Menace of predatory, cloned journals more rampant in post-pandemic world

Among the highest number of victims from South Asian countries, particularly India, say academicians

Two years ago, a Pune-based PhD student who is enrolled at a university in Madhya Pradesh submitted a paper to a social science journal that promised to upload it online. She only had to pay Rs 5,000 to publish the paper, and immediately received a PDF file of her paper and a certificate via mail.

“But later when I searched online, I could neither find the paper nor the journal’s website,” says the 32-year-old who does not want to be identified.

It’s one of thousands of examples of researchers falling prey to fake, cloned or predatory journals — a phenomenon