CHECK CAREFULLY WHERE YOU ARE SUBMITTING YOUR SCIENTIFIC ARTICLE!

Today many fraudulent schemes are appearing in activities connected with the publication of scientific articles. Such projects mislead authors with claims like these:

“We accept within 12 hours”
“It will be published within 24 hours”
“Conference in Italy / Turkey / Dubai (all on one site and all looking exactly the same)”
“A DOI is issued, the Higher Attestation Commission (HAC) recognises it, it goes into Scopus”
“An international article at a low price”

But what is the real situation?

THE REAL PROBLEM:
Conferences are being offered in the name of various countries (Turkey, India, Italy, Russia, Dubai and so on) through websites that all belong to one and the same person. The sites use the same template and run on the same system.
Such conferences have no publishing licence, no organiser and no scientific committee (and where one is listed, the people do not exist)
Sites calling themselves a “journal” fake the DOI number, are not present in the Crossref or Zenodo databases, or copy some foreign journal and operate through fake sites.
For example, in Indian journals 90% of the authors are from Uzbekistan — this is not an international market but a local one.

As a result of our observations we have established that most of the journals presented as Indian or American are journals bought for certain sums of money by Uzbek "entrepreneurs". If you look through their archives, almost all the authors are Uzbek and the articles too were accepted in Uzbek. It makes one wonder how truthful it is to call this a "JOURNAL".

WHAT IS A GOOD JOURNAL AND CONFERENCE LIKE?
It holds a licence (it operates on a legal basis)
It has an official editorial board
It has an article review process (peer review)
The journal or conference has an official website (an independent and transparent domain)
The following information is provided openly:

ISSN – for a journal, check it at issn.org
DOI – every article must have a DOI number at crossref.org or on other sites where a DOI can be assigned
Indexing – is the journal listed in Google Scholar, ResearchGate, Index Copernicus (journals are included in this database but articles are not deposited there, so this too needs attention) Scopus, WoS, RSCI (RINTS), the Higher Attestation Commission (HAC) and others? And some Impact Factors (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impact_factor) are bought for money, and then they boast to us that their factors are high.

Organisers – is it a genuinely existing organisation (if you want to find out whether an organisation operating in Uzbekistan exists, check the name of the legal entity through the site https://orginfo.uz/ — it shows in real time whether it is actually operating or has been liquidated), and what about the professors?

DO NOT FORGET:
“A low price, rapid publication, an international name” – this is not a mark of scientific quality.
If you submit your article to a doubtful project, it:

may not be recognised anywhere
may be rejected by the Higher Attestation Commission (HAC)
your name may end up on an unlawful “blacklist”

WHAT SHOULD YOU DO?
Always check that the journal and the conference are official
Do not be shy about asking for documents: the ISSN, the publishing licence, the organisation’s certificate and others.
Consult your academic supervisor or the professor of your department
Do not pay even one soum to a place you do not trust! It is clear that every sum you have spent did not come to you easily. Do not put yourself to shame before everyone by trying to produce theses and articles quickly in order to gain a reputation.

DO NOT WASTE YOUR SCIENTIFIC WORK!
Share this post with your friends and with academic groups — saving one person from a fraudster is also a great good deed!

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