rejected work gets back in the line-up", Times Higher Education, 7 August 2014
- Bohannon, John (2013). "Who's Afraid of Peer Review?". Science. 342 (6154): 60–65. doi:10.1126/science.342.6154.60. PMID 24092725.
- "Data and Documents". Science. Retrieved 29 May 2015.
- Beall, Jeffrey. "OMICS Group Now Charging for Article Withdrawals". Scholarly Open Access. Retrieved 29 May 2015.
- Walt Crawford, “Journals, “Journals” and Wannabes: Investigating The List,” Cites & Insights, Volume 14, Number 7, July 2014.
- Bivens-Tatum, Wayne (2014). "Reactionary Rhetoric Against Open Access Publishing". tripleC 12 (2): 441–446.
- Berger, Monica; Cirasella, Jill (2015). "Beyond Beall's List: Better Understanding Predatory Publishers". College & Research Libraries News 76 (3): 132–135. Retrieved 1 August 2015.
- New, Jake (15 May 2013). "Publisher Threatens to Sue Blogger for $1-Billion". Chronicle of Higher Education. Retrieved 18 January 2014.
- Chappell, Bill (15 May 2013). "Publisher Threatens Librarian With $1 Billion Lawsuit". NPR. Retrieved 18 January 2014.
- Rohan Venkataramakrishnan (2013-05-19). "Send Section 66A bullies home". India Today. Retrieved 2013-05-19.