Laval, Québec is the location of CSCanada, the latest addition to my list of predatory open-access publishers. This publisher gives its headquarters address as: 758, 77e AV, Laval, Quebec, H7V 4A8, Canada, but when I look at that address using Google Maps, I see what appears to be a low-rent apartment complex.
This publisher offers fourteen journal titles. It is not clear what “CSCanada” means; the site fails to provide an explanation. The publisher boasts that it is the publishing arm of the Canadian Academy of Oriental and Occidental Culture and the Canadian Research & Development Center of Sciences and Cultures, but if you Google these organizations, you are just led back to the publisher’s website; they’re obviously bogus.
The site contains many grammatical errors. Most of the articles’ authors are not from North America but Asia, leading me to conclude that the site is really set up for Asians to buy the privilege of publishing in a North American Journal.
One colleague describes the publisher by saying ” but the most entertaining thing about their journal is all the papers about endosymbiotic actinidic archeal bacteria. They’re responsible for climate change, intelligence, the shape of galaxies, Ayurveda and so forth.”
Looking at the journals’ editorial boards, one sees chiefly non-North American names and affiliations, and some editorial boards include just names without any affiliations. At least one journal, Higher Education of Nature Science, lists no editorial board.
This site may be related to the Canadian Center of Science and Education (CCSE), a publisher already included on my list. Update: 2013-05-27: There is no relationship between the two publishers. They both use the same e-journal software, the one provided by Open Journal Systems; they are both from Canada, and they both chiefly publish Asian authors.
The site has an unprofessional and corrupt article processing charge structure. It states,
As for the publication fees, 20% of the articles are free, on the basis of assessment results given by our editorial team. Excellent articles will be published with no charge, but others will not.
This is likely a means to entice potential authors into submitting articles; you have a one-in-five chance of getting a free paper submission, but I think this is merely a trick to get submissions.
One of the publisher’s email addresses is [email protected]. Using a Hotmail email account is just another example of this publisher’s unprofessional practices.
If you look closely at the publisher’s logo (above), you’ll see that it seems to combine the maple leaf symbol with the Islamic crescent moon symbol. Could this be a clue as to the origin of the publisher’s owners, whoever they are (the site provides no information about who runs this operation other than listing the two bogus cultural organizations)?
CSCanada is a predatory and bogus publisher, operated out of an apartment complex in a Montreal suburb. I recommend against conducting any business with them.
Related blog post: I get more academic publishing spam.
Hat tip: Colin Batchelor
CSCanada Journals as of July 13, 2012
- Advances in Natural Science
- Advances in Petroleum Exploration and Development
- Canadian Social Science
- Cross-Cultural Communication
- Energy Science and Technology
- Gastroenterology and Hepatology
- Higher Education of Nature Science
- Higher Education of Social Science
- International Business and Management
- Management Science and Engineering
- Progress in Applied Mathematics
- Studies in Literature and Language
- Studies in Mathematical Sciences
- Studies in Sociology of Science
