In a test of standards, the Ottawa Citizen submitted a nonsensical and largely plagiarized article to a Canadian medical journal, which has now been published, according to the paper.
The Canadian publishers Pulsus Group and Andrew John Publishing were purchased recently by OMICS International, which the University of Colorado's Jeffrey Beall has labeled a predatory publisher, the Citizen reports. It adds that the US Federal Trade Commission has also dubbed OMICS to be scammers. The journal in which the Ottawa Citizen got its fake study published, the Journal of Clinical Research and Bioethics, is jointly owned by Pulsus and Andrew John and is one of many new journals OMICS created for those publishers. Beall adds that OMICS has been on a "buying spree."
OMICS says the paper passed peer review and adds to the field, but the Citizen notes that the fake paper is mostly Aristotle with every few words changed, a move that rendered much of it unintelligible.
Suzanne Kettley, the executive director of the independent Canadian Science Publishing tells the Citizen that the situation is "a bloody mess."
"Predatory publishers are appropriating journal names and editorial boards from reputable publishers, they are purchasing publishing houses, which leaves unsuspecting medical societies to then find legitimate publishing partners, and they continue to publish fake science authored by fake researchers that has undergone absolutely no review," she adds.