Science Publishing Group (SPG) is an

open-access Open access (OA) is a set of principles and a range of practices through which research outputs are distributed online, free of access charges or other barriers. With open access strictly defined (according to the 2001 definition), or libre o ...

publisher of academic journals and books established in 2012. It has an address in New York City but is actually based in

Pakistan Pakistan ( ur, ), officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan ( ur, , label=none), is a country in South Asia. It is the world's List of countries and dependencies by population, fifth-most populous country, with a population of almost 24 ...

. The company has been criticized for

predatory publishing Predatory publishing, also write-only publishing or deceptive publishing, is an exploitative academic publishing business model that involves charging publication fees to authors without checking articles for quality and legitimacy, and withou ...

practices. it publishes 430 journals in various fields. SPG uses a Gold open-access model of publishing which charges the authors. The company claims that articles are

peer review Peer review is the evaluation of work by one or more people with similar competencies as the producers of the work ( peers). It functions as a form of self-regulation by qualified members of a profession within the relevant field. Peer revie ...

ed by scientific experts before publication. In October 2022, most to all of its journals did not have a scientific

editor-in-chief An editor-in-chief (EIC), also known as lead editor or chief editor, is a publication's editorial leader who has final responsibility for its operations and policies. The highest-ranking editor of a publication may also be titled editor, managing ...

Criticism of publishing practices

The company has been criticized for

predatory open-access publishing Predatory publishing, also write-only publishing or deceptive publishing, is an exploitative academic publishing business model that involves charging publication fees to authors without checking articles for quality and legitimacy, and withou ...

. In an experiment, university professor Fiona McQuarrie submitted an article to ''International Journal of Astrophysics and Space Science'' from Science Publishing Group, using pseudonyms "

Maggie Simpson Margaret Evelyn Lenny "Maggie" Simpson is a fictional character in the animated television series ''The Simpsons'' and a part of the Simpson family, notably the youngest member. She first appeared on television in the '' Tracey Ullman Show'' sh ...

" and "

Edna Krabappel Edna Krabappel-Flanders ( Krabappel; ) is a fictional character from the American animated sitcom ''The Simpsons'', voiced by Marcia Wallace from 1990 until her death in October 2013. She was a 4th-grade teacher, who taught Bart Simpson's class ...

" (characters from the cartoon series ''

The Simpsons ''The Simpsons'' is an American animated sitcom created by Matt Groening for the Fox Broadcasting Company. The series is a satirical depiction of American life, epitomized by the Simpson family, which consists of Homer Simpson, Homer, Marge ...

''). Although the article had been generated by the

SCIgen SCIgen is a paper generator that uses context-free grammar to randomly generate nonsense in the form of computer science research papers. Its original data source was a collection of computer science papers downloaded from CiteSeer. All elements ...

computer program and was nonsense, it was accepted for publication. Librarian

Jeffrey Beall Jeffrey Beall is an American librarian and library scientist, best known for drawing attention to " predatory open access publishing", a term he coined, and for creating what is now widely known as Beall's list, a list of potentially predatory ...

, creator of a list of predatory open-access publishers, cites a nonsensical article in ''American Journal of Applied Mathematics'', containing an alleged proof of Buddhist . Science Publishing Group has also been cited more directly as a predatory journal and a

scam A confidence trick is an attempt to defraud a person or group after first gaining their trust. Confidence tricks exploit victims using their credulity, naïveté, compassion, vanity, confidence, irresponsibility, and greed. Researchers hav ...

, using more than 200 pseudo-publications like ''American Journal of Applied Mathematics'' or ''International Journal of Transportation Engineering and Technology''. The publisher uses techniques related to scam like aggressive emailing (spamming campaigns) with replaced characters (α for a, for example) or invitations to publish in exchange for a payment in order to fool unsuspecting scholars.

References

{{reflist Academic publishing companies Open access publishers Publishing companies based in New York City Publishing companies of Pakistan Publishing companies established in 2012

Criticism of publishing practices

See also

References