The OMICS Group and Its Agents: An Evidence Base

Abstract

A recent article suggested that authors should avoid publishing with OMICS, as they have been producing fake articles. Moreover, other publishers often conceal their association with OMICS as the scholarly community is wary of OMICS after a US court fined them US$50.1 million for deceptive practices. In addition to the 15 publishers previously mentioned (which included OMICS), another five have been identified. Evidence is presented for these ninteen publishers to show their relationship with OMICS. This is the first time that such an evidence base has been presented in a peer-reviewed article. Several small case studies are also presented to demonstrate that some of the publishers are not operating in ways that we would expect of high-quality publishers, noting that further investigation would be useful. Supplementary files are provided, providing details of the web pages that have been archived, as well as other data collected as part of this research.