The Explosion of Indian Open-Access Publishers Continues

“Recently there has been an explosion in the number of scholarly open-access publishers appearing in India. The word is out: there’s an easy way to make money, and all you need is a web site and the ability to create unique journal titles. Thanks to a tip, I learned about Discovery Publishing Group, (DPG) which appears to operate out of Tamil Nadu, India.  The publisher’s journal portfolio consists of seven titles: discovery, drug discovery, discovery pharmacy, discovery science, discovery life, discovery universe, and species(I follow the publisher’s convention of not capitalizing the titles).None of the titles has any articles yet. Looking at the different scope descriptions for each of the titles, I saw some strange stuff. For example, for the journal discovery universe, I read, ‘Aim & Scope ... ‘discovery universe’ is the ample term which explains the scope of the journal. discovery universe is an universal journal belonging to the totality of everything that exists, including all matter and energy (dark and light), the planets, stars, galaxies, contents of intergalactic space, space-time, size, age, structure, origin, evolution, chemical elements, expansion, discovery of alien species and also universe with diverse and multiverse theories, models, physical laws, philosophies, cosmologies and cosmogonies, published monthly, with original innovative and groundbreaking research and reviews.’ Also, I noticed that in one of the journals, the list of topical areas covered includes, ‘Alien’s science,’ and another includes ‘Alien species life.’ So, it looks like this journal will be open-minded about accepting articles that constitute pseudo-science. DPG’s 35-page document, Author Instructions for the Preparation of Manuscripts, is lifted from Elsevier, without attribution. The site’s web pages are spare, containing lots of white space. Finally, I got a copy of one of the spam emails this publisher is sending out to scholars worldwide... This is a partial screenshot taken directly from the spam email. It says, ‘The work should contains [sic] less than 10% plagiarism.’ I am not making this up! Is there any question that this is a predatory publisher?”