OMICS is widely regarded as a
predatory publisher. It has been subject to widespread criticism, notably by
Jeffrey Beall, who included OMICS in his list of "potential, possible, or probable predatory" publishers. Among the criticism leveled at OMICS are that its journals are not actually peer-reviewed as advertised, often contain mistakes, and that its fees are excessive. It has also been suggested that OMICS provides fake lists of scientists as journal editors to create an impression of scientific legitimacy, even though they are not involved in any review or editing process. In 2013, an OMICS journal accepted a bogus and obviously flawed publication submitted as part of a
sting operation by
Science. Critics assert that the main purpose of the publisher is commercial rather than academic. A
Bloomberg News investigation in 2017 noted a tendency of pharmaceutical companies to publish in these journals, which might have stemmed from a self-interest in skipping rigorous review procedures. including under the ConferenceSeries banner. Beall criticised the financial arrangements for OMICS conferences and urged all scholars to refrain from any dealing with these conferences. and submitted it under the name Iris Pear (a reference to
Siri and
Apple). Despite being obvious nonsense, the work was accepted within three hours of submission and a conference registration fee of $1,099 requested. In yet another case, OMICS accepted a paper plagiarized from
Aristotle and "garbled to remove any clear meaning" to an ethics journal, and later accepted the same paper to a conference on
geriatrics and nursing. It has been also found that many academic or government scientists are advertised as speakers or organizers for OMICS conferences, without their agreement. and seeking an unspecified monetary reimbursement for academics duped by them. they alleged OMICS' peer-review processes to be a "sham" and their claiming of renowned academics in their editorial board and/or as speakers at its conferences without their consent to be intentionally deceptive. The FTC won a
summary judgment (ECF No. 86) on 29 March 2019, with the court finding that OMICS made false claims about manuscripts being peer-reviewed, used the name of prominent researchers as editors of journals without their consent or knowledge, used misleading impact factors for journals which had not been calculated by
Clarivate Analytics, made false claims about being indexed by PubMed, was not transparent about the publication fees charged per manuscript until after it had accepted an article for publication, and often did not allow researchers to withdraw their articles after submission. OMICS was ordered to pay a fine of $50,130,810 as well as change some of its publishing methods. OMICS plans to challenge the ruling. On September 11, 2020, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit upheld the grant of summary judgment and the $50.1 million award.
Legal threat to Jeffrey Beall In 2013, OMICS Publishing Group sent a letter to then
University of Colorado librarian
Jeffrey Beall stating that they intended to sue him and were seeking $1 billion in damages. In their six-page letter, OMICS stated that Beall's blog is "ridiculous, baseless, impertinent", and "smacks of literal unprofessionalism and arrogance". OMICS' law firm said it was pursuing damages under India's
Information Technology Act, 2000, referring to section 66A, which makes it illegal to use a computer to publish "any information that is grossly offensive or has menacing character" or to publish false information. It stated that three years in prison was a possible penalty, although a U.S. lawyer said that the threats seemed to be a "publicity stunt" that were meant to "intimidate". In 2015, Section 66A was struck down by the
Supreme Court of India in
an unrelated case.
Acquisition of Canadian publishers In late September 2016, OMICS acquired two Canadian publishers—
Andrew John Publishing and
Pulsus Group—and sixteen journals published by them. The acquisition led to a decline in publishing standards for these journals, caused concern that the names of the publishers were being hijacked to lend credence to bogus science, and led to six of the sixteen journals stating their intention to terminate their publishing contracts with OMICS.
Fake articles In 2023, Mike Downes stated that to the list of fraudulent practices undertaken by predatory publishers "must be added the invention or compilation of articles ostensibly written by academic scholars but in fact crafted by the publishing house in question", noting that "the majority are created under a fake name by compiling a set of plagiarized passages extracted from the specialized literature or cannibalized from within the journal's own archive". Downes's research showed that all of OMICS's subsidiaries and imprints have created and published such articles, arguing that this was evidence that "the directive to carry out this fraudulent scheme appears to have been a chosen policy coming from the top management" of OMICS. == References ==