Publish or Perish! Where to Publish?
The sole purpose of university education is the creation (discovery and innovation) and dissemination of knowledge.
Creation of knowledge comes from research activities, while dissemination is the transfer of knowledge/information that is already available in books, magazine, journals etc.
Unfortunately, most of the universities in the third world countries are engaged only in dissemination of knowledge.
As for instance, in knowledge transfer/dissemination system one can hardly find any fundamental differences in between an intermediate level college and a university, particularly in Bangladesh.
Albeit, a small group of lecturers and post-graduate students from different universities in Bangladesh are trying to involve them in ‘research and publication’ business.
Unfortunately, a number of factors such as lack of proper guidance from senior faculty members, poor management/guidance by University Grants Commission, old or outdated government policy on university education etc. created an environment to publish the research findings in predatory journals/publishers. By publishing an article in predatory journal, a researcher can’t achieve anything from international community except the addition of ‘garbage’ or ‘extra baggage’ to his/her CV.
Any journal that is not indexed by ‘Web of Science (Clarivate Analytics)’ or ‘Scopus (Elsevier)’ is considered as predatory category. The ‘Web of Science’ indexing platform consists of ‘Science Citation Index (SCI)’ and ‘Science Citation Index Expanded (SCIE)’ for science and engineering journals, and ‘Social Science Citation Index (SSCI)’ for social science journals.
In a nut shell, any journal indexed by ‘SCI, SCIE and SSCI’ is considered as ‘Institute of Scientific Information (ISI)’ cited journal. Note that, All ISI cited journals are indexed by Scopus but not all Scopus cited journals are indexed by ISI.
However, all ISI cited journals usually have a non-zero ‘impact factor’ and accepted worldwide. Authors having publications in ISI-cited journals are eligible to receive offers for academic job, promotion, scientific recognition etc. from universities and other platforms-internationally.
The total number of ISI/Scopus cited papers published from a university in a single year is also used as a barometer for determining the global ranking of that particular University. Remember, a journal indexed in ‘Emerging Source Citation Index (ESCI)’ under ‘Web of Science’ is also considered as predatory journal.
One can easily check the indexing status of any journal by going to the homepage of that particular journal. You can see many indexing platform such as CrossRef, CrossMark, DOI, SAO/NASA.ADS, INSPEC, Google Scholar, Georgetown University (USA), WorldCat libraries, WZB Electronic Journals etc. is written in the journal home page, and such a journal is identified as predatory journal.
Furthermore, many predatory journals show impact factor on the journal home page. Such an impact factor is ‘bogus’ or ‘false’.
Remember, the management of predatory journals normally target the individuals from 3rd world countries. They frequently send emails to the individuals for submitting manuscripts and assures the publication of paper within a relatively short period, with or without a publication fee.
Note that, an ISI journal never send any email to individual for submission of a manuscript (except you are an established and leading scientist in international level!). A list of potential predatory scholarly open‑access publishers is available at https://beallslist.net/.
In case of book publication, several publishers such as Nova, Lambert, InTech Open etc. are considered as predatory publisher. Therefore, do not waste your time by sending your works or paying money to them for publication.
A list of predatory publishers is available at https://predatoryjournals.com/publishers/#I. Publishing of your work in such platform also add ‘garbage’ or ‘extra baggage’ to CV.
In regard to conferences, nowadays many ‘money making’ conferences are frequently held here and there. Such conference organizers are relatively very cunning. They normally arrange such conferences in big cities, tourists’ places, hotels etc. Their main purpose is to collect a good amount of money in the name of registration fee.
Generally, conferences organized by WASET, Conference Series, OMICS etc. are money making category.
A list of predatory conferences/conference organizers is available at https://libguides.caltech.edu/c.php?g=512665&p=3503029.
Participation in such conferences will not give any scientific knowledge except traveling to some places, and again participation record in such conferences, adds ‘garbage’ or ‘extra baggage’ to CV.
Only conferences organized jointly by well-known scientific societies/leading universities/international organizations, etc. are good conferences, and one may achieve better knowledge, find opportunities for collaborative research, job offers etc. by participating in such conferences.
Writer: Dr. Mayeen Uddin Khandaker
Professor, Sunway University, Malaysia
&
Associate Editor, Radiation Physics and Chemistry (Elsevier)
Handling Editor, Physics Open (Elsevier)
