We recently learned about a publisher and conference sponsor called Academic Journals & Conferences. Based in Florida, the company appears to be a one-man operation. The man is Dr. Turan Senguder, who is apparently originally from Turkey.
The firm publishes three journals, yet they are not open-access. I normally only comment on OA journals, but I think this publisher deserves some scrutiny and that researchers would benefit from knowing how it operates. The three journals are:
- The Journal of American Business Review, Cambridge
- The Business Review, Cambridge
- The Journal of American Academy of Business, Cambridge
The journals don’t appear to have any real connection to Cambridge (the one in Massachusetts or the one in the U.K.). The website boasts that each journal’s ISSN was issued by the Library of Congress. The publisher itself does not publish the online versions of three journals; they are only available through the ProQuest database ABI Inform. The publisher does claim to make print subscriptions available but this is not clearly stated on the website.
My library only has access to a two-year run of one of the publisher’s three journals. What’s the point of publishing something if it’s very difficult for people to access your work? Or — maybe that is the point here. The journals appear to be the bait to get people to pay for and attend the conferences that the publisher organizes. Conferences are held yearly in Miami, London, Los Angeles, Hawaii, Tokyo, and Istanbul. We found this information on the website about registration for the 2013 Miami Conference:
Registration Fees: $598 (If submission before September 10, 2013) Late Submission: $698 (After September 10, 2013) Students will get 5% [sic] discount from the general rates, if students submit their paper [sic] and register [sic] fees before August 1, 2013. Students need to provide a copy of their student identification cards and registration forms. The registration fee must be received in [sic] ten days after the paper is accepted. There will be an extra charge of $69 for each author [sic] for papers with more than two authors. The re-process fee is $59. Paying the registration fee entitles authors to publish the paper in the journal and to receive a copy of the publication. When the paper is accepted, each conference attendee must pay the registration fee. The payment information will be given in the acceptance letter. There will be no refunds on cancellations received after the deadline [sic]. If the author (s) does not attend the conference, he/she will be liable to pay the journal publication fee.
This arrangement shows a conflict of interest, I think. The more papers the publisher accepts the more conference registration fees it receives. And the fees are large. The publisher’s website bears many pictures of the diminutive Dr. Senguder, who is often seen posing with attractive females. I don’t recommend attending any of his conferences or submitting articles to any of his journals.
Hat tip: Dr. Karamat Azim
This entry was posted on Thursday, March 21st, 2013 at 9:57 AM and is filed under article processing charges, Scholarly Open-Access Publishers. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
