“Meta and other social media companies would be required to share their data with outside researchers under a new bill announced by a bipartisan group of senators on Thursday. …
The bill, the Platform Accountability and Transparency Act, would allow independent researchers to submit proposals to the National Science Foundation. If the requests are approved, social media companies would be required to provide the necessary data subject to certain privacy protections. …”
“At 9 a.m. (PST, GMT-8) on Wednesday, June 10, 2020, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit is scheduled to stream live video of the oral arguments in Federal Trade Commission v. OMICS Group Inc., et al., from its website and YouTube channel. Members of the scholarly publishing community may enjoy watching judges and lawyers argue over the finer points of predatory journals, peer review, the impact factor, journal indexing, and article processing charges. Sessions generally last between 30 minutes and an hour. This blog post provides a preview of some of the arguments that will be presented….”
Abstract: On 25 August 2016, the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) sued OMICS Group Inc., iMedPub LLC, Conference Series LLC, and Srinubabu Gedela, all affiliated with open access mega-publisher OMICS International, for deception in their solicitation of journal articles and advertising of conferences. The ongoing lawsuit seeks to stop OMICS’s deceptive practices and disgorge US $50.5 million in ill-gotten gains. OMICS has in turn claimed over $2.1 billion for harm caused by the lawsuit to its business and employees. This article describes the main arguments, counter-arguments, and court decisions in the 5920 pages of pleadings, exhibits, and orders that have been filed through 14 October 2018. The article then evaluates the case to formulate key take-aways for publishers, editors, academics, and universities. Depending on its ultimate outcome, the case against OMICS may be a turning point in the practices of questionable open access online publishers, making this interim case assessment pertinent to all concerned about the future of academic publishing.
“In the world of scientific research, they are pernicious impostors. So-called predatory journals, online publications with official-sounding names, publish virtually anything, even gibberish, that an academic researcher submits — for a fee.
Critics have long maintained that these journals are eroding scientific credibility and wasting grant money. But academics must publish research to further their careers, and the number of questionable outlets has exploded.
Now the Federal Trade Commission has stepped in, announcing on Wednesday that it has won a $50 million court judgment against Omics International of Hyderabad, India, and its owner, Srinubabu Gedela.
Omics publishes hundreds of journals in such areas as medicine, chemistry and engineering. It also organizes conferences. The F.T.C. claimed that Omics violated the agency’s prohibition on deceptive business practices….”
“It used to be that publishing a scientific journal was a significant undertaking, requiring infrastructure for peer review, printing, and distribution, and the costs were often defrayed by charging authors for the honor of publishing. Now, it’s possible to simply convert submissions to PDFs and throw them online. With those barriers gone, science quickly became plagued by predatory publishers who decided to eliminate peer review as well. Instead, they simply published anything from people who have the money to cover the publication fees.
The profits of these “predatory publishers” come from a mixture of genuine scientists who are unwary, people who want to pad their publication records, and fringe scientists who just want to see their ideas in the literature regardless of their lack of merit. All of them can end up putting misinformation into the scientific record and confusing a public that generally doesn’t even know about the existence of predatory publishers.
Now, the Federal Trade Commission has won a summary judgement that just might cause some predatory publishers to step back from their business model. An India-based predatory publisher has been hit with a $50 million dollar judgement for deceptive business practices, along with permanent injunctions against most of the activities that made it money….”
“The Court finds that a permanent injunction against Defendants is appropriate under the circumstances to enjoin them from engaging in similar misleading and deceptive activities. Here, Defendants did not participate in an isolated, discrete incident of deceptive publishing, but rather sustained and continuous conduct over the course of years. An injunction is therefore necessary to prevent future misconduct and protect the public interest….
Where, as here, consumers suffer broad economic injury resulting from a defendant’s violations of the FTC Act, equity requires monetary relief in the full amount lost by consumers….Accordingly, the Court finds Defendants jointly and severally liable for restitution in the amount of $50,130,811.00….”
“The U.S. Federal Trade Commission has won a judgment against a publisher and conference organizer that has been widely viewed as predatory.
As reported in brief by Courthouse News Service, U.S. District of Nevada Judge Gloria M. Navarro ordered OMICS International to pay the U.S. government $50,130,810. …
Following the suit’s filing in August 2016, The FTC won an initial ruling in September 2017, prohibiting OMICS from engaging in “deceptive practices” but not banning them from publishing or organizing conferences….”