Open-Access Publisher Offers to Waive Fees, But There’s an Unethical Catch

Let’s make a deal …

Global Researchers Journals is offering to waive article processing charges (APCs) for authors who cite articles in its journals in other journals with impact factors.

The fine print (click to enlarge).

This publisher is sending out a spam email that offers to waive APCs for authors who publish in journals from other publishers that have impact factors AND who cite an article published in one of GRJ’s ten, low-quality journals.

The offer, currently being broadcast in a spam email, says,

NOTICE: Authors that cite www.grjournals.com manuscripts as reference in their ISI articles, they can send their manuscripts to one of above journals as FREE of charge. After evaluation and get an acceptance it will publish without any Article Processing Fee with DOI.

Global Researchers Journals is based in Urmia, Iran. I believe it is unethical for an open-access publisher to offer a fee waiver in return for citing one of its articles in a journal with an impact factor.

The normal APC for a single article in one of Global Researchers’ Journals is 80 euros. The publisher’s website is a complete mess, difficult to navigate, and full of coding errors.

A copy of the spam email is here.

Hat tip: Dr. Robert K. Colwell

Appendix: List of Global Researchers Journals as of 2014-12-04

1. Journal of Animal Production Advances
2. Journal of Animal Science Advances
3. Journal of Chemical and Biochemical [sic]
4. Journal of Computer Science Advances
5. Journal of Food Science and Nutrition
6. Journal of Physiology and Pharmacology Advances
7. Journal of Pure and Applied Science
8. Journal of Veterinary Advances
9. Journal of Medical Science Advances
10. Journal of Recent Advances in Agriculture