My favorite bizarre academic journals

I frequently get invited to go to fictitious academic conference on everything in Hawaii and to contribute to academic journals which offer a great, ehm, variety of articles. Others have published articles by Margarete Simpson (aka Maggie) or articles with the profound title “Get me off Your Fucking Mailing List”. The list of such journals is endless, so I picked just a few that have a nice Austria and Balkan ring to them. Some are predatory, i.e. they charge money for publishing without any quality control, others are hijacking legitimate journals and others have just dubious standards.

1. Metalurgia International

This Romanian journal published the classic article “EVALUATION OF TRANSFORMATIVE HERMENEUTIC HEURISTICS FOR PROCESSING RANDOM DATA”which includes nice pictures of the three authors. The references includ Borat, the Journal of Illogical Studies and other gems. Unforunately, it is no longer online.

2.Wulfenia International

This “Austrian” journal recently asked me to submit an article and is edited by a certain Prof. Dr. Vienna S. Franz. It is claimed that it is the journal of the Carinthian museum, but in fact, it is what is called a hijacked journal. The real journal is legit, the email and Mr. Vienna S. Franz is not.

3.  Mitteilungen Kloserneuburg

Another fake of a real Austrian journal that has been hijacked. Now, if you do not know this, it might be a bit suspicious that the journal of the Höhere Bundeslehranstalt und Bundesamt für Wein- und Obstbau Klosterneuburg (the Federal Institute of Higher Education for Wine and Fruit) is publishing articles on “CHILD SEXUAL OFFENDERS: A SERIES FROM HATAY, TURKEY,” “Travel from Europe to Istanbul in the 19th Century: The Quarantine of �anakkale” and  “THE HUMAN CAPITAL DETERMINANT OF SOCIAL STRATIFICATION IN ROMANIA” unfortunately the authors names are not visible, but I guess that is better for the authors.

4. International Journal of Advanced Computer Technology

This journal managed to accept a paper called Get me off your fucking mailing list, which incidentally is also the only sentence of the article. 12 points for consistency and parsimony.

5.  Journal of Computational Intelligence and Electronic Systems a

Here, some clever colleagues submitted a non-sensicle article in the name of Maggie Simpson, Edna Krabappel, and Kim Jong Fun in a reference to the Simpsons. Of course the article got accepted and published for the modest fee of 459$.

6. Journal of Society for Development of Teaching and Business Processes in New Net Environment in B&H

This Bosnian journal has a pretty big scope too and gives precise instruction, including the useful advice “Paper depends on its content, but usually it consists of a page title, abstract, text, pictures and tables, conclusion and references.” While the editorial board and some contributors are serious academics, the journal has been accused of publishing for money (and a lot of it, i.e. more than number 5).

7. HealthMed

This other Bosnian journal closely linked to the previous one, published by a non-profit publisher in Sarajevo. According to a report by Pero Šipka into this and the previous journal, they are engaged in a number of dubious practices, such as . They are also ” bibliometrically isolated, i.e. not being cited by other quality journals” (p.5) and appear to be belong to “citation cartels”.

8. Megatrend Review

This journal is less predatory, as more a reflection of the esoteric and eclectic world view of Megatrend and its founder Mica Jovanović. Its 2013 issue was not only devoted to pay homage to him, but also includes and article by the Bogdanoff brothers, who have taught cosmology at Megatrend on “BEFORE THE BIG BANG: A COSMOLOGICAL CODE” who have been controversial, to put it mildly. Of course the most dubious contribution in the journal is the biography of Jovanović himself…

There are many more candidates with great potential and looking forward to some nice suggestions.

Of course, all of this sounds like a bit of joke, but dubious, bizarre and predatory journal do not only muddy the water of academia, they also allow scholars to “publisher” their research and thus advance their careers. There has been some action by state institutions against them, but it is sometimes difficult to identify them (at least by their title) or close them down. A great source of dubious journals (and serious issues in serious journals) is  Retraction Watch and Scholarly Open Access .

And to end with a quote of the aforementioned Boganoff article: “All of us should be happy that our world is equipped with time. Without time, everything would be boring and stagnant. Problems couldn’t be fixed and nothing else could happen either. One couldn’t hope that the future is going to be brighter than the present.” (p. 489)