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<< Go back to Part 1 Xia et al. (2014): Who publishes in "predatory" journals? This study tried to figure out if there were some patterns in the author profiles who tend to use this predatory publishing business. The researchers looked for patterns based on publication history and geographical locations of authors. They categorized authors as those belonging to Group 1 (publishing articles in predatory journals) and Group 2 (publishing articles in non-predatory journals). Out of 941 authors publishing in predatory journals, 725 hailed from India. The next contenders were Nigeria (80) and Pakistan (44).   Disturbing, isn't it? Unsurprisingly, 75% of the predatory journal-authors were South Asian. And the credit defnitely goes to India. The Discussion section of this paper elaborates on the status in India. "Noticeably, researchers from India and Nigeria rarely appear in prestigious OA (open-access) journals, while authors from Austalia, Europe a

Indian academia is sick. It needs to detoxify. Urgently. The context Difference between an authentic journal and a predatory journal, put simplistically Researchers disseminate their findings by having them published in academic journals . Sometimes, a variety of journals related to a variety of fields are published by the same firm, and such firms are called publishing houses . These journals offer the services of having papers reviewed by experts before their publication (so the readers only get authentic science) and the distribution of papers (so everyone knows what discoveries have taken place). In this model, institutions subscribe to these journals i.e. the reader pays to read the papers. (Another noteworthy point is that researchers, after submitting their findings to a journal, also hand over the copyrights to that information to that journal.) The open-access movement aimed to make all knowledge free for everyone, so that researchers with limited funds could al