Fraudulent journal impersonating legitimate one deceives both HEC, Pakistani academics

On the problem of Pakistani academics getting lured by fake journals and having their papers published in them, the Higher Education Commission of Pakistan (HEC) has maintained that it has formed a database of the approved journals in the country and the academics must verify through that database whether the journal to which they are sending their papers is genuine or fake.

However, The News has detected a fake journal, which is a hijacked journal as it has taken the name of another genuine journal in order to deceive academics but the HEC maintains that the hijacked journal and the genuine journal are one and the same. With the HEC failing to differentiate between the two journals, dozens of Pakistanis have published their papers in the hijacked journal — some knowingly as they want shortcuts to academic reputation and others unknowingly, wasting their time, energy and money.

According to the Clarivate, a United States-based analytics company that calculates impact factor of journals, the hijacked journals are “often created by a malicious third party for the purpose of fraudulently offering academicians the opportunity to rapidly publish their research online for a fee”.

The name of both the original and hijacked journals is ‘Turkish Journal of Physiotherapy and Rehabilitation’. The fraudulent owners of the fake journal have not only taken the name of a genuine journal but also copied its International Standard Serial Number (ISSN) on its website to attract academics.

The discovery

The two journals with the same name are being published by two websites. Besides mentioning the same name, both the websites maintain that their ISSN is 2651-4451 and e-ISSN: 2651-446X.

The addresses of the two websites are https://dergipark.org.tr/en/pub/tjpr and https://turkjphysiotherrehabil.org. During its investigations, The News learnt that the former is a genuine journal recognised in Y category by the HEC Journal Recognition System (HJRS) introduced in July 2020. It is also indexed by the Web of Science, a credible indexing agency for research journals.

The other journal has interestingly been indexed by Scopus, an indexing agency approved by the HEC. It seems that not only the HEC was deceived by the trickery of the clone journal but also a reputed agency like Scopus. Currently, the HEC only recognises journals indexed with either Scopus or Web of Science.

To inquire into the duplicity of their names and ISSN, The News sent emails to the editorial teams of both the journals on the email addresses mentioned on their respective websites. No reply was received to the email sent to the second journal. However, the editor of the first journal, Habibe Serap nal, replied saying that they had no connection with the second website.

The editor claimed that the second journal had cloned their journal and the researchers who had paid money to the second journal for having their papers published “wasted their valuable academic articles”.

The corresponding editor of the legitimate journal, Dr Fzt. Tansu Birinci, also responded to The News. She is currently a research assistant at the Istanbul Medeniyet University’s Department of Physiotherapy and Rehabilitation.

She wrote: “The Turkish Journal of Physiotherapy and Rehabilitation is an international, peer-reviewed journal covering the recent developments and current research in physiotherapy/physical therapy. Unfortunately (turkjphysiotherrehabil.org) is not our web address and it’s a scam. Our genuine website can be reached here: [https://dergipark.org.tr/en/pub/tjpr].”

If this is not enough to ascertain that the second website runs a hijacked journal, the fact that one of the recent issues of the second journal on the website contains 50,000 pages with thousands of research papers proves it. It is unimaginable for a genuine journal to publish as many pages and articles in a single issue.

With so many pages, it will not be surprising to find around 100 papers of a single author in one issue. In the Volume 32, Issue 2 of the hijacked journal, an Indian writer, L. Keerthi Sasanka, who is a senior lecturer at the Department of Prosthodontics, Saveetha Dental College and Hospitals, Chennai, has published 98 papers. In another issue, we can find 46 papers to his credit.

A matter of concern

Luckily, the HEC has not recognised this fake journal but unluckily, it says the fake and the original journals are one. When The News sent a query to the HJRS management asking them to identify which of the two websites were of the legitimate journal, the scribe received a strange reply that read “This is one journal, not two”.

The failure of the HEC to differentiate between the two journals and the fact that dozens of Pakistani academics submitted their papers to the hijacked journal highlight that the HEC is not well-equipped to address the phenomena of fake, clone, predatory, standalone and hijacked journals.

However, there are several international watchdogs that have been maintaining a list of such dubious journals. For example, the website of the fake Turkish journal has been listed by the Beall’s List, an international website that monitors research and predatory journals, in the category of hijacked journals. It has also mentioned the website of the legitimate journal along with the website of the fake journal. A few months ago, the HEC had told the scribe in a written reply that it did not recognise Beall’s List. However, there are also many other reputable watchdogs such as Retraction Watch, Directory of Open Access Journals, Australian Business Deans Council, etc. that can provide help with the identification of fake journals.

Faulty policies

The culture of fraudulent research seems to have pervaded the Pakistani academia. HEC Chairman Tariq Banuri blames this on past higher education policies of the country which rewarded the academics on the quantity of research papers produced by them with no mechanism to ensure quality.

Speaking to The News, he said that as promotions of varsity teachers were linked with the quantity of papers authored by them, a large number of Pakistani academics went for publishing as many papers as possible with no care for quality. Those academics did not mind whether the journals publishing their articles were fake or not as all that they cared was a large number of published papers to their credit. And this eventually caused an endemic of plagiarism and fraudulent research in the country, he remarked.

When asked what actions he took to address the situation, Prof Banuri replied that the formation of the HJRS was one such step to ensure quality research. However, he added that during the time he was removed by the federal government, the caretakers of the HEC tried to reverse many steps that had earlier been taken to improve the research culture in the country.