Predatory journals have several tell-tale signs that researchers should look for.
The increasing number of predatory journals spotted in the UGC list of approved journals is a clear indication that UGC is not equipped to produce and sustain a journal white list. And allowing universities to recommend journals to be added to the list has only made things worse. It’s time it scraps the list and adopts the DOAJ list instead.
The University Grants Commission’s (UGC) approved list of journals or white list appears more grey than white. In June this year, the UGC released a revised list of 33,112 approved journals in which university/college faculty and students may publish papers. It has now come to light that UGC’s revised list contains 111 potential or possible predatory or fraudulent journals. Last week, I reported that the revised list contains 84 predatory journals that are found in librarian Jeffrey Beall’s (University of Colorado, Denver) list of “potential, possible, or probable” predatory journals, bringing the total to 195.
Of the 586 journals that the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) had recently removed from its directory on grounds of “suspected editorial misconduct by publisher”, the UGC list contains 114. Three of the 114 journals have an overlap with Beall’s list.
By all accounts, the probability of the revised list containing more predatory journals cannot be ruled out. For instance, the UGC list has included a few journals which have all the tell-tale signs of predatory journal. They are neither found in Beall’s list nor are they among the DOAJ’s rejected journals.
The journals from the UGC white list (45,925, including inactive journals at ugc.ac.in) were “web-scraped” and individually “string-matched” with the list of journals in the DOAJ list flagged as “suspected editorial misconduct by publisher”. Earlier, the same list was compared with Jeffrey Beall’s list. An exact string match between the names of journals in the lists was taken as the criteria to flag the journal as predatory. The full list is maintained here.
“[Compiling the list] is not an easy task. The definition of predatory journals is different from one person to another. We are aware of predatory journals and will remove them from the list if we are provided with details,” Dr. V.S. Chauhan, who is the Head of the UGC committee that prepared the list had told me earlier.
Clear indicators
A few of the predatory journals that have been removed from the DOAJ database want the authors to assign copyrights to the journals, which goes against the grain of open access, while a few others offer an E-certificate to authors of published papers and a hard copy of the certificate for a fee. One journal has an open invitation to researchers to “propose a journal”. It also offers authors a unique payment option — by paying a registration fee of Rs.3,000, authors will be allowed to publish multiple articles without paying any article processing charge (APC), it says. While one journal on engineering and technology accepts papers in 30 engineering disciplines, another journal accepts papers from almost all engineering and science disciplines. And one journal carries agriculture and cancer-related articles in the same issue of the journal. Most journals have fake impact factors to impress naive researchers the importance of the journal; the Index Copernicus Value is cited as impact factor.
Sting operation
In a sting operation in late 2012 by John Bohannon of Science, a “mundane paper with grave errors” was sent to 167 journals included in DOAJ database and 121 from Beall’s list. While 82% publishers in Dr. Beall’s list accepted the questionable paper, nearly 45% of DOAJ publishers did not reject the paper.
About six months after the results of the sting operation were published in October 2013 in the journal Science, the DOAJ began its mammoth exercise of weeding out the bad apples. The DOAJ has cleaned up its database by removing nearly 3,800 journals.
Following the introduction of new criteria for listing in March 2014, DOAJ has received 1,600 applications from Open Access journal publishers in India, which is the “highest number” in the world. But of the 1,600, only 4% (74) were from genuine journal publishers and accepted for inclusion in the DOAJ directory, while 78% were rejected for various reasons. One of the main reasons for rejection is the predatory or dubious nature of the journals.
The journals removed from the DOAJ list due to “Suspected Editorial Misconduct by Publishers” that match with the UGC list
| S.No | Journal Name |
| 1 | Asian journal of Sports Medicine |
| 2 | American Journal of Animal and Veterinary Sciences |
| 3 | American Journal of Biochemistry and Biotechnology |
| 4 | American-Eurasian Journal of Sustainable Agriculture |
| 5 | Applied Physics |
| 6 | Archives of Pediatric Infectious Diseases |
| 7 | Archives of Trauma Research |
| 8 | Asian Journal of Pharmaceutical and Clinical Research |
| 9 | Advances in Environmental Biology |
| 10 | Advances in Geosciences |
| 11 | Advances in Natural and Applied Sciences |
| 12 | Advances in Psychology |
| 13 | African Journal of Agricultural Research |
| 14 | African Journal of Biotechnology |
| 15 | African Journal of Pharmacy and Pharmacology |
| 16 | Applied Mathematics |
| 17 | Advances in Fixed Point Theory |
| 18 | Business and Economic Horizons |
| 19 | Bioscience Discovery |
| 20 | Core Evidence |
| 21 | Chinese Medicine |
| 22 | Clinical Practice and Epidemiology in Mental Health |
| 23 | Engineering |
| 24 | European Journal of General Dentistry |
| 25 | Global Journal of Health Science |
| 26 | Health |
| 27 | Hepatitis Monthly |
| 28 | International Business and Management |
| 29 | International Journal of Endocrinology and Metabolism |
| 30 | International Journal of Engineering Science and Technology |
| 31 | International Journal of Environmental Sciences |
| 32 | International Journal on Computer Science and Engineering |
| 33 | International Research Journal of Pharmacy |
| 34 | Iranian Journal of Pediatrics |
| 35 | Iranian Journal of Radiology |
| 36 | Indian Journal of Computer Science and Engineering |
| 37 | Indian Journal of Pharmaceutical Sciences |
| 38 | International Journal of Future Generation Communication and Networking |
| 39 | International Journal of Geomatics and Geosciences |
| 40 | International Journal of Hybrid Information Technology |
| 41 | International Journal of Nanomedicine |
| 42 | International Journal of Pharmaceutical Sciences and Research |
| 43 | International Journal of Physical Sciences |
| 44 | International Journal of Medicine and Public Health |
| 45 | International Journal of Computer Science and Management Studies |
| 46 | International Journal of Phytopharmacy |
| 47 | International Journal of Communications, Network and System Sciences |
| 48 | International Journal of Astronomy and Astrophysics |
| 49 | International Journal of Computer and Electrical Engineering |
| 50 | International Journal of Research and Development in Pharmacy and Life Sciences |
| 51 | International Journal of Materials, Mechanics and Manufacturing |
| 52 | Internet Journal of Rheumatology and Clinical Immunology |
| 53 | International Journal of Advances in Computing and Information Technology |
| 54 | International Journal of Research Studies in Management |
| 55 | International Journal of Anatomy and Research |
| 56 | International Journal of Civil and Structural Engineering |
| 57 | International Journal of u- and e- Service, Science and Technology |
| 58 | Journal of Young Pharmacists |
| 59 | Journal of Computer Science |
| 60 | Journal of Pharmacology and Pharmacotherapeutics |
| 61 | Journal of Social Sciences |
| 62 | Journal of Management Research |
| 63 | Journal of Agricultural Science |
| 64 | Journal of Pharmaceutical and Scientific Innovation |
| 65 | Journal of Scientometric Research |
| 66 | Modern Management |
| 67 | North American Journal of Medical Sciences |
| 68 | Nephro-Urology Monthly |
| 69 | OnLine Journal of Biological Sciences |
| 70 | Open Agriculture Journal |
| 71 | Open AIDS Journal |
| 72 | Open Anesthesiology Journal |
| 73 | Open Atmospheric Science Journal |
| 74 | Open Biochemistry Journal |
| 75 | Open Bioinformatics Journal |
| 76 | Open Biomedical Engineering Journal |
| 77 | Open Cardiovascular Medicine Journal |
| 78 | Open Catalysis Journal |
| 79 | Open Civil Engineering Journal |
| 80 | Open Colorectal Cancer Journal |
| 81 | Open Cybernetics and Systemics Journal |
| 82 | Open Dentistry Journal |
| 83 | Open Dermatology Journal |
| 84 | Open Ecology Journal |
| 85 | Open Fuels and Energy Science Journal |
| 86 | Open Immunology Journal |
| 87 | Open Infectious Diseases Journal |
| 88 | Open Materials Science Journal |
| 89 | Open Mechanical Engineering Journal |
| 90 | Open Medical Imaging Journal |
| 91 | Open Microbiology Journal |
| 92 | Open Neurology Journal |
| 93 | Open Nutraceuticals Journal |
| 94 | Open Obesity Journal |
| 95 | Open Ophthalmology Journal |
| 96 | Open Ornithology Journal |
| 97 | Open Pain Journal |
| 98 | Open Petroleum Engineering Journal |
| 99 | Open Psychology Journal |
| 100 | Open Public Health Journal |
| 101 | Open Respiratory Medicine Journal |
| 102 | Open Rheumatology Journal |
| 103 | Open Sports Sciences Journal |
| 104 | Oriental Journal of Chemistry |
| 105 | Open Journal of Forestry |
| 106 | Open Analytical Chemistry Journal |
| 107 | Pharmacognosy Magazine |
| 108 | Pharmacognosy Research |
| 109 | Pharmacognosy Reviews |
| 110 | Sustainable Development |
| 111 | Scientific Research and Essays |
| 112 | Smart Grid |
| 113 | Trauma Monthly |
| 114 | Tactful Management |
Journals that match with Beall’s list:
| 1 | Bioscience Discovery |
| 2 | International Journal of Pharmaceutical Sciences and Research |
| 3 | International Research Journal of Pharmacy |
Science Chronicle 
The informative reviews of the status of predatory journals in India by Prasad show that the efforts of the UGC to identify the “white” journals are not effective. The cancer has infected the system so deeply and extensively that it is not possible to cure it in the short term. We need large groups of dedicated, committed scientists/researchers and academicians in many disciplines to help the UGC to sift the corn from the chaff. Many in responsible, decision making echelons in the universities themselves seemed to have encouraged predatory publishers. Predatory publishers may be very pleased with the unexpected turn of events. They will boldly advertise their newly gained honorable mention in the UGC “white” list, along with other claims and attributes. By closing our eyes for too long, we have done irreparable damage to the system.