These Professors Don’t Work for a Predatory Publisher. It Keeps Claiming They Do.

The emails came often enough for Thomas L. Traynor to save a generic response on his computer: Dear _____, your suspicions are correct. The journal to which you’ve submitted is a fraud.

Years ago, Traynor, an interim dean and economics professor at Wright State University, learned that a journal was misusing his name online. On its website, the International Journal of Humanities and Social Science lists a range of scholars, including Traynor, on its editorial and international advisory boards.

But Traynor and other supposed board members contacted by The Chronicle said they’ve never been associated with the publication, nor did they grant it permission to use their names. A few have spent years attempting and failing to correct it. All the while, emails have trickled in to their inboxes from disgruntled submitters of papers, asking where their money went or why the edits were so paltry.

Predatory publishers — those that shirk rigorous peer review, seek out inexperienced researchers, and levy fees for authors to publish their own work — are nothing new. More than 400,000 papers have found homes in questionable journals, according to a Finnish researcher whose estimate was reported in The Economist.

Tales of scholars who have been snookered by unscrupulous publishers are commonly told. But the International Journal of Humanities and Social Science has claimed another set of victims: Professors who say their names and clout have been poached.

The scholar listed as “chief editor” even created a web page to distance herself from the journal and warn readers against sending it money or manuscripts. Despite her attempts at search-engine optimization — note the URL — it hasn’t entirely worked. Google her name, Joan Sabrina Mims-Cox, and her biography on the journal’s website appears prominently in the search results. Mims-Cox, who was a professor of education at California State University at Los Angeles, died in May. As of Wednesday, her name still is atop the page on which the international journal lists its editorial board.)

Traynor said he emailed the journal repeatedly demanding that it take down his name. It promised action, he said, but never followed through. He broached the issue with Wright State’s legal counsel, who didn’t want to get involved, Traynor said.

So Traynor drafted a letter to send the 30 or so people who had contacted him over the years, typically voicing suspicions that their submissions hadn’t been peer-reviewed. Some worried about wiring payment to Bangladesh, where the journal’s publisher, the Center for Promoting Ideas, appears to be based. (The center lists in its portfolio a passel of other publications as well, including the International Journal of Business and Social Science and the Journal of Education & Social Policy.) Other submitters were simply ignored by the journal after they paid up.

Anyone who actually wired money “should know better,” Traynor said. Just look at the publisher’s name. It sounds “naïvely nonacademic,” he said. Scholars who proceed despite such evidence are “participating, to some degree,” by looking the other way, he said.

Still, it’s clear some people either didn’t know or didn’t care that the journal and its publisher looked dodgy. It churned out a volume every month, at a minimum, from January 2011 to May 2018.

Telltale Signs

On the annoyance scale, tweaking and sending a generic email is relatively low, Traynor said. The traffic died down after a six-month hot streak years ago, he said. But it is “a little bit disconcerting to know that these operations are out there and, to some degree, succeeding.”

For J. Peter Pham, who’s still listed as a member of the editorial board, the journal has been a virtual shadow since 2011. He’s got reams of correspondence, including a threatening letter he asked a lawyer friend to write. Nothing helped.

“They’ve found a sweet spot,” said Pham, vice president for research at the Atlantic Council, a nonprofit global-policy group. It’s annoying, he said, but not quite enough for him to litigate.

Pham responds to everyone who writes to him seeking help with their submissions, and he does sympathize. But some due diligence is required, he added, when sussing out a prospective publisher.

Indexes — the shuttered Beall’s List and a blacklist maintained by Cabell’s International, which publishes a popular directory of journals — have aimed to identify predatory publishers.

Fakers exhibit telltale signs, like overly broad names or claims of what they want to accomplish. The International Journal for Humanities and Social Science promises to print papers on dozens of topics: another red flag. (The topics are “anthropology, business studies, communication studies, corporate governance, criminology, crosscultural studies, demography, development studies, economics, education, ethics, geography, history, industrial relations, information science, international relations, law, linguistics, library science, media studies, methodology, philosophy, political science, population studies, psychology, public administration, sociology, social welfare, linguistics, literature, paralegal, performing arts (music, theatre & dance), religious studies, visual arts, women studies and so on,” according to its website.)

Still, Johan Muller, another scholar falsely listed by the journal, feels for young academics who stumble into the trap. The University of Cape Town emeritus professor of education was unaware of his inclusion among the editors until The Chronicle contacted him.

Coincidentally, he said, the journal recently sent him an email soliciting submissions. It offered speedy, peer-reviewed publishing for a couple of hundred dollars, which sounds “so alluring” to inexperienced students under pressure to publish, Muller said. But “once you’ve got that on your record, it counts against you.”

Once Anthony Goerzen learned that the journal had named him as a board member, he tried to reach Mims-Cox, the supposed chief editor. Goerzen, an international-business professor at Queen’s University, in Ontario, said he quickly saw that they were in the same boat. And they both realized that not much could be done.

Goerzen said Mims-Cox mentioned that she had gone to her university’s lawyer to figure out what to do. Establishing a website denouncing the journal seemed to have been the best option she had.

“They’ve got your name. They’ve thrown it up there,” Goerzen said. Essentially, “there’s nothing we can do.”

For Goerzen, it’s been a minor nuisance. He offers the emailers his condolences and some advice: Chalk it up as a loss and walk away.

Attempts to reach the Center for Promoting Ideas were unsuccessful. No one responded to emails sent by The Chronicle to the International Journal of Humanities and Social Science requesting an interview. But it’s clear that the endeavor hasn’t been abandoned. Atop the home page, a deadline for new submissions is posted: August 31, 2018.

Emma Pettit is a staff reporter at The Chronicle. Follow her on Twitter @EmmaJanePettit, or email her at emma.pettit@chronicle.com.