Be very careful
Hans Publishers Inc. (also HansPub or 汉斯) is the Chinese-language counterpart of Scientific Research Publishing (SCIRP), a highly-questionable publisher that has been on my list for many years, a publisher that does not hesitate to publish junk science provided the fee is paid.
HansPub is introducing open-access publishing to Chinese scholars and is using its “success” in the West as bait to get Chinese scholars to publish in its Chinese-language journals.
HansPub currently publishes 160 open-access journals, and most of them have a very broad scope. Here are some examples:
- 应用物理 (Applied Physics)
- 教育进展 (Advances in Education)
- 护理学 (Nursing Science)
- 艺术研究快报 (Art Research Letters)
The publisher charges 1600 yuan (about $260) per article for up to eight pages, and 100 yuan additional per page for longer articles.
I have published blog posts describing the pseudo-science that Scientific Research Publishing has happily accepted and published (see here and here), and the tradition of accepting anything as long as the fee is paid is apparently being followed by HansPub as well.
Pay to publish
For example, this article, “冷核聚變堆和新現代物理學綜述“ (“Cold Fusion Reactors and New Modern Physics Review“) appears in the HansPub journal 天文与天体物理 (Astronomy and Astrophysics). The article is dubious and reports on the author’s “progress” in achieving cold fusion.
With the help of Chinese-speaking colleagues and others, I have analyzed this publisher and have added it to my list.
I recommend to all Chinese scholars that they not submit their articles to this publisher of junk science. HansPub’s western counterpart, Scientific Research Publishing (SCIRP) is a known scholarly vanity press that will publish any article that looks scientific as long as the fee is paid.
In my opinion, over time, publishing scholarly articles in HansPub’s journals will hurt your career more than help it.
