One of the most recent additions to my list of questionable publishers is Scientific & Academic Publishing. This publisher claims to be from Rosemead, California, but when I look at the address on Google Maps, it shows an intersection with parkland on either side.
The publisher offers 133 journal titles, all in the area of STM. Many of the titles begin with “American” or “International.” Few of them have any content yet, and many are seeking editors-in-chief and editorial board members. Under the site’s “Latest news” feature, it says “SAP has been established May 8, 2011.”
There are no books listed on the “Books” link from the banner, but the publisher seems to give itself away when you read the text there. It says, “We sincerely welcome all you authors to deliver your precious book manuscripts to us, and we are going to do our utmost to help your works be published under your requirements to your satisfaction.”
That certainly sounds like something a vanity press would say, and that is probably what Scientific & Academic Publishing aims to be, albeit under the guise of a scholarly open-access publisher.
The publisher is sending out spam emails soliciting submissions. Here is one that was forwarded to me:
Part of a spam email solicitation.
The letter is poorly written and smarmy. It almost seems to be inviting the authors to re-publish the same article they already had published elsewhere. It looks like SAPUB got the article information and author information by harvesting it from a legitimate journal website.
The site doesn’t really mention author fees (except to say that they are waived for some conference proceedings), so I imagine the publisher doesn’t hit you with this until your article has already been accepted, that is, after you’ve already invested time submitting your article and waiting for the reviewers’ comments (if there are any reviewers, or comments).
Most of the site is written in acceptably idiomatic English, with only occasional slip ups. However, in the News section from August 15, 2011 it says this:
“The establishment of SAP caused scholarly society’s strong repercussion. Nowadays more than 1,000 internationally-recognized Editors are serving on the Editorial Boards of SAP’s journals. In order to serve the scholarly society better, SAP welcomes competent academicians to join us.”
Except for the last phrase, the statement is false and misrepresentative. But I don’t think they care about that.
The acronym “SAP” suggests a hoax.
While researching my dissertation, I found an article through the Scientific and Academic Publishing website that was completely plagiarized from a well-known, reputable article written in 2001. All they did was change around the numbers (completely fabricated data!) and the rest was word for word.