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[totoro]

http://omicsonline.org/index.php

My wife just got an e-mail inviting her to join the editorial board of a new open-access journal published by these people. She is surprised as she is "just" a post-doc at a government lab. We guess that her PhD advisor was asked and recommended her instead.

Their website provides little information but based on authors and odd English my guess is that they are likely to be based in India. I checked the editorial boards of some of the journals and there are people at respectable universities on them.

Should she accept the invitation?

[kstjohn]

I just got a notification that I had been added to the Journal of Tissue Science and Engineering editorial board because of my "quality of research and trustworthiness in the field of " Tissue Science & Engineering"".  I do not do tissue engineering, although I am a member of an academic department that conducts such research and have a colleague who does so.  I did publish in the early 1990's on animal studies of a new bone graft material but my suspicion is that this is a new journal and that online searching is being used to identify board members.  I tried to bring up the board for this journal and it is blank (ie. under construction) and the first issue of the journal has not yet been published.  I have been unable to find any more information about this publisher, who they are, or where they are.

I am uncertain about this.

[totoro]

Interesting. They didn't invite you, just added you? A few of their journals are up and running but most are in start-up mode.

[mozman]

I have been getting spammed by OMICS lately - 3-4 emails a day, for multiple journals in fields that I may or may not have any expertise in.

I delete them all.  Any publishing company that does this is crap - I want no association with them.

[jackit]

This one is easy: no.

Getting on an editorial board only makes sense early in a career if the journal has a good, established reputation and is highly related to your own interests.

[adb75_im]

I was asked by this company to serve as an editorial board member.  I declined, as my research area expertise have shifted dramatically from the subject matter of the journal. 

This group then took my name and affiliation, and then listed me as a member of their board without my permission!  Incredibly unprofessional behavior, in my opinion.  Indeed, I am quite upset by this - it's an abuse, really.

Calls to their office have gone unanswered.  I've submitted a request to have my name removed immediately.  But I fear I might have to get my school's legal office involved.

My recommendation is to ignore requests from this group.  But make sure they've not used your name inappropriately by checking their editorial board membership list at the journal's site.

The sad thing is that I somewhat favor the move toward open access publishing.  The high cost of publication in some journals is impeding the speedy dissemination of new data.  This kind of bad behavior by this publishing group threatens to give the whole movement a bad name.

[mozman]

I was asked by this company to serve as an editorial board member.  I declined, as my research area expertise have shifted dramatically from the subject matter of the journal.  

This group then took my name and affiliation, and then listed me as a member of their board without my permission!  Incredibly unprofessional behavior, in my opinion.  Indeed, I am quite upset by this - it's an abuse, really.

Calls to their office have gone unanswered.  I've submitted a request to have my name removed immediately.  But I fear I might have to get my school's legal office involved.

My recommendation is to ignore requests from this group.  But make sure they've not used your name inappropriately by checking their editorial board membership list at the journal's site.

The sad thing is that I somewhat favor the move toward open access publishing.  The high cost of publication in some journals is impeding the speedy dissemination of new data.  This kind of bad behavior by this publishing group threatens to give the whole movement a bad name.

This is why you don't answer them - even to say no.  Just delete the email.


Open access is a great thing.  We are moving to only publish in open access journals.  But OMICS isn't open access - its a vanity press being operated out of India.

[collegekidsmom]

 One way to judge quality or credibility of such a publisher would be to do a search for any of the journal titles in OCLC WorldCat and see if any good research level academic libraries are adding the title to their catalogs and holdings. I am a science librarian. We would add any good quality free open access title to our library holdings, and regularly vet open access titles for inclusion. If no libraries, or only lower tier libraries are interested, you can be fairly sure that these are not quality publications. Also, check to see where the titles are indexed. If no top index covers them (such as Medline, PsycINFO, Scopus, Web of Science, etc), then they have likely not qualified for inclusion. Being included in the DOAJ (Directory of Open Acccess Journals) or similar listings does not necessarily indicate quality. Searching Ulrich's might give you some further information on the title. These titles are a dime a dozen if they are not in libraries or indexed in major sources.

[dwl_sdca]

While I agree with much of what you wrote I want to share another perspective.

Over the past few months, several articles from questionable journals have made it into the main-stream press. Academics and policy-makers at government agencies and NGOs are being asked about the findings from research published in these vanity press journals. I believe that it is important to be able to respond with specific comments when asked by reporters, students, or others. That requires that we actually read the controversial article. If we simply say that the research findings were published in a less than prestigious journal and may be dismissed, I fear that our own credibility will be diminished by what is interpreted by our arrogance.

I'm not recommending that trash journals be read routinely! I do believe that we need to be able to easily find articles that are mentioned in the news.