Tuesday, April 23, 2019

"Predatory" London-based medical journal: Publication dates of our articles & authors' names are "confidential"

source

On April 12, I blogged "Fully Published" or "In Press"? My search for an elusive UK medical journal leads to a recent $50m court judgement against a "predatory publisher," chronicling my attempt to verify information about a research study published by the London-based International Journal of Clinical Skills (IJOCS). 

Among other surprises, that odyssey led to my discovery that IJOCS is owned by Omics International, a "predatory" publisher that recently was fined $50m by a federal judge in Nevada.

The undated study briefly described ten cases in which an anti-choking plunger device called the LifeVac had  saved the lives of choking victims in Wales, the US, the UK, Spain, and Greece.


I sent some related questions about the LifeVac study and IJOCS's editorial policy to Srinubabu Gedela, Omics International's CEO & Managing Director.

This morning I received this e-mail which I'm publishing as-is with very minor editing for clarity. 


Date: Tue, 23 Apr 2019 18:16:54 +0530
Subject: Re: blogger inquiry
From: clinicalskills@journalpublications.org
To: peter.heimlich@gmail.com
 

Dear Peter,

This is to inform you that the "International Journal of Clinical Skills" is an Hybrid Open access journal, and moreover we are not supposed to disclose the journal information to other than authors.

Here we appended the best possible answers for your queries:

1) My understanding is that the IJOCS will not provide the publication date of articles without the approval of authors of the articles. Is my understanding correct? If not, what is the publishing date of Volume 12, Issue 2 of the IJOCS?

Re: Our journal will not disclose the publishing dates on any of the published articles as like the other journals of our publisher (for your reference, you can crosscheck with the Diabetes Management)

For your reference we are disclosing the published date: Nov 13, 2018

As we will release the issues once we have the enough articles to publish with in the issue.

3) What are the full names of the four New York City-area authors of this article published in Volume 12, Issue 2 of the IJOCS?


 
Re: We can not disclose teh full names of the authors as it is confidential concern and against the norms of the journal.

If you have any concerns regarding the article, let us know and kindly do not elaborate it.

Aviron R
Journal Coordinator
International Journal of Clinical Skills


Although Mr. R cannot disclose the names of the New York City-area authors, a July 10, 2018 LifeVac press release fills in one of the four blanks:
A peer review of LifeVac was recently accepted to the International Journal of Clinical Skills. Dalia Moradi Saperstein authored the contribution, titled "Successful Use of a Novel device called the LifeVac to Resuscitate a Choking Victim–Worldwide Results."