In 2014 I wrote a brief article titled Predatory Publishing: A Case Story. The article dealt primarily with the Journal of Language and Literature published by the Progress Publishing Company in Baku (Azerbaijan).
The Journal of Language and Literature is one of seven journals under the umbrella of the International Journal of Academic Research (IJAR), ISSN 2075-4124, E-ISSN: 2075-7107. IJAR is described as “a bimonthly international journal publishing the finest peer-reviewed research in all fields of science and technology on the basis of its originality, importance, multidisciplinary interest, timeliness, accessibility, elegance and surprising conclusions. IJAR also provides rapid, authoritative, insightful and arresting news and interpretation of topical and coming trends affecting science, scientists and the wider public.”
IJAR and its six affiliated journals were launched in 2009. The journals are:
International Journal of Academic Research
Journal of Language and Literature
Journal of Mathematics and Technology
Journal of Economics and Engineering
Journal of Education and Sociology,
Journal of Health, Sport and Tourism
Journal of Law and Ethics
Editors
Dr. Javid Jafarov is the editor-in-chief of IJAR (Azerbaijan) and its affiliated journals.
Co-Editors-in-chief:
Mehmet Bayansalduz (Turkey)
Michael F. Shaughnessy (USA)
Sarwoko Mangkoedihardjo (Indonesia)
Manuel A. Ferreira (Portugal)
Maybelle S. Gaballah (Egypt)
History
IJAR and its affiliated journals were first launched in 2009. From 12 December 2014 the domain http://www.ijar.lit.az became inaccessible and returned an 404 error. There was no redirect, simply nothing that would indicate an ordinary move to another domain.
Five days earlier, on 06 December 2014, a new domain eu-print.org was launched, registered by WebStudio.Az LLC in Baku, Azerbaijan. This page became the new homepage of IJAR.
Not much had changed, the names of the journals are still the same, the look is virtually identical, but by the time this report is written (April 2016), the new website still looks as if it were stil under construction with a large number of broken links. The publisher is still “Progress IPS” with the same address and Dr. Javid Jafarov is still the chief editor, but this time he spells his name: Dr. Dz Dzafarov”, and the Executive Director is still Alik Khankishiyev.
But a few changes are noteworthy: There is no mentioning anymore regarding an alleged affiliation with the Azerbaijan Academy of Sciences and the Azerbaijani members of the International Advisory and Editorial Board do no longer serve IJAR. The only members of the International Advisory and Editorial Board are Sarwoko Mangkoedihardjo from Indonesia. Prof. Sarwoko is employed at Institut Teknologi Sepuluh Nopember (ITS) in Surabaya. He also serves on the editorial board a number of other potentially predatory journals.
Authors
Striking is that in all seven journals is the almost complete absence of submissions from authors from Europe, East Asia, Australia, New Zealand, and the Americas. I have never seen any article published from academics from Australia, Canada, or from Europe with the exception of a few submissions from Portugal and Poland.
Africa is also underrepresented. Submissions are coming mainly from Nigeria.
From 1920 until 1991 Azerbaijan was part of the Soviet Union. Authors from former republics of the Soviet Union, which now form 15 independent countries, constitute a seizable part of the authors. Apart from the aforementioned countries, authors are predominantly from the Middle East, Central, South and Southeast Asia. The country most frequently represented is the Islamic Republic of Iran. Among Southeast Asian countries, Indonesia is by far the most prominent country.
Journal of Mathematics and Technology
The majority of authors contributing to the Journal of Mathematics and Technology are Iranian citizen. The remainder of the articles is from authors of African, Middle Eastern, and Central and South Asian provenance.
Journal of Language and Literature
The authors are predominantly from the former republics of the Soviet Union and from Indonesia. In some volumes Indonesian academics constitute over 20% of total authors. Authors from Indonesia are almost exclusively from a few institutions of tertiary education from East Java and South Sulawesi. This is most likely due to the efforts of Sarwoko Mangkoedihardjo.
Journal of Economics and Engineering
The author base is quite mixed. While some volumes are dominated by Iranians, we also find a substantial number of African, Indonesian (again mainly from East Java!) and Portugese authors.
Journal of Education and Sociology
The vast majority of submissions is from authors from Russia, Central, and South Asia, but in Journal of Education and Sociology we find also a few submissions from the USA: from a highschool teacher, a community college teacher, and from Michael F. Shaughnessy (Eastern New Mexico University, Portales) who is a member of the editorial board of the Journal of Education and Sociology.
Journal of Health, Sport and Tourism
Formerly: Journal of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences (2010-2013). The majority of submissions is from Iran and Nigeria, but also from Egypt, Ecuador, Jordan, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia. There is a seizable number of articles from Indonesia, mainly from South Kalimantan, East Java (Institut Teknologi Sepuluh Nopember in Surabaya), and Sulawesi (Universitas Negeri Gorontalo).
Journal of Law and Ethics
Only four volumes have been published yet. The vast majority of contributions comes from Iranian authors, and only occasionally there area few articles submitted from Saudi Arabia and Turkey. Noticeable exceptions are a few articles submitted from the USA, and one from Poland (Uniwersytet Szczeciński).
Publication Fee
IJAR Azerbaijan and its six affiliated journals are not open access journals as the articles published are not available for free. The journals says that authors are not charged a publication fee, but this is not quite correct. The following applies to all seven journals:
“There is no publication fee. But, subscribe to receive 1 print copy (see example) of the journal is compulsory for authors. Please, see Print Subscription Price List for 2015.”
The link to the price list generates a 404 error (page not found), but in 2014 the fee was $290. The seven journals double dip by charging the authors a subscription fee and they charge the reader a $20 download fee for each downloaded article.
The subscribed authors receive one printed copy of the journal, but they have to pay an additional fee for each additional copy. Otherwise, the seven journals are not printed. The are not available in any library that I researched, not even in some of the most prestigious libraries in the world such as the Library of Congress or the library of the Australian National University!
Quality and Quality Control
The quality of the submissions of all the journals is mixed. Solid academic articles are published next to articles of questionable value. The existence of low quality articles reveals that there is no peer review or any other editorial process. For some examples of the substandard quality look at the following articles: U Kozok (2014) and U Kozok (2015).
Hijacking
Hijacking is done by copying the entire content of the site and re-publishing it under a different domain name. The hijackers then pretend that they are the real administrators and collect the publishing fees while the submitted article is, naturally, not published.
The seven journals seem to get frequently hijacked. The following appears prominently at eu-print.org: “Someone (editorial.ijar@gmail.com, www.jee-journal.com (hijacked site), editor@jee-journal.com, www.ijarsite.com (hijacked site), ijarmanager@gmail.com), www.acoreanajr.com (hijacked site) has used our company name, journals’ titles, ISSN without permission and has asked for publication fees for issues, special issues, conference materials and has given fake acceptance letters. We would like to inform you that we do not publish special issues, conference proceedings etc. Our official website is www.eu-print.org only. Please, if you get or have received an acceptance letter for publishing your manuscripts in our journals, including special issues or conference materials, please contact us (edit@ijar.lit.az or subijar@gmail.com). Before you pay any annual subscription fee, please check your title and journal at this website.”
At the time of writing (April 2016) the hijacking site www.ijarsite.com is still active, and, apparently without knowledge of the publishers, IJAR has also been hijacked by acoreanajr.com. Their address is given as “Assoc Etsud Acorean Chaves, Edificio Do Museu ‘Carlos Machado’ ,Apartado 258, Pnta Delgada, Portugal”. We can safely conclude that the Carlos Machado Museum in Ponta Delgada, the capital of the Azores, has never heard of the “Journal of Acoreana”. The hijackers then add in broken English: “The publication fees for the journal is 175 Euro for the papers below 10000 words and for extra 1000 words, it costs 40 more Euro.”
Additionally, IJAR Azerbaijan is not the the only journal named “International Journal of Academic Research”. A journal with the web address ijar.org.in has precisely the same name.
Impact Factor
At “Science Impact Factor (SIF), http://scienceimpactfactor.com/?p=547, IJAR is listed as having an impact factor of 1.2. That SIF is another fake impact factor company is all too evident. Everything on their page looks fake, including their evaluation methodology that they spell twice as “Evalutaion Methology”.
IJAR and its six affiliated journals are given impact factors by a number of fake impact factor companies including he above mentioned and also uifactor.org. I highly recommend reading The story of fake impact factor companies and how we detected them and Beall’s “list of questionable companies that purport to provide valid scholarly metrics at the researcher, article, or journal level”
IJAR and is not listed in the SCOPUS journal title list.
IJAR is also listed by Thomson & Reuters:
http://ip-science.thomsonreuters.com/cgi-bin/jrnlst/jlresults.cgi?PC=MASTER&ISSN=2075-4124
Address
IJAR is listed under the following addresses: 97/2 I.Qutqashinli (Gutgashinli) Str. AZ1006, Baku, Azerbaijan.