Research Institute or Vanity Press ?
The Journal of Academic and Business Ethics is one of 19 journals published by the Jacksonville, Florida-based Academic and Business Research Institute (AABRI). The institute appears to be chiefly a one-man operation headed by entrepreneur Dr. Russell K. Baker, who is an Associate Professor of Management Information Systems at the Davis College of Business, Jacksonville University .
One of the journals this outfit publishes is called Journal of Academic and Business Ethics. This journal has an article entitled, “Eminent Domain: In Theory – It Makes Good Cents” (see volume 5), written by Benjamin A. Neil from Towson University in Maryland.
Unfortunately, this article, published in March, 2012, contains a lot of text that originally appeared earlier in other publications. The copied text completely lacks attribution in some cases and lacks proper attribution (quotation marks) in others.
The example below is one instance of unattributed copying in the article. The top box is from the article in question; the second one is from a 2005 government hearing entitled Supreme Court’s Kelo decision and potential Congressional responses. There is no citation, and the long sentence is copied verbatim.
The original text is on the bottom; the copied text is on the top.
There are numerous other examples of pirated content in the article. There are also examples of passages being copied without quotation marks but with citations.
This begs the question, Why on earth would someone plagiarize in a business ethics journal? What were they thinking?
The answer is that people submit articles to such journals just to get credit for a publication. It’s done to pad their resumes. They can assume that few or no people are going to read the article and observe the misconduct.
We think that the other journals published by the Academic and Business Research Institute are just as bad as this one. We recommend against submitting papers to this publisher.
Hat tip: David Sullivan. His blog: http://facultytrustee.blogspot.com/2013/02/home-grown-s.html
Appendix
List of 19 journals published by the Academic and Business Research Institute as of February, 2013:
- Journal of Academic and Business Ethics
- Journal of Aviation Management and Education
- Journal of Behavioral Studies in Business
- Journal of Business Cases and Applications
- Journal of Case Research in Business and Economics
- Journal of Case Studies in Accreditation and Assessment
- Journal of Case Studies in Education.
- Journal of Contemporary Counseling and Research
- Journal of Criminal Justice Research
- Journal of Finance and Accountancy
- Journal of Instructional Pedagogies
- Journal of International Business and Cultural Studies
- Journal of Legal Issues and Cases in Business
- Journal of Management and Marketing Research
- Journal of Sport Management Research
- Journal of Sustainability and Green Business
- Journal of Technology Research
- Research in Business and Economics Journal
- Research in Higher Education Journal
