Published on: 16 Jan, 2025
In today's story, we are going to highlight questionable journal indexing practices followed by Scopus which is an indexing database owned by Elsevier. Last year, we presented a mind-blowing item titled “Elsevier Unethically Promotes its Journals via Scopus: The Case of Heliyon”, in this article, we pen a few horrible publishing scams being supported by Scopus.
Many authors are well aware of journals like “International Journal of Religion (IJOR)” [still conducting operations] and “PalArch's Journal of Archaeology of Egypt/ Egyptology (PAJAE)” [link down/seems ran away with authors’ hard earned money], both of the journals started massive spam email campaigns to lure authors for publishing their articles after getting placed in Scopus. Both journals, inter alia, published an enormous number of questionable, out of scope, nesciently reviewed or unreviewed articles after getting recognized by Scopus, as a result, earned hefty amounts from authors (IJOR APC: USD 650; PAJAE APC: USD 700) between 2019-2023 (IJOR Scopus indexing year: 2023; PAJAE Scopus indexing year 2019: We assume year of indexing as mentioned in Initial CiteScore Rank year on Scopus website). When PAJAE was approved by Scopus, its CiteScore was calculated with one (1) citation and five (5) articles published between 2016-2019, whereas IJOR got only 28 citations and 36 articles published between 2020-2023. We know many well-qualified journals published hundreds of finest quality articles with a history of over 5-10 years and got thousands of citations, but rejected by Scopus because they were not part of the game. We know that Scopus delisted both IJOR and PAJAE in 2023 but after they earned a stack of dollars enough for them to survive and conduct future scam operations.
In the present article, we shall include five (5) Scopus backed journals continuing publication of questionable, out of scope, flawed, and possibly unreviewed research. We hope our readers will think twice before submitting their articles to these Scopus indexed journals.
Journal of Ecohumanism (JOE) is published by Creative Publishing House, UK as mentioned on the journal’s website and related Scopus page. However, ERIH PLUS reports that this journal is published by Transnational Press London, UK. We checked the ISSN portal for further clarification and found that it mentions Transnational Press London, UK (tplondon; https://journals.tplondon.com/ecohumanism/index) as the publisher but its URL redirects to the website of Creative Publishing House.
JOE published its inaugural issue in 2022. In 2022, the journal published 2 issues with a total number of 11 articles. Similarly, in 2023, this journal published 2 issues having 14 articles. In 2023, JOE was indexed in Scopus within one and half year of its inception and got Q2 rank in the same year as reflected on Scimago website.
Surprisingly, when the journal was indexed in Scopus it had only 24 published articles in its portfolio with just 9 citations. After getting listed in Scopus, JOE initiated a massive spam email campaign and published 8 issues accumulating 1,360 articles in 2024. In 2025, the journal published 51 articles in Issue no.1 and 11 articles in Issue no. 2, which is still to be populated. Please note that JOE charges an Article Processing Fee (APC) amounting USD 1250.
If we look at the quality of published articles, we shall only find a bunch of lowest quality, possibly unreviewed, unedited, unstructured, and out of scope articles.
Edelweiss Applied Science and Technology (EAST) is published by Learning Gate which claims to be a US based publisher, however, on the “Contact" page of the journal we only find the address of a shipping company named “Outside the Box Shipping.”
EAST published 13 articles in 2019, 15 articles in 2020, 13 articles in 2021, 5 articles in 2022, and 12 articles in 2023. After getting indexed in Scopus, the journal surprisingly published 426 articles. In 2025, the journal published 61 articles in its
first issue till today; the issue is still in progress. Surprisingly, when the journal was indexed in Scopus in 2020, only 19 articles were published accumulating 1 citation only.
EAST has been awarded a Q4 rank by Scopus, according to Scimago. The journal scope includes a wide array of subjects e.g., Applied Social and Management Sciences, Engineering and Technical Sciences, Natural Sciences, Formal Sciences, Physical Sciences, Medical Sciences, and Healthcare to attract more easy money for its stakeholders. This journal charges an APC of USD 830 per published article. Many authors are happy to pay such a hefty price to publish their articles because these lower quality articles would not have been accepted by journals applying standard quality control practices.
Environment and Social Psychology (ESP) is a publication of Arts and Science Press, Singapore. From 2016 till 2018, this journal published 17 articles, 6 articles in 2019, 9 articles in 2020, 15 articles in 2021, and 15 articles in 2022 with the publishing frequency of 2 issues per year (the journal was published by Whioce Publishing). In 2023, Asia Pacific Academy of Science took control of the journal as a new publisher and published 58 articles in 3 issues. In 2024, the publishing frequency was hiked up and the publisher published 185 articles in 6 issues. After publishing Volume no. 9, Issue no. 6, the publisher was again changed to the current one and published 176 articles in 6 issues.
Our smart readers may have observed what happened in 2023 which drastically changed the publishing frequency and number of articles. Yes, you are right! The journal was indexed in Scopus. ESP charges USD 1700 for publishing articles without applying any standard quality control, article structuring, or even copyediting.
It is important to mention that when CiteScore rank was calculated by Scopus in 2023, it only had 3 citations stemming from 38 articles published from 2019 to 2022.
Currently, the rank allocated to ESP is Q4 as reported by Scimago.
International Journal of Innovative Research and Scientific Studies (IJIRSS) is published by Innovative Research Publishing, Ajman, United Arab Emirates.
This journal started operations in 2018 and published 9 articles. In 2019, the journal published 12 articles, 24 articles in 2020, and 36 articles in 2021. IJIRSS was indexed in Scopus sometime in 2021. At that time the journal got 61 citations and 81 published
articles from 2018 till 2021. After getting indexed in Scopus, the journal published 41 articles in 2022, 100 articles in 2023, 150 articles in 2024, and 28 articles in the first issue (in progress) of 2025.
This Scopus Q3 journal brazenly covers wide areas like Social Sciences, Engineering, Physical Sciences, Biological Science and Engineering, Environmental and Earth Sciences, and Medical Sciences and Healthcare to lure a wide cross section of academia, hence pocketing sizable sum of easy money. This journal charges USD 1250 to authors per accepted paper. Authors publishing in this journal may feel happy to find an easy to publish outlet which offers publications of articles with relaxed or no quality control, poor editing, informal paper composition, and easy publication.
The last scholarly publication aberration we shall present today is the Journal of Management World (JoMW). It smells that Scoups was waiting to find it to get it indexed. Strangely, JoMW doesn’t display the name of the publisher and the physical location of the editorial office except a UK based WhatsApp number on its Contact page. In contrast, the ISSN Register confirms JoMW as a US based publication. The journal clearly deceives the authors about its original physical location.
If you want to observe the affectionate relationship between JoMW and Scopus, just look at the name of the publisher on the journal’s Scopus page. Scopus doesn’t even require the publisher’s name as it mentions “Editorial Team of JoMW” is the publisher of this journal. The journal was incepted in 2021 and accepted for Scopus indexing possibly in 2023 with all the horrible pieces of stuff it calls “research articles”. JoMW charges USD 430 for each processed article.
Let’s write about some commonalities among all above sampled journals.
1. All 5 journals are not recognized by any mainstream indexing/abstracting/ranking entity except Scopus.
2. All these journals are running massive spam email campaigns to lure more and more authors so that a sizable amount of money can be pocketed.
3. All these journals are publishing awful papers which should not be called research papers.
4. These journals somehow deceive authors by providing fake/false information.
5. None of the journals apply standard quality control practices.
6. Offer fast and easy publication to authors in exchange for APC.
7. Don’t provide copyediting services to augment the quality of manuscripts.
We received many complaints from authors about the blatant shots of emails from the publishers of these journals. We understand that such synergy and affection with Scopus cannot sustain for long time, ergo, these publishers want to earn handsome money before they will be delisted from Scopus just like International Journal of Religion (IJOR) and PalArch's Journal of Archaeology of Egypt/ Egyptology (PAJAE).
We know about many well-qualified journals publishing finest quality research over the years but Scopus always rejects them giving lame excuses because those journals are not the part of any settlement. The above analyses picture cues of covert settlement between Scopus and such shady journals because Scopus provides indexing services to many suspicious publication activities conducted by journals publishing unacceptably poor-quality papers and following deceptive tactics to present them as legitimate operations.
Don’t hesitate to share your thoughts and experiences with such journals.
Update: After publication of our criticism, we came to know that Journal of Ecohumanism (JOE) and Journal of Management World (JoMW) have been delisted from Scopus. We hope rest of the journals analyzed in this article will also be delisted soon.
"Scholarly Criticism" is launched to serve as a watchdog on Business Research published in so-called Clarivate/Scopus indexed high quality Business Journals. It has been observed that, currently, this domain is empty and no one is serving to keep authors and publishers of journals on the right track who are conducting and publishing erroneous Business Research. To fill this gap, our organization serves as a key stakeholder of Business Research Publishing activities.
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Disclaimer: The content published on this website is for educational and informational purposes only. We are not against authors or journals but we only strive to highlight unethical and unscientific research reporting and publishing practices. We hope our efforts will significantly contribute to improving the quality control applied by Business Journals.
