A very dangerous medical publisher.
I am writing this blog post to warn researchers about the open-access publisher SMGroup. It also uses the name SM Open Access Journals. This is a deceptive and exploitative open-access publisher, and all honest researchers should decline to submit papers to its journals or associate with it in any way.
The publisher has 60 journals in its portfolio, all with a broad coverage. Most of them are in the biomedical sciences, but a few are in other fields, for example, the SM Journal of Environmental Toxicology.
I added SM Group to my list two years ago, and at that time, it published 18 open-access journals.
Previously, I blogged about the predatory publisher Austin Publishing Group. In the comments section of that blog post, there is credible information linking SM Group to Austin Publishing Group. One comment identifies the two publishers’ owners as Mahendra Reddy Chirra, Siva Parvathi Chirra and Ari Padmaja.
Although SM Group gives an address in Dover, Delaware as its headquarters, the firm is really based in — you guessed it — Hyderabad, India, the world capital of cyber-corruption. In every case I know of, when an open-access publisher gives a Delaware address as its headquarters location, it’s a predatory publisher.
Journal of Graft.
Recently, I personally received a spam email from SM Group (see Appendix 2, below) inviting me to submit a manuscript to its SM Journal of Biomedical Engineering, a journal that falls outside my field of library science. Way outside. The email is signed by Angela Rose, a fake name from a fake publisher.
It is unclear what the author fees are for the SM Group journals.
Medical research is way too important to trust to bogus publishers such as SM Group. It’s a completely deceptive and exploitative publisher that all researchers should completely avoid.
Appendix 1:
List of SM Group journals as of 2016-12-09:
- Annals of Chromatography and Separation Techniques
- SM Analytical and Bioanalytical Techniques
- SM Bioequivalence and Bioavailability Journal
- SM Dentistry Journal
- SM Dermatology Journal
- SM Emergency Medicine and Critical Care
- SM Gerontology and Geriatric Research Journal
- SM Journal of Anesthesia
- SM Journal of Bioinformatics and Proteomics
- SM Journal of Biology
- SM Journal of Biomedical Engineering
- SM Journal of Biometrics & Biostatistics
- SM Journal of Cardiology and Cardiovascular Diseases
- SM Journal of Cardiovascular Disorders
- SM Journal of Case Reports
- SM Journal of Clinical and Medical Imaging
- SM Journal of Clinical Medicine
- SM Journal of Clinical Pathology
- SM Journal of Clinical Pharmaceutica Acta
- SM Journal of Community Medicine
- SM Journal of Depression Research and Treatment
- SM Journal of Diabetes and Metabolism
- SM Journal of Endocrinology and Metabolism
- SM Journal of Engineering Sciences
- SM Journal of Environmental Toxicology
- SM Journal of Family Medicine
- SM Journal of Food and Nutritional Disorders
- SM Journal of Forensic Research and Criminology
- SM Journal of Gastroenterology & Hepatology
- SM Journal of Gynecology and Obstetrics
- SM Journal of Hepatitis Research and Treatment
- SM Journal of Infectious Diseases
- SM Journal of Nanotechnology and Nanomedicine
- SM Journal of Nephrology and Therapeutics
- SM Journal of Neurological Disorders and Stroke
- SM Journal of Neurology and Neuroscience
- SM Journal of Nursing
- SM Journal of Nutrition and Metabolism
- SM Journal of Oncology and Hematology
- SM Journal of Orthopedics
- SM Journal of Pediatric Surgery
- SM Journal of Pediatrics
- SM Journal of Pharmacology and Therapeutics
- SM Journal of Psychiatry & Mental Health
- SM Journal of Public Health & Epidemiology
- SM Journal of Pulmonary Medicine
- SM Journal of Reproductive Health & Infertility
- SM Journal of Sleep Disorders
- SM Journal of Stem Cell Research
- SM Journal of Urology
- SM Liver Journal
- SM Musculoskeletal Disorders
- SM Ophthalmology Journal
- SM Otolaryngology
- SM Radiology Journal
- SM Surgery Journal
- SM Tropical Medicine Journal
- SM Vaccines and Vaccination Journal
- SM Vascular Medicine
- SM Virology
Appendix 2: A spam email I recently received from SM Group:
From: Editor – SM Biomedical Engineering Journal [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: Tuesday, December 6, 2016 8:21 PM
To: Beall, Jeffrey <[email protected]>
Subject: Research on Biomedical Research : Challenges in irreproducible
Dear Dr. J Jeffrey
I would like to invite you to contribute a manuscript to a special edition in this encyclopedia entitled “SM Journal of Biomedical Engineering.” The title that you may wish to consider is: “Biomedical Research : Challenges in irreproducible research.” We have planned for publication of these special issues by “45 – 60 Days” from now. Therefore, it is greatly appreciated if you would let me know as soon as possible whether you agree to cover this or a related subject. On average, each manuscript is 20-25 pages including the figures and tables. Upon publication, your manuscript will be included in the “Encyclopedia of our journal” which will ultimately contain nearly 5000 manuscripts.
If you are interested we request you to accept our request as Guest Editor for these Topics. (Propose a topic you are interested)
- Editing Special issue
- Proposing title, authors with minimum of 5 articles
- Reviewing all these articles
- Make a dead line for submission and publication
If you agree to contribute a manuscript, please fill out the following submission form and send it to me by email. I suggest that you provide a tentative date for submission, normally 4-8 months after you accept to contribute a manuscript. You can change this date in case that you cannot meet the deadline. You can submit either an original article or a review. To avoid confusion, please do not submit your manuscript to the editorial office of the Frontiers in our journal. Your manuscript including text and figures should be submitted to me by email as attachment. Once your manuscript is received, it will be peer reviewed and once accepted, you will receive an acceptance letter.
Thank you.
Angela Rose, Administrative Coordinator to:
Editorial Office: SM Journal of Biomedical Engineering
Special Edition: Biomedical Research : Challenges in irreproducible research
[email protected]
SM Online Scientific Resources LLC
# 160 Greentree Drive,
Suite 101, Dover,
DE 19904, USA
Tel: +1-469-647-3601