The Statesman: Dubiously online

" ... The Indian context is no different. The University Grants Commission (UGC) has linked peer-reviewed publications of academics to career advancement incentives. Such publications have been made mandatory even in the context of awarding higher research degrees.  The conventionally published journals are severely limited in terms of scope, reach and regularity. No wonder open access journals are increasingly popular. Regretfully, however, the proliferation of open access journals has spawned a range of problems that pose a challenge to their credibility. Many fly-by-night publishers have launched unscrupulous business ventures; authors in need of publications need to pay a dubiously titled ‘article processing fee’ to such publishers to get their works published online.  These publishers claim to possess an eight-digit International Standard Serial Number (ISSN), which is merely an identification code and does not mention any criterion of scholarly rigour. Ideally, all such publications need to be peer-reviewed so that only the best are published. However, many publishers skirt the peer-review process if the authors pay the article-processing fee. The fact that our country leads the list of such dubious journals can be attested from any international directory of such ‘predatory journals’ which thrive on authors’ fees as a source of profit. In many cases, peer-review is a farce with acceptance letters sent to authors within an hour of submitting the article. Furthermore, plagiarism is the norm with authors desperate to obtain an ISSN publication, following the unscrupulous ‘copy-paste’ practice and sourcing their matter from the web rather than contributing anything new ..."