Hindawi
Publishing Corporation was founded in 1997. They were the first subscription
publishers who converted their complete range of journals into open access. To
date, they have more than 400 open access journals to their credit.
With
such a rapid growth and speedy progress, and inclusion of new journals, they
have been criticized as a predatory publisher. A number of different
controversies are linked with their name, spamming being one of them.
Complaints
have been launched against Hindawi that their method of operation is based on
spamming researchers with multiple email invitations, either requesting them to
join editorial boards or contribute papers.
Per
Ola Kristensson-
a Computer scientist in 2010 complained about Hindawi in his blog ‘The
Strategy’:
“Seems
to be to mine reputable conference and journal papers for email addresses and
then use them for targeted spam.”
He
also added,” Another open access publisher that likes to send spam is
Hindawi. However, news to me was that Hindawi now spams on behalf of EURASIP,
an organization I thought was reputable (until now).”
On
the basis of these consequences and as a preventive measure, Hindawi decided to
join a number of additional open access publishers in order to organize The
Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association (OASPA) which adheres to a
professional code of conduct.
The
exclusion of one of their journals, “The Scientific World Journal (TSWJ) from
the Journal Citation Reports (JCR) and excessive citations in two of their
articles published in the journal “Cell Transplantation” was evidently
frustrating and embarrassing for Hindawi. Both journals were peer-reviewed
under the supervision of the previous management of the journal.
In
a nutshell, Hindawi`s reputation seems to be provisionally grinded on account
of the collateral damage occurring from a few well intentioned endeavors to
name and disgrace those companies that could be considered as predatory.
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