Updates:
1. According to Wim Meester, Scopus Senior Product Manager, Scopus has delisted the American Academic & Scholarly Research Journal. He revealed this in a comment on the blog Library Out Loud, published by Massey University Library in Palmerston North, New Zealand.
2. Thanks to a comment from a reader named Shawn, I learned there is a second publisher that also hosts American Academic & Scholarly Research Journal. It appears that the content is identical, and there is no explanation of this on either website. The second publisher is Natural Sciences Publishing Corporation, based apparently in Bahrain.
I am in the process of analyzing the second publisher but have already found many questionable practices surrounding it. For example, it has a journal entitled Journal of Atomic and Molecular Sciences. However, the same journal (content and all) is also published by a Global Science Press, which I am also analyzing. Here are links to the Exact Same Journal published by two OA publishers:
I will also analyze these two additional publishers that I discovered. There is something very sneaky going on here, including duplicate publication of one journal by two publishers.
Blog Post: [Note: The publisher has preemptively taken down most of the pages discussed in this blog post.]
This is the second of two posts about the American Academic & Scholarly Research Center, a mysterious group that publishes one journal, has a “Strategic Research Initiative” and markets an “International Author Identification Number.”
Today I will describe two of the organization’s additional products. One is its academic conferences. It appears the firm organizes three or four conferences each year. Here is a listing of their remaining 2013 and 2014 conferences:
- AASRC 2013 International Conference –19-20 September – Bratislava, Slovakia
- AASRC 2013 International Conference –6-7 November – Dubai, UAE
- AASRC 2014 International Conference – January 10-11, 2014 Beirut, Lebanon
- AASRC 2014 International Conference – 18-19 June – Istanbul, Turkey
- AASRC 2014 International Conference –26-27 Febuary – Dubai, UAE
We love the theme for the January 10-11, 2014 conference, with the hilarious typo:
“West Meats East in Research and Methodology In: Education, Technology, Business, Engineering and Computer” [sic]
The organization claims to be U.S.-based but holds its conferences in Eastern Europe or the Middle East. Another contradiction is this: The publisher sells itself by claiming to be working for scholars from poor countries. It claims, “AASRC is devoted to the continuing advancements of global research working with a clear mission of helping the economies of the world’s 50 (underdeveloped) countries.” But this statement belies one of the special conference sidetrips advertised on AASRC’s website:
Is this really a scholarly conference?
Finally, another of AASRC’s products is the International Certification Council. This organization is run by a mysterious man who calls himself Dr. Tony Montana and who never reveals his location. According to its website, “The IC-Council is an alliance of global organizations dedicated to assuring competency, and high level of professionalism by encouraging and setting the Standards for accrediting, licensing, certification, and credentialing programs globally”
Their pricing guide.
This product’s website appears not to have been updated in a long time, and this is understandable.
Any organization that markets products to researchers ought to uphold the highest standards of professionalism, transparency, and honesty. I don’t think that the American Academic & Scholarly Research Center is rising to this level. I recommend against submitting papers to their journal, against participating in their Strategic Research Initiative, against using their International Author Identification Number, against attending their conferences, and against using the services of their International Certification Council.
