Talk:Scientific Research Publishing

Whitewashing attempt
A user with a name written in Chinese characters that I am sadly unable to read just tried to whitewash this article. I think we need to keep an eye on this. Martin Rundkvist (talk) 07:50, 8 November 2012 (UTC)

Google Translate tells me this person's handle translates as Maple Leaf Gold. Martin Rundkvist (talk) 09:49, 8 November 2012 (UTC)
 * As well as getting rid of sourced information, it was a copyright violation, as it copied and pasted text from the journal's web site. The same user has been warned about that before, so I gave him or her a short block over it this time. —David Eppstein (talk) 15:53, 8 November 2012 (UTC)


 * Looking at the IP's other edits, they all seem to be promoting this company. Dougweller (talk) 17:01, 8 November 2012 (UTC)

On the death of Yashnikov
To Randykitty, are you like me to a death certificate showed? —Luksaz
 * No, that would be a primary source an that is not allowable to source a statement like this. You need a reliable secondary source that confirms that SRP used Yashkinov's name knowing fully well that he was deceased. --Randykitty (talk) 17:14, 29 November 2012 (UTC)

To Randykitty. Victor Yashnikov was killed in Chernogolovka about 3 years ago. More than a year ago, I spoke personally with the members of his laboratory. As you can easily see Yashnikov still is editor in chief of JMP. Do you think that the editors of Scirp have not noticed his death? Well, I understand your position, let honest guys and girls from the scirp milk the name of the dead scientist. —Luksaz
 * You don't seem to understand WP: you may know something is true, I believe that what you are saying is true (there's not much this kind of publishers are not capable of), but still we cannot write it, because you have no reliable source for it. You and I are NOT reliable sources, please read the policy and please remove your unsourced statement. Just as I will fight to keep unsourced praise out of this article, I will also remove unsourced criticism. It's the way WP works, we're not a blog where people can give their opinions on the subjects treated. Thanks for your understanding. --Randykitty (talk) 20:42, 29 November 2012 (UTC)

Anonymous Contributor Puts "Disputed" Header On Article
I see no trace of any debate about this article, only repeated whitewashing attempts. I suggest we remove the "Disputed" header. What does everybody say? Martin Rundkvist (talk) 12:35, 1 March 2013 (UTC)

A Balanced View is Required

It seems (from the history of this page) the page was started with the intension to stigmatize the publisher as a whole based on (admittedly well cited) single findings. This was corrected a little during the life of the article by adding “SHERPA has identified Scientific Research Publishing as a Green OA publisher“. I would expect an article on the publisher “Scientific Research Publishing” to start with giving a detailed insight about the many good journals and finish with a balanced critique with praise and accusations.

I could imagine that SCIRP themselves are providing the details of their publishing hours. They can well spend the time on writing this. The Wikipedia Community can check that later.

An outside reader can maybe help on giving the balanced view.

Hopefully, we find people to do the job.

My personal view is this: Open Access Publishing can be the future. It is not per se bad to have companies to set this up. I can also not see that companies need to be blamed for making a profit. The baker at the next corner also tries to make a profit (and provides us with delicious bread). The question is how much money is morally sound to ask for editing an article and to put in online. Any one who criticizes a certain price (like 500 USD), needs first to have a look at the service offered to the author which can include:

1.) Having a review process being organized 2.) Language editing 3.) Type setting editing 4.) Provide indexing 5.) Provide a DOI (Digital Object Identifier) for the paper ...

Editors-in-Chief, members of the Editorial Board and Reviewers for Open Access journals give their precious time voluntarily to have high quality papers being published. They work for free and have an eye on the publishers not exploiting their enthusiasm. Therefore, there is a self checking mechanism built into the system.

After all, journals can only be as good as the Editor-in-Chief and Editorial Board members do their work. Like every else in life we have diligent people and lazy once. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 31.18.38.83 (talk) 12:37, 1 March 2013 (UTC)
 * The discussion in the article is not at all about the fee or its height (I just have edited that bit). Neither is the discussion here about OA as such. Rather, it is about well-sourced accusations of bad publishing practices by SCIRP. Apart from the SHERPA classification, I don't know of any independent source that says something neutral, let alone positive, about this publisher. If all that can be sourced is that a publisher produces shoddy work, then that is all that we can say and there is no POV problem. POV would be that people would take references out of their context and only selectively cite soruces to put something in a specific daylight. That is not the case here. --Randykitty (talk) 14:12, 1 March 2013 (UTC)

The dispute was too quickly solved!

I am just a novice here, but my impression is: It seems that there are people in the Wikipedia community (in this case Randykitty), who do not follow the rules set by Wikipedia about how a dispute has to be solved. Typing a few lines and the "Template messages/Disputes" is deleted within hours. No chance for anyone else to even see that there was a dispute (unless going to the Talk page). I read it would disqualify myself in Wikipedia if I put the template message on again. So I won't do this. I will spend some time on learning more about the POSITIVE side of SCIRP posted on the WWW. We may want to continue on the "dispute line" once I have my information put together. In the mean time I just want to say this:

I maintain my view that a Wikipedia article on Scientific Research Publishing should be more than a "Warning Message" to potential customers. So in order to avoid the "template messages" to be put on and off, I for now, just keep my point of missing information with another(!) "template message". Depending on the time it will stay on the page, I will determine the seriousness among the participants of this discussion.

Now, looking at the argument from above. It says: "If all that can be sourced is that a publisher produces shoddy work, then that is all that we can say and there is no POV problem." This statement is not scientific (no question about this). There are several 1000 articles online at SCIRR. Such a bold statement just discredits the work of uncounted honest researchers. If they would ALL read how they are defamed and would respond here, the talk page would not be long enough to fit the responses. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 31.18.38.83 (talk) 16:59, 1 March 2013 (UTC)
 * Please present us with reliable independent sources and we'll work those into the article. If you have no evidence that any such sources exist, then your tag is not justified and I am going to remove it. Articles published by SCIRP obviously are 1/ not independent and 2/ probably not about SCIRP. And if you think that my editing is against WP rules, there is WP:ANI for you. Thanks. --Randykitty (talk) 17:39, 1 March 2013 (UTC)

You are missing my point!

You/someone was generating a Wikipedia page about a publisher, ok. Apparently there were things handled not right, ok. BUT: This does not justify to only address this problem. Look at this page about a publisher: Elsevier it looks different, doesn't it. Even if they would have had a problem and someone would have written a paragraph about it, the page still would look different compared to the page we now see about SCRIP.

Then you may say, it is my time spent on Wikipedia and I write whatever I am interested in. Fine, then let other people work on completion (and no one will hopefully delete it). I hope I find time to do this and your/someones paragraph will become a footnote to a proper page about a publisher. IN THIS WAY way we get a NPOV. This is why we have the tag on the page and it should stay there until the work is done - even if it never gets done.

And coming back to my original posting. If you want to warn potential customers, go to a forum with this information. I have never seen a dictionary with "warning entries". This is the problem with the missing NPOV.

To comment on your above posting directly: "Articles published by SCIRP obviously are ... not about SCIRP". Yes! They are written (hopefully in the majority; I could not check them all) quality papers by honest researchers and as such they are a proof for themselves of the quality of what SCIRR is publishing. Take an issue from one of the journals and tell me that x% out of the papers in this issue of the journal are bad. Then we have not a proof about all the journals, but we have at least a point to discuss further. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 31.18.38.83 (talk) 18:51, 1 March 2013 (UTC)
 * What you are doing here is called original research. Elsevier is a large, old, and well-established publisher. There are lots of sources. Also, if you care to look, a lot of criticism. For now, you have given ZERO evidence that there is SOURCED information missing from this article here. As WP editors, we cannot and should not present our interpretations and impressions. We have to rely on reputable sources and present what those say. Nobody here is attampting to "warn potential customers" (I guess that's indeed how this publisher sees them, other publishers talk about "authors"). All we are doing is present sourced information on this company, nothing more and nothing less. And if you bother to look at the article's history (since you cited that when you started this tagging game), you'll see that I have removed negative information from this article as well, because of lack of sources. So: show us what sourced information is missing here and we'll put that into the article. f you cannot provide sources, then take down the tag. --Randykitty (talk) 19:14, 1 March 2013 (UTC)

You have already taken down the tag for me

Apparently, you have a problem with a sign saying to readers/editors in Wikipedia "Add information to this page". You do not even give me time finding and editing the evidence you are crying out for with the tag being on. I guess it is best you write YOUR Wiki-page about SCIRP and I do something else. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 31.18.38.83 (talk) 19:30, 1 March 2013 (UTC)
 * No, I didn't, as you can easily see in the article history. Another editor did, telling you "rm tag -- no clear rationale or sources provided on talk" in the edit summary. And regarding the text that you just added to the article: what is it about no original research that you don't get? You just added a statement with your personal analysis, without any source. What you have to realize is that NPOV does not mean that we have to write neutrally about a subject. We don't have to expound on all the positive virtues of Ted Bundy in order to write a neutral article. NPOV means that we present what the sources say in a neutral manner, without inserting our personal opinion of things. If what the sources say is negative, then the article will be negative and there is no need for us to sugarcoat things. You should self-revert and remove that remark, unless you can come up with a source comparing Elsevier's problems with those of SCIRP. --Randykitty (talk) 21:36, 1 March 2013 (UTC)


 * It shouldn't have to be pointed out that when somebody is being criticised on the net and the Wikipedia article about them refers to this criticism, then this does not mean that the issue is disputed. Of course nobody likes being criticised. But a controversy is when other people disagree about the criticism. Martin Rundkvist (talk) 22:45, 1 March 2013 (UTC)

To answer your: "I don't understand why a jobs page was linked in any case"

The jobs page contains information found at no other place on the companies web page. You may want to add it as reference after the text in the first paragraph: "The company's headquarters are in Wuhan, China, with offices in California, Shanghai, and Hong Kong." This sentence combines information from "About" and "Jobs". Please do it for me. Chances that text will stay more than a few minutes online may be higher. (frustrated novice editor) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 31.18.38.83 (talk) 17:44, 2 March 2013 (UTC)

Let's not have unlogical stuff on this page

The critical text is this:

Jeffrey Beall states that "This publisher exists for two reasons. First, it exists to exploit the author-pays Open Access model to generate revenue, and second, it serves as an easy place for foreign (chiefly Chinese) authors to publish overseas and increase their academic status". He acknowledges that its fees are relatively low, describing this as a strategy that successfully attracts a large number of submissions" and that "it has attracted some quality article submissions. Nevertheless, it is really a vanity press.

1.) "This publisher exists ... to exploit the author-pays Open Access model to generate revenue" a) OA is not about a certain business model, but about open access of information. b) OA publishing is (also) done by companies. They have to generate revenue from some source or will not exist any more. So, yes like many other publishing companies, also SCIRP generates revenue to "exist". c) How can SCIRP exploit someone, if it charge less then average? Even Beall things that "fees are relatively low". Here (http://www.ep.liu.se/openaccess) you can find numbers on publication fees: "publication fees ... are normally around €1000, but vary from €500 to €2500". SCIRP is at or below the lower end of the named range. So, how can SCIRP "exploit" someone?

2.) "This publisher exists ... as an easy place for foreign (chiefly Chinese) authors to publish overseas" How can Chinese authors publish overseas in a journal from a Chines publisher?

I learned we do not do original research on a Wikipedia page. I guess we also do not copy nonsense, only because we have a quote from someone well known in the community.

The real explotation is this: "Virtually all the major subscription-based publishers offer a scheme whereby you can pay them $3000 (or thereabout) to make your article freely available" (http://www.ep.liu.se/openaccess => Hybrid OA). Linköping University, Sweden continues: "We strongly do not recommend this option."

Beall has to be critizised about HIS way of doing research when writing "it [SCIRP] is really a vanity press". This is not a scientific statement. SCIRP claims "32000 authors already published with SCIRP". How can Beall possibly judge (scientifically) the motivs (of a representativ number) of these authors for writing their paper? One thing seems clear, Beall did not even make an attempt to find this out.

Beall makes statements that can be called "defamation" and (as far as I know) can be prosecute. Wikipedia should not help in unlawfull action! We'd better delete the text! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 31.18.38.83 (talk) 23:34, 3 March 2013 (UTC)
 * Please see WP:LEGAL. Threats of prosecution are not acceptable behavior for Wikipedia editors. You need to either clarify that you have no intent of taking such action, or you need to stop editing here. —David Eppstein (talk) 23:47, 3 March 2013 (UTC)

I did not make a statement that I would prosecute anyone and I do not intend to do that. I had a strong word of caution about making wrong statements on Wikipedia or just helping someone to duplicate wrong statements. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 31.18.38.83 (talk) 23:59, 3 March 2013 (UTC)
 * WIth all the non-standard layout, this section is getting quite messy. So I'll post my response to some of the above here: The IP rgues that because SCIRP is cheap, it cannot be predatory. Of course, that is a logical fallacy. Mainstream publisher do indeed charge a lot more, but for that they provide a lot: high-quality peer-review, article editing (meaning for language and layout), production, archiving, etc. Predatory publishers can charge less, and still make significant money, by skipping some or all of these steps. And SCIRP may be China-based, but by having a US mailbox, Chinese authors can still argue that they have published "overseas". That many people choose to publish with SCIRP (although I sincerely doubt the 32,000 figure), does not mean that it is not a vanity press. If there were good evidence that SCIRP rejects a good proportion of submissions, that would show that it's not a vanity press. But, of course, that would drive profits down. Having said this, I start to find this constant turning and twisting of improbable arguments and opinions to somehow get us to make this article say that this is a decent publisher very tiresome. --Randykitty (talk) 08:45, 4 March 2013 (UTC)

Is this about arguments or about clicking the undo buttom?

When I came here to this page, I was asked to provied evidence. It this only required for me, or also for others? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 31.18.38.83 (talk) 04:16, 4 March 2013 (UTC)

The lead needs to mention the problems with this publisher
I came here after getting invitation spam for a ridiculously broad "Conference on Mathematics and System Science" that was tied to publication in one of this publisher's works. I know we are not supposed to add words such as "controversial" to the lead, but IMO it can't stand without some mention of the problem. There are use cases for Wikipedia in which only the first lead paragraph is used, and in those we are giving undeserved credibility to this publisher. I am not sure what to do, though. Hans Adler 06:36, 5 March 2013 (UTC)

'Not gone unchallenged' section
That was removed literally seconds before I was about to remove it. This must not be reinstated. The wordpress blog is a one page blog, neither of them mention this company. We can only mention Beall (in this article) in relationship to this company. Dougweller (talk) 08:49, 6 March 2013 (UTC)
 * And if you two hadn't taken it out, I would have done so. It obviously is not a reliable source as it is not written by someone who is generally accepted as an expert in the field. In addition, it accuses Beall of blackmail for money without offering a shred of evidence, and finally wants us to believe that a "Special Collections Librarian at Flinders University" and the "Acting Editor, Stanford Magazine" can't write correct English... I think that we have a good consensus here (albeit not unanimously, as I gather the IP will disagree) against reinstating this material. --Randykitty (talk) 09:15, 6 March 2013 (UTC)

More data on SCIRP
Source of data in publisher's box: Publisher's web site and e-mail from SCIRP.

CV of Dr. Huaibei Zhou:

www.scirp.org/imagesforemail/pdf/MIMO-sample-pages/Bio_of_Chief_Editors.pdf

More details on CV at end of this paper:

http://filebox.vt.edu/users/yshi/papers/TWC09.pdf

More:

http://iss.whu.edu.cn/English/schoolFaculty.html

http://iss.whu.edu.cn/English/contact.html

"SCIPR currently publishes more than 220 journals in STM, 109 journals have been tracked by ISI for impact factors, and many journals have been indexed by several academic databases."

Source: From e-mail (Information could also be collected from publisher's web site) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 31.18.38.83 (talk) 20:37, 6 March 2013 (UTC)

Compare with:

"Huai-Bei Zhou, a physicist from Wuhan University in China who says he helps to run Scientific Research's journals in a volunteer capacity"

and

"He says it was set up ... by a group of friends and colleagues from these countries to promote exchange between scholars. He declined to tell Nature who these people were or whether he was one of them, although in an e-mail to Abrahams he describes himself as president of Scientific Research."

From:

Sanderson, Katharine (2010). "Two new journals copy the old". Nature 463 (7278):148. doi:10.1038/463148a — Preceding unsigned comment added by 31.18.38.83 (talk) 21:01, 6 March 2013 (UTC)

In addition to the data given above there is also this newer source: file.scirp.org/pdf/zhou_cv_srp.pdf showing that Prof. Dr. Huaibei (Barry) Zhou is founder and president of Scientific Research Publishing. I can not see any promotional material in this PDF. In fact the PDF contains not more about SCIRP than the name being mentioned once. "Among American-born and other overseas Chinese it is common practice to be referred to primarily by one's Western name, with the Chinese one relegated to alternate or middle name status." (Chinese_given_name). The title professor is given on www.scirp.org/AboutUs .31.19.210.13 (talk) 03:05, 8 January 2015 (UTC)

Is wikipedia really neutral？
As referred above，you need good evidence that SCIRP rejects a good proportion of submissions.This data is privacy.Ithink the rejection rate of “mainstream publisher” won‘t publish these data?This is too harsh！ I think you are controled by first impressions .First,the page was started with the intension to stigmatize the publisher with "well cited".And you affirm that Scientific Research Publishing is predatory.So the information which you think is bad for Scientific Research Publishing all saved,in reverse, deleted it for no source or not reliable source.Girry sam (talk) 01:50, 8 March 2013 (UTC) — Girry sam (talk • contribs) has made few or no other edits outside this topic.

Page is not neutral: These are the rules in my view neglected/violated quite often.

WP:NPOV (Neutral_point_of_view)

WP:UNDUE (Neutral_point_of_view). Beall is given undue weight in this article. Beall is not neutral but has his own agenda. This he makes more than clear in his tripleC article.

Neutral_point_of_view. "Try to state the facts more simply without using loaded words." Examples from this page are words given without good reason: predatory, abusing, exploit, vanity press, questionable.

Neutral_point_of_view/FAQ. "Lack of neutrality as an excuse to delete. ... there is usually no need to immediately delete text that can instead be rewritten as necessary over time." I have always tried to add material and to explain the background of my reasoning and my references at length. Neutral_point_of_view. "As a general rule, do not remove sourced information from the encyclopedia solely on the grounds that it seems biased. Instead, try to rewrite the passage or section to achieve a more neutral tone."

Neutral_point_of_view/FAQ. "Anglo-American focus". Is included in this article just due to the fact that undue weight is given to Beall. The editors active here may asked themselves, if they may also have fallen into this trap.

WP:3RR (Edit_warring). I wonder if this rule is applied in both ways in the correct way.

Well sourced facts are ignored/deleted in favor of Beall's position. With the exception of Beall's (outdated) article in The Charleston Advisor, all other of his sources are from his blog. --31.19.210.13 (talk) 11:37, 13 January 2015 (UTC)

Unsolicited commercial emails and unsubscribe
The article most of all attacks the publisher based on the fact of Unsolicited commercial email (UCE). This is called in the article lead Unsolicited_bulk_email which is not quite the same. We all get unsolicited emails from the most prestigious companies and organizations. It can not all be illegal. SCIRP is registered in the USA, so US law should apply: CAN-SPAM Act of 2003. "The bill permits e-mail marketers to send unsolicited commercial e-mail as long as it adheres to 3 basic types of compliance defined in the CAN-SPAM Act": Unsubscribe compliance, content compliance, sending behavior compliance. Some of these compliances go much into technical detail. To my understanding SCIRP's emails did not look as if they would violate one of these compliances. Most important is probably the unsubscribe compliance. All unsolicited mails that I saw from SCIRP had an unsubscribe link. The unsubscribe dialog behind this link has even been lately inproved in oder to limit misunderstanding. If interested have a look: SCIRP's Unsubscribe Dialog

My proposal would be, not to blame the publisher for a bahavior in the lead of the article, as this bahavior is most probably legal. Sure there may be someone out there who did not like the e-mail, or did not find or bother about the unsubscribe link. If this is of most importance, we may want to leave the text as it is - but would it make sense? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 31.18.38.83 (talk) 18:30, 28 May 2013 (UTC)


 * Please knock off the transparent attempts to whitewash this article. The comment in question is accurate, well-sourced, and should stay.  --JBL (talk) 18:36, 28 May 2013 (UTC)
 * In addition, please note that the legality of the spam is not the point; if it's unsolicited email sent out to large numbers of people for commercial purposes, it may well be legal but it's still spam. As for unsubscribe links: the standard advise to email users is to ignore them, because the main function of such links is to inform spammers that they've found a legitimate email address that they can send more spam to. —David Eppstein (talk) 20:53, 28 May 2013 (UTC)
 * The argument "it's still spam" brings us around a circle. Wikipedia defines Email spam and discusses UBE ("A synonym for email spam"). Here we are talking about UCE ("Spam promoting a commercial service or product"). So, even Email spam goes around a circle in its definition. That's why I say: "It is spam if it is illegal" and refer to Email spam legislation by country. With respect to the USA this brings me to CAN-SPAM Act of 2003. Apparently to ban bulk e-mails by the number of e-mails sent was not helpful. You can also discuss "opt-in" versus "opt-out" (Opt-in email). Looking at CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 obviously "opt-out" is applied. Maybe we are influenced by our national law or by our wishes how things should be. I look at one other country. Take e.g. the German law (http://www.iuscomp.org/gla/literature/heidenreich.htm#D6): "7(3) UWG contains a narrow exception to the prohibition in sec 7(2)(3) UWG, stating that direct marketing by email is not regarded as unfair competition where ... the customers clearly and distinctly are given the opportunity to object to such use when their contact details are collected and on the occasion of each further use, without incurring costs other than the transmission costs based on the basic tariff." So anyone is free to decide. I also sometimes do not unsubscribe for reasons stated by David Eppstein (above). But by doing so, I do not complain if I receive further emails. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 31.18.38.83 (talk) 08:36, 29 May 2013 (UTC)
 * TL;DR, still dull, still transparent shilling, still pointless. --JBL (talk) 13:27, 29 May 2013 (UTC)
 * Interesting: U DR but U know "pointless". 4 what? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 31.18.38.83 (talk) 13:54, 29 May 2013 (UTC)
 * It is currently stated in the article that the publisher has been accused of sending unsolicited emails. Two reliable citations are provided. If there are similarly reliable citations that suggest the company does not send unsolicited emails, we should discuss those sources here and decide on how to formulate a cited counterpoint. Any other discussion is outside the scope of talk page guidelines, and I would remind the IP editor that Wikipedia is not a forum. Keepcalmandcarryon (talk) 14:08, 29 May 2013 (UTC)

Well phrased: "sending unsolicited emails"! I may also remind you of the original text quoted in the article:

Beal [1]: "Scientific Research Publishing is widely known for its use of spam e-mails"

Sanderson [8]: "Scientific Research recently e-mailed many academics"

Compare with Wikipedia lead: "The company has been accused of ... abusing bulk emails". The Wikipedia lead implies an unlawful action with the word "abusing". "Abuse is the improper usage or treatment for a bad purpose, often to unfairly or improperly gain benefit. Abuse can come in many forms, such as: physical or verbal maltreatment, injury, sexual assault, violation, rape, unjust practices; wrongful practice or custom; offense; crime, or otherwise verbal aggression." See: Abuse. I tried to work out (sorry for the OR) that SCIRP's action most probably is not unlawful. Wikipedia should be careful with such accusation - especially in a lead. We have agreement here: "legality of the spam is not the point" (Eppstein, above). So, time to change the lead. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 31.18.38.83 (talk) 17:16, 29 May 2013 (UTC)
 * Not so fast. Spam is the word used in the first source, and I don't see consensus for your change. Switching the phrasing "accused of" to "noted for" is not NPOV, since it implies that SCIRP has been established beyond all doubt as a predatory publisher. In fact, SCIRP has been notably accused of being one, or categorised as one, but we can't pass judgement here on whether this is "true" or not. Keepcalmandcarryon (talk) 17:38, 29 May 2013 (UTC)
 * I'm quite happy with the current well-sourced wording, "The company has been accused of being a predatory open access publisher, and of abusing bulk email." Martin Rundkvist (talk) 20:08, 29 May 2013 (UTC)
 * Great that you strive for the NPOV. "To accuse is a somewhat formal act, and is applied usually (though not exclusively) to crimes" (http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/accuse). Like Abuse it is a legal term. Beall did not say "abuse". Sending unsolicited commercial emails is not unlawful (see above). Not even publishing bad journals is unlawful. By using judicial terms the article would imply something that is not sourced. And I guess writing here is also not about happiness of editors at the expense of suffering of others.--31.18.38.83 (talk) 21:59, 29 May 2013 (UTC)
 * I don't recall the possible suffering of employees at companies with questionable business practices being an important consideration in Wikipedia guidelines. Martin Rundkvist (talk) 08:27, 30 May 2013 (UTC)

SCIRP has expressed in some detail its strategy on the issue in the blog post [blog.scirp.org/scirp-2/scirp-practicing-legal-and-moderate-email-marketing SCIRP Practicing Legal and Moderate Email Marketing]. We can not expect to find outside sources of internal company strategies.31.19.210.13 (talk) 01:18, 8 January 2015 (UTC)
 * TL;DR they're still spammers but they feel justified in being spammers because they need the spam to market themselves and because spam is not illegal. —David Eppstein (talk) 01:27, 8 January 2015 (UTC)
 * U DR but U know "spammer". 4 what? Part of SCIRP's e-mail addresses on their mailing lists are those that solicited the service and others did not opt out which means the same. We all get regular e-mails from companies and do not unsubscribe because we read the content. This is normal. Stevan Harnad about Hindawi Publishing Corporation: "Hindawi's promotional messages don't deserve to be singled out for stigmatisation." If it is ok for Hindawi, it should also be ok for SCIRP. It is ok for Hindawi because Hindawi is not on Beall's List and Hindawi is an OASPA member. This is especially to note because Hindawi's bulk e-mails fail to have an unsubscribe mechanism and a physical address. As such they are not legal in the USA. --31.19.210.13 (talk) 00:59, 13 January 2015 (UTC)

I am receiving spam from them. There is no link to unsubscribe. There is the sentence, "Please don’t hesitate to contact us if you want to unsubscribe from this email." No contact info is given, but "you can reply to this email and submit the original manuscript", so I replied to the email and asked to be removed from the mailing list. I have had no response to my request and they are still sending me email inviting me to submit papers. Nurg (talk) 21:51, 28 June 2017 (UTC)


 * Can confirm they are terrible spammers with no unsubscribe link. No matter how many times you complain, it is impossible to get unsubscribed. --sciencewatcher (talk) 14:17, 18 February 2020 (UTC)

Company figures
Scientific Research Publishing Inc. is registered in Delaware, USA. Initially it was registered in 2007 with registration renewed in 2012 under file number 5124220. Its "Principal Place of Business" is in China. According to the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) Scientific Research Publishing's Country is United States. < ref name=DOAJ>

The DOAJ lists 127 journals from Scientific Research Publishing. Furthermore, the database lists in total more than 19000 of its papers. The publisher has about doubled its papers each year listed on DOAJ since starting its business.< ref name=DOAJ>

In total more than 5000 professionals serve on the editorial boards of the publisher's journals.< ref name=SCIRP> Each member of an editorial board is presented with a full biography page. . The presentation of editorial board members follows DOAJ's recommendations on "Transparent editorial boards". --31.18.38.83 (talk) 17:31, 29 May 2013 (UTC)

Resignation of Editorial Board Members
More facts can be found online from "Advances in Anthropology" of SCIRP:

Old board (18 EB members) as given on the February 2013 issue of AA: www.scirp.org/journal/PaperDownload.aspx?issueID=2677&issueType=content

New board (6 remaining EB members) as given on the May 2013 issue of AA: www.scirp.org/journal/PaperDownload.aspx?issueID=2938&issueType=content

12 EB members left the board. 2/3 = 66.6% left. This is a clear majority vote. But a number of 12 people is generally not considered a "mass" of people. "mass" can also not be determined from the ratio of 66.6%.

The first comment to Beall's article says: "It’s not exactly a mass resignation if one board member stayed on to become the editor-in-chief."

Wikipeadia should not uncritically copy words from Beall's text without quotes.

--31.19.204.50 (talk) 05:45, 21 October 2014 (UTC)


 * This is inane. 12 editors resigning from a journal is certainly a "mass resignation".  Two thirds of the editors resigning from a journal is certainly a "mass resignation".  --JBL (talk) 15:42, 21 October 2014 (UTC)


 * Agreed. This is the term used. a13ean (talk) 19:55, 27 October 2014 (UTC)

undue?
pls see Talk:Predatory open access publishing Fgnievinski (talk) 21:39, 30 October 2014 (UTC)

Peer reviewed?
The lead sentence says the journal is peer reviewed. Is there an independent source for this assertion? Nomoskedasticity (talk) 10:35, 20 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Well, we usually accept such a claim from any journal, unless there is a serious reference that contradicts this. At this point, nobody says that SCIRP journals are not reviewed. In fact, most or even all predatory journals claim to be peer-reviewed and as far as I know, most actually are. However, whatever sources we have on these journals indicates that the peer-review is absolutely without any quality control. I remember reading a blog recently (Beall's blog, I think) where someone even was asked to review a paper and when that person said to have no clue and actually being a plagiarist himself being told that it didn't matter. In any case, I see no reason to doubt the claim of peer review, although the controversies make it abundantly clear that this peer review is completely below standard. --Randykitty (talk) 12:40, 20 December 2014 (UTC)
 * I'm not thrilled about having articles re journals give the appearance of peer review (which for normal journals is the key basis for confidence in what they publish) if the peer review doesn't (as in this case) result in quality control. There's an analogy with the notion of getting a PhD from an unaccredited institution (viz. Robert Sungenis): it's not a real PhD, and it's a mistake to equate it to one.  If it's true that we don't currently require some sort of external validation of the claim, then I'd support a change in our practice in this respect.  Nomoskedasticity (talk) 14:14, 20 December 2014 (UTC)
 * The problem is that with accreditation, we have a source (or not, as the case may be) on which to base a judgment. In the case of peer review, there is nothing equivalent of accreditation. So we are forced to accept what a journal/publisher claims, unless we have good reason to doubt their claims. I think the problem is mitigated by the fact that extremely few of the predatory journals with low-quality (or contrary to their claims even absent) peer review are notable. They're seldom good enough at being bad to cross the bar that way either. SCIRP is notable because of being bad and I think our article makes that very clear, the statement that they publish "peer-reviewed" journals does not really change that. --Randykitty (talk) 14:25, 20 December 2014 (UTC)
 * PS: I just had a look at the posting signaled below (http://scholarlyoa.com/2014/12/16/the-chinese-publisher-scirp-scientific-research-publishing-a-publishing-empire-built-on-junk-science/). For this discussion, the comment by "Zedi" perfectly illustrates what I was trying to say. Not an RS, unfortunately. --Randykitty (talk) 00:21, 21 December 2014 (UTC)


 * I just had a "pleasure" of interacting with one of the authors of several papers in SCIRP and I can clearly state that the "peer review" is more like "poor review". We should indicate this by maybe adding an adverb in the first sentence (for instance: presumably peer-reviewed) in order to give proper characterization of the publisher. I also added "of questionable quality" to the first sentence, regarding the quality of the published material. Метамерік (talk) 09:32, 2 October 2017 (UTC)

New blog post by Jeffrey Beall
Jeffry Beall has another blog post out on SCIRP which can be seen here. I don't know if it's worth citing this or would this be too much from a single source? Dahliarose (talk) 23:13, 20 December 2014 (UTC)

Difference between Reuse Rights and Copyright
PLOS, SPARC, OASPA, and others offer the "Open Access Spectrum (OAS)" that "standardizes Open Access terminology". Following this, it has to be differentiated between:

1.) "Reader Rights" - This is about "Gratis OA"

2.) "Reuse Rights" - This is about CC licenses (and about "Libre OA". CC licenses are about rights granted to everyone. "Public copyright licenses do not limit their licensees."

3.) "Copyright" - This is about how much of the original full copyright the publisher allows the author to hold when submitting the work to be published. (A separate question is: How much of the original full copyright does the author grant to the publisher? Different possibilities exist. It is important for the publisher to have sufficient rights to be allowed to publish the work. This can e.g. be based on the CC BY the author has granted under "Reuse Rights" to everyone and hence also to the publisher. Alternatively, it can be based e.g. on a non-exclusive copyright the author grants the publisher; often it is based on a copyright transfer, legal only in some countries.)

The difference between "Reuse Rights" and "Copyright" is explained by CC: "CC licenses are legal tools that creators and other rights holders can use to offer certain usage rights to the public, while reserving other rights. Those who want to make their work available to the public for limited kinds of uses while preserving their copyright may want to consider using CC licenses". "Our licenses [the CC licenses] and legal tools are intended for use by anyone who holds copyright in the material. This is often, but not always, the creator."

If all this sounds too complicated please look at the video on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_Commons_license which is this: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3f/Creative_Commons_and_Commerce.ogg

31.19.210.13 (talk) 08:51, 21 December 2014 (UTC)

With respect to Randykitty:

a) Comment in article source code: "This is contradictory: CC and authors holding copyright is incompatible".

b) Edit summary: "Most predatory publishers don't seem to have a clue about copyright..."

Compare with PLOS - Setting the standard and publishing accordingly!

"PLOS applies the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license to all works we publish ... Under the CC BY license, authors retain ownership of the copyright for their article, but authors allow anyone to download, reuse, reprint, modify, distribute, and/or copy articles in PLOS journals, so long as the original authors and source are cited."

"Open-access—freely accessible online, authors retain copyright" "PLOS applies the Creative Commons Attribution License (CCAL) to all works we publish. Under the CCAL, authors retain ownership of the copyright for their article, ..."

See also figure: http://www.plos.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/hoii-guide-2-PLOS-Standing-v2.gif

SCIRP follows OA publishing standards like PLOS.

31.19.210.13 (talk) 14:59, 21 December 2014 (UTC)


 * I came here via an invitation left at Wikipedia talk:Copyright problems
 * At first the comments above baffled me, because it is not crouched in the usual Wikipedia way. So to explain to others. This comment revolves around a number of edits made by IP 31.19.210.13 who has been editing this page since 1 March 2013
 * The last edit IP 31.19.210.13 made to this article was a multi part edit finishing at 03:17, 20 December 2014 (diff).
 * It was followed by an edit made by Randykitty at 09:26, 20 December 2014 which mainly cleaned up the edit by IP 31.19.210.13 but also included the hidden comment "This is contradictory: if it is CC, then authors don't hold copyright any more" (diff).
 * Randykitty then made a second edit at 09:31, 20 December 2014 (diff) which altered the text of this sentence:


 * to


 * --PBS (talk) 15:59, 22 December 2014 (UTC)
 * First make it clear that I am not a copyright lawyer, and so my opinion is no more valid than any other editors.
 * I think that the first wording is correct and it certainly fits in with Wikipedia Terms of use (see section "7. Licensing of Content"). So lets use Wikipedia as an example. Suppose that you Randykitty create and write an article which you publish on a blog under copyright. You then have it publish it on the Scientific Research Publishing's website. You also use the text to create an article on Wikipedia. If anyone but you reuse that text in another article (say they publish it as one of the funny books containing Wikiepdia text which one finds advertised at Google, then they must publish it under the CC licence. But you still own the copyright to it. If you publishes it in your own book using the essay and expanding on it, unlike any derivative work based on the Wikiepdia or  Scientific Research text, your new version is a derivative work of your original so you retain all rights in it and others can not use your derivative work without your permission. Or let us suppose that your first publishing was on a site using CC but with a non-commercial caveat. The text can not be added to a Wikipedia article by anyone but you because the licence is not compatible with Wikipedia's. But if you are the author and you add it to Wikipedia then as the original copyright holder you can do that because the first site does not own the copyright but only a licence from you to use the text. -- PBS (talk) 15:59, 22 December 2014 (UTC)
 * But once published under CC, anybody is free to use it, so where is then my copyright? --Randykitty (talk) 17:45, 22 December 2014 (UTC)
 * CC (depending on the license chosen) grants some rights to all and retains some for the copyright holder (originally the author). Typical in scholarly OA journal publishing today is CC BY. You are right asking: Which rights remain? Not many in this case. The only one in this case who is allowed to publish without acknowledgement (BY) is in this case the copyright holder. All others have to acknowledge the author. The more rights get reserved with CC (like CC BY-NC-ND) the larger is the difference between the rights of the copyright holder and the public.31.19.210.13 (talk) 20:38, 22 December 2014 (UTC)
 * 31.19 is correct. Publishing under CC is freely licensing the use and reuse of your work, though you still retain copyright. Depending on the license, you retain only limited control over who can use it and how. The real-world effective result may be much the same as waiving your copyright, but from the license perspective you do still retain it, so saying Copyright and CC are contradictory or mutially exclusive is not accurate. Crow  Caw  20:48, 22 December 2014 (UTC)

I have changed my previous edits based on the above. Given that the author rights that remain are what is left after CC has been applied, it seemed safest to me to not mention author rights at all but only the CC versions. --Randykitty (talk) 22:44, 22 December 2014 (UTC)
 * I do not understand the argument "it seemed safest ... not to mention author rights". There is a publishing standard (http://www.plos.org/open-access/howopenisit) supported by well known organizations about Open Access characteristics of a journal. This is also what the section "Open access type" is about. HowOpenIsIt has 6 characteristics. Publishers are asked to apply this standard. SCIRP did on www.scirp.org/AboutUs. The Wikipedia article here has so far only mentioned 4 of them. It is now reduced to only 3, but really all 6 should be mentioned. With respect to characteristic 3 (Copyright): It is true - as I explained above - that with CC BY not much is left, but that is no argument to suppress information. SCIRP offers also the OASPA-accepted CC BY-NC (not many publishers give authors permission to select this). If authors select CC BY-NC they retain more rights. In this case there is a considerable difference between the public CC license CC BY-NC and author's own copyrights. Therefore, it is safest not to suppress information and give all 6 characteristics of HowOpenIsIt.31.19.210.13 (talk) 09:32, 23 December 2014 (UTC)
 * I don't think it is necessary to go into such intricate detail. We don't do that for other publishers either. The important thing are the CC licences, qnd those are now listed. There's no "suppression of information". --Randykitty (talk) 09:40, 23 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Sorry, we had a text on the page "(authors hold copyright with no restrictions)" and it was fine also for you and many others passing by. I fixed some links. You looked at the page and added a negative statement. This attempt was not successful, but you insist now text must be altered to the detriment of the publisher. 31.19.210.13 (talk) 20:46, 23 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Randykitty, you said "we don't do that for other publishers either". I showed you that Wikipedia does indeed specify copyright for OA journals and you tell me Wikipedia only specifies copyright for journals that are not OA. It's wrong what you say. Here are the links. This is the section about Open Access at Springer: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Springer_Science%2BBusiness_Media#Open_access. Here the related copyright explanation at Springer: http://www.springeropen.com/about/copyright. "Copyright on any research article in a SpringerOpen journal is retained by the author(s)" is stated on the OA publisher's web page and in Wikipedia. The very same should apply to SCIRP: A statement on the publisher's page and on Wikipedia. So what is the differences? 31.19.210.13 (talk) 05:32, 24 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Maybe it convinces more what Beall says: „The following practices are considered to be reflective of poor journal standards and, while they do not equal predatory criteria, potential authors should give due consideration to these items prior to manuscript submissions:“ „The publisher requires transfer of copyright and retains copyright on journal content. Or the publisher requires the copyright transfer upon submission of manuscript.“ (http://scholarlyoa.com/2012/11/30/criteria-for-determining-predatory-open-access-publishers-2nd-edition) --- Therefore, to avoid blacklisting it is important to set up a journal such that authors hold copyright without restrictions.31.19.210.13 (talk) 22:10, 4 January 2015 (UTC)

SCIRP: “Inc.”, Home, and Origin
Scientific Research Publishing Inc. was formed through registration (incorporation) in Delaware, USA.

A corporation is a legal entity that is effectively recognized as a metaphysical person under the law. Corporations are owned by shareholders whose liability is limited to their investment. “Inc.” puts everybody on constructive notice that they are dealing with an entity whose liability is limited. The fact that SCIRP is “Inc.” has certain advantages also for readers and authors. It is the „durability“ of the company. “A corporation is capable of continuing indefinitely. Its existence is not affected by the death of shareholders, directors, or officers of the corporation.” (Source of paragraph: several Wikipedia pages)

The fact that SCIRP was incorporated in Delaware, USA means the company is so to speak “born in the USA”. “Home is where the incorporation is.” (Delaware Registered Agent). This has also been confirmed by the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2014 decision in Daimler AG v. Bauman where “the court explained that a corporation is most likely to be ‘at home’ in its state of incorporation …“ (New England In House).

The Principal Place of Business (PPB) is a term from US American legislation with respect to incorporation. Less formal, the PPB is called headquarters. In contrast to the home of the legal entity, the PPB is where executives make decisions (nerve center) and where the activities are conducted (muscle center). (Delaware Registered Agent)

When we ask a natural person “Where are you originally from?” we are rather asking for the birth place than for the present apartment location.31.19.210.13 (talk) 22:12, 7 January 2015 (UTC)


 * This is not a discussion forum. --JBL (talk) 22:19, 7 January 2015 (UTC)
 * I explain my edits!31.19.210.13 (talk) 01:04, 8 January 2015 (UTC)
 * Only two other examples of companies with "Inc." registered in Delaware and named as such on Wikipedia: John Wiley %26 Sons and Amazon.com --31.19.210.13 (talk) 00:10, 13 January 2015 (UTC)
 * My edit was reverted without any explanation (here or in Edit Summary). --31.19.210.13 (talk) 07:42, 13 January 2015 (UTC)
 * The explanation is obvious. Nomoskedasticity (talk) 07:57, 13 January 2015 (UTC)
 * It would be good, if we could agree to follow the law (see above) and not what one editor sees subjectively as "obvious". --31.19.210.13 (talk) 08:14, 13 January 2015 (UTC)
 * Let's follow Wikipedia policies and guidelines instead, 'k? Nomoskedasticity (talk) 08:25, 13 January 2015 (UTC)
 * I moved the discussion to Talk:Scientific_Research_Publishing! --31.19.210.13 (talk) 09:01, 17 January 2015 (UTC)

Consistent Editing?
09:45, 2 November 2014 - Randykitty: "Reverted 1 edit by 31.19.204.50: No wikilinks within quotes."

05:32, 8 January 2015 - 31.19.210.13: "No links are allowed in quotes."

05:49, 8 January 2015 - Joel B. Lewis Reverted edits by 31.19 without comment! (puts back in the link)???31.19.210.13 (talk) 08:38, 8 January 2015 (UTC)

History
Saved before it gets deleted:

The organization was set up by a group of friends from the United States and from China to promote exchange between scholars. Today SCIRP is part of a publishing group together with Hans Publishers (Chinese language scholarly OA journals) and Open Access Library (Multifunctional: search engine, index of external OA articles, repository, and mega journal). 31.19.210.13 (talk) 08:40, 8 January 2015 (UTC)

SCIRP and Tax Payments in the USA
SCIRP has reported at length on the topic: The tax reports are not trivial, but exactly what needs to be paid. --31.19.210.13 (talk) 08:03, 13 January 2015 (UTC)
 * [blog.scirp.org/scirp-faq/#Q1.17 FAQ 1.17: Does SCIRP pay tax in Delaware?]
 * [blog.scirp.org/scirp-faq/#Q1.18 FAQ 1.18: May I see older tax reports?]
 * [blog.scirp.org/scirp-2/in-response-to-accusations-related-to-a-controversial-researcher-and-more/ Response to Beall's Blog Post: 2014-07-31]

This page got "protected" on 2014-01-17
On 2014-01-17 this page got "protected" which means that edit requests can be made on the talk page only.

Background: User:Nomoskedasticity brought a case forward on Administrators%27_noticeboard/Edit_warring quoting some of my Edit summaries as reason.

My answer was this: I am glad we start to discuss how the page is being edited. The NPOV is defined to a certain extend by the majority of the editors involved. Not many are in favor of the Chinese publisher. The page was started reporting about something controversial - not because someone got the idea to report about the existence of the publisher. I tried to bring in a little general material and I had to teach myself how Wikipedia works. I had only started two other pages before, nothing controversial, easy. One page was pushed by others nicely. It was always difficult to edit this page here, but a very small percentage of what I tried to bring in stayed over the long time. There are just very few reliable sources available. Blog entries against SCIRP are not deleted by the other editors, but a PDF from the publisher's page or a blog entry at the publisher does not stay (even if it shows the publisher's view defending the company from maybe exaggerated critique given on Wikipedia's page and references included). Most of the controversies section is based on one person Jeffrey Beall and his concept of "Predatory open access publishing" (a concept used against open access publishers) which is much debated on the related Talk page. I think we have made use of the Talk page sufficiently. The other editors seem to have given up discussing there. Maybe too much work involved, or no good arguments left, I do not know. I explained my edits at length, too long for some editors ("TL, DR"). I always give reason in the Edit summary for every edit no matter how small. There is not much argument included in return - I mean something I could learn from. What can I learn from "Nonsense"? A problem is also that it is not possible to change 5 lines in a structured way. Things get reverted by "undo" faster than you can think. So, I have to limit myself often to single word changes, see if they survive (mostly not) and continue form there on. As they mostly do not survive and I do not want to change in the same place again and therefore just take another piece of the text that needs correction and change a little thing there. 10 steps forward (with references, Edit summary, Talk page) and 9 back is about the ratio of advancement. I was asked to go by Wikipedia rules and tried to list the violations by those who constantly revert my edits. Please find it on the Talk page hier: Talk:Scientific_Research_Publishing. Yes, I know: "TL, DR".

My Edit Summary: It would be nice, if we could work together as described by Wikipedia rules - even if we have different views on the topic.

Answers to this before the page got "proteced": None. Typical Wikipedia style? --31.19.210.13 (talk) 00:36, 18 January 2015 (UTC)


 * It got protected because you insisted on continuing to edit the article despite your apparent conflict of interest and counter-consensus views on what it should contain. The purpose of protection was to get you to stop editing the article and instead build consensus for your proposed changes on the talk page. In order to get the rest of us to pay attention, we need to have clear, concise statements of what you think should be changed. Walls of text are unhelpful. Vague accusations of anti-Chinese bias or anti-open-access bias or Wikipedia policy violations (all of which seem to be present in your comment above) are also unhelpful, as those things are neither about the actual content of the article nor persuasive in getting others to agree to your changes. Also, please do not use on the talk page; it makes it difficult to keep straight which parts of the text on the page come from which comments. —David Eppstein (talk) 00:55, 18 January 2015 (UTC)
 * To me, Anonymous Editor's contributions to this article look consistently like attempts at corporate public image management. Martin Rundkvist (talk) 07:32, 18 January 2015 (UTC)
 * Yes, absolutely. (One minor consequence is that even fairly innocuous edits by this user are being reverted.) --JBL (talk) 02:58, 19 January 2015 (UTC)

Redirect needed
I was looking for Wikipedia information on this company. I searched for "Scientific Research" and got directed to Scientific method, with no hint of this publisher. So I assumed there was no article on it in Wikipedia. Only later, using Buenosearch (a general Web search engine) did I stumble onto this article. Can someone please modify the current redirect to allow people interested in SCIRP to find it by using "Scientific Research" as their search term? Thanks. 211.225.33.104 (talk) 06:05, 28 January 2015 (UTC)
 * Scientific method got 74,000 hits last month; this article got 1200. It seems to me that the existing redirect target is the correct one unless Scientific research should be converted into a disambiguation page. VQuakr (talk) 07:54, 28 January 2015 (UTC)
 * I have a suspicion here. If we named this page "Scientific Research", then it's possible Google searches on the term would end up producing results where on the right-hand side at the top there'd be a box containing the lead section of this article; at a minimum it would put this company at the top of search results (again via Wikipedia). If that's what the IP is hoping for, it's clever -- but also completely inappropriate, we have no reason to contribute to their marketing efforts in this mode. Nomoskedasticity (talk) 08:28, 28 January 2015 (UTC)
 * Unless we would start the disambiguation page with "Scientific Research may refer to SCIRP, a predatory open access publisher" :-) Of course, we could place a hatnote on top of scientific method to the effect that "Scientific Research" is redirecting there, "for the predatory OA publisher, see SCIRP"... --Randykitty (talk) 10:32, 28 January 2015 (UTC)
 * This article is already #2 on a Google search for ""Scientific Research" wiki". The redirect already exists, targeting Scientific method. You probably should WP:AGF regarding the IP's motivations. VQuakr (talk) 02:21, 29 January 2015 (UTC)
 * Nomoskedasticity: I am the IP. My intentions certainly are not to publicize this company.  I went looking for it because I wanted to find out about its quality and nature after having gotten an unsolicited e-mail from it.  I'm just saying that there should be some way of helping readers find this article without having to know that they have to add "Publisher" to "Scientific Research."  We're supposed to be user-friendly. 211.225.33.104 (talk) 10:29, 29 January 2015 (UTC)
 * A disambiguation page at Scientific research was created and contested late last year; I started a RfD to discuss. VQuakr (talk) 02:23, 30 January 2015 (UTC)
 * Nomoskedasticity: In this light, is it a good idea to create a redirect here for individual journals? In this manner, people will see right away that they are dealing with a fraud. On the other hand, in view of what you said, it creates unnecessary publicity? Метамерік (talk) 09:20, 2 October 2017 (UTC)

Questions about the References
It is interesting to note that the main sources of references are Jeffrey Beall's posts (7/13). It may be better to change the title of this article page from "Scientific Research Publishing" to "Jeffrey Beall's comments on Scientific Research Publishing". Or, it may be better to add a paragraph (with related references) about SCIRP's responses to Jeffrey Beall's comments under the section of "Controversies".(P.S. The section of History is too short, only two sentences. Why not add the sentences to the first paragraph and delete this section?) Anheyi (talk) 16:10, 16 May 2016 (UTC)
 * We can only write about what is in reliable sources. SCIRP's statements about themselves are not considered reliable in this sense. —David Eppstein (talk) 17:22, 16 May 2016 (UTC)
 * by that rule, neither should Beall's! Richardjames444 (talk) 19:05, 14 December 2016 (UTC)
 * They are independent of the subject (SCIRP) and by an established expert on the reputability of journals, so they are reliable. —David Eppstein (talk) 20:02, 14 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Yes, Beall is a respected source on this issue. He has no particular axe to grind against SCIRP over other publishers who behave similarly. Martin Rundkvist (talk) 21:29, 15 December 2016 (UTC)

If he is so confident and has no particular intention to blacken the OA journals in his list, why he shuts down his blog right now? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Anheyi (talk • contribs) 05:38, 6 February 2017 (UTC)
 * If you're interested in an unbiased and encyclopedic treatment of this subject, why do you resort to loaded questions and dubious insinuations? —David Eppstein (talk) 08:32, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

Broken link: list of predatory publishers
The link '3' (List of predatory publishers) is no longer available. Are there any better sources? Метамерік (talk) 09:03, 2 October 2017 (UTC)

Individual journal redirects?
I apologize for creating a new section without consulting with the experts here. It has been deleted now. I am a physicist and I have been receiving unsolicited emails with offers to publish in "reputable open access journals" for quite a while. Today I received an email from a pseudoscientist with quite a few papers in a "peer-reviewed" SCIRP journal. Since there is no informaiton on Wikipedia about such journals, I was going to create wiki pages for them, linking to this page, where the situation is described. Because it took me a while to figure out what I was dealing with. Perhaps if the page with the journal name was redirecting here right away, I wouldn't have wasted so much time. Метамерік (talk) 09:11, 2 October 2017 (UTC)


 * So what do we do here?
 * List in this article?
 * List in a separate list article?
 * Categorization of the redirects?
 * Do not list?
 * Also there's the question of the named redirects. I would suggest (as a minimum) keeping those redirects, pointing them here, and having them categorized as a group, linked from this article. I'm less convinced of the need (given the linked category) to have them listed on a page as well. Andy Dingley (talk) 09:22, 2 October 2017 (UTC)

External links modified
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified 6 external links on Scientific Research Publishing. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20141227014143/http://scholarlyoa.com/2014/12/16/the-chinese-publisher-scirp-scientific-research-publishing-a-publishing-empire-built-on-junk-science/ to http://scholarlyoa.com/2014/12/16/the-chinese-publisher-scirp-scientific-research-publishing-a-publishing-empire-built-on-junk-science
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 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20140422234744/http://scholarlyoa.com/2014/01/02/list-of-predatory-publishers-2014/ to http://scholarlyoa.com/2014/01/02/list-of-predatory-publishers-2014/
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Should this be in the lead?
"In 2014 there was a mass resignation of the editorial board of one of the company's journals, Advances in Anthropology, with the outgoing Editor-in-Chief saying of the publisher "For them it was only about making money. We were simply their 'front'." "

It is also mentioned in the controversies section. Kenji1987 (talk) 04:49, 11 May 2020 (UTC)
 * It seems lede-worthy to me. The amount currently said in the introduction is about right for summarizing the amount currently in the article body. XOR&#39;easter (talk) 17:03, 11 May 2020 (UTC)
 * thank you for replying, but to be honest I don't see this kind of information among other publishers (and yes I know this one is a scammy one) Kenji1987 (talk) 08:30, 12 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Mass resignations are always covered when possible. &#32; Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 08:47, 12 May 2020 (UTC)
 * In the lead? I dont see it in for example Scientific reports. Kenji1987 (talk) 08:58, 12 May 2020 (UTC)

Link to deprecation decision?
Greetings, all. Working recently on a Wikipedia article, I cited a text from scirp. I was promptly and bot-automatically warned that scirp is not an acceptable source of text, so I replaced the scirp citation with another one. I then tried to locate the discussion or the decision to deprecate scirp as a source in Wikipedia but could not find something, which could very well be my fault. Are there links to a decision? Thanks in advance. -The Gnome (talk) 09:17, 14 June 2022 (UTC)
 * Reliable sources/Noticeboard/Archive 205 appears to be the most recent real discussion. There appears to be consensus that Scientific Research Publishing is a predatory publisher (see also its article) and that predatory publishers are not reliable sources. —David Eppstein (talk) 16:21, 14 June 2022 (UTC)
 * Thanks, David Eppstein. Most helpful. -The Gnome (talk) 18:22, 14 June 2022 (UTC)


 * It's very clearly and obviously a predatory publisher. Don't cite it. &#32; Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 16:44, 14 June 2022 (UTC)
 * Well, I did not need that admonition. I thought I made it clear that I accepted scirp's a non-reliable source. I only asked for the relevant discussions. -The Gnome (talk) 18:22, 14 June 2022 (UTC)
 * Things are more complicated and this WP article is clearly outdated and should be revised (or corrected).
 * See for example this recent article published in Scirp JAMP by Prof. C. G. Vayenas et al. (Κωνσταντίνος Βαγενάς) :
 * https://doi.org/10.4236/jamp.2022.109187
 * Rotating Lepton Model of Pions and Kaons: Mechanics at fm Distances
 * Google Scholar Profile (Author): https://scholar.google.gr/citations?hl=el&user=hXLdUyUAAAAJ&view_op=list_works&sortby=pubdate
 * And there are thousands of such high quality research articles and authors in Scirp. The share amount of publications, researchers and Institutions involved over the last decade is too big to be simply ignored and naively categorizing Scirp as predatory by some past isolated case studies. Surely it is a low impact factor overall publisher but "predatory" is out of place today. 147.95.130.109 (talk) 10:51, 3 October 2022 (UTC)
 * And there are thousands of such high quality research articles and authors in Scirp. The share amount of publications, researchers and Institutions involved over the last decade is too big to be simply ignored and naively categorizing Scirp as predatory by some past isolated case studies. Surely it is a low impact factor overall publisher but "predatory" is out of place today. 147.95.130.109 (talk) 10:51, 3 October 2022 (UTC)


 * When Cabells Predatory Reports openly calls it a predatory publisher and the Norwegian Scientific ranks it a zero (i.e. predatory) then that cannot be ignored. Many of your arguments would also apply to OMICS,which is equally junk. They are called "predatory publishers" for a reason, because some high quality work does get published by these journals, usually those who are unaware that the publisher is predatory. That's not a good reason to consider them not predatory. Hemiauchenia (talk) 11:18, 3 October 2022 (UTC)
 * I agree with Hemiauchenia. Martin Rundkvist (talk) 18:57, 3 October 2022 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 23 May 2023
There is some disinformation on this wiki page specifically in controversies section.. 198.178.191.2 (talk) 06:49, 23 May 2023 (UTC)
 * Red question icon with gradient background.svg Not done: it's not clear what changes you want to be made. Please mention the specific changes in a "change X to Y" format and provide a reliable source if appropriate. AnnaMankad (talk) 07:15, 23 May 2023 (UTC)