Seemingly defunct, but still spamming -- Medtext Publications

Google Scholar lists hundreds of articles for journals from Medtext Publication LLC (medtextpublications.com), but the domain is not functioning, making them inaccessible. GoDaddy is maintaining a page at this URL with an ad for its domain broker service, and IPaddress.com reports:

Medtextpublications.com was registered 1115 days ago on Thursday, January 11, 2018.
This domain has expired 19 days ago on Monday, January 11, 2021.
The WHOIS entry was last updated 446 days ago on Monday, November 11, 2019.

UPDATED 2/6/21: The domain name was registered again on January 31, 2021. The website is up, running, and revealing. It includes 16 "American Journals of ..." that are "aimed to publish" "with honorary editorial board members." There is even a "Journal of Open Gastroenterology" comprised, no doubt, of cutting edge articles. 

MedText even has trouble keeping the names of its journals straight. The "Annals of Clinical Cases," which spammed me, is not on its list, but the "Annals of Clinical Studies" is there. This publisher's "offshore address" is in "Hitech City, Hyderabad." Perhaps that is the place to go if you want what the About Us page calls "the best services ... for qualitative .. review process."

Email

Annals of Clincal Cases

• From: Annals of Clinical Cases [editor@mails.medtextoajp.info]
  Sent: Tuesday, January 26, 2021 6:54 AM
  Subject: Followup: Dear Dr. David H Kaye - Awaiting for your Valuable Response - Annals of Clinical Cases (ISSN: 2692-7993)
  Dear Dr. David H Kaye, [← I'm not a doctor]
  Hearty greetings to you,
  I hope you would be fine and trust this e-mail finds you well.
  This is Vanessa Williams, Editorial Manager of “Annals of Clinical Cases (ISSN: 2692-7993)” we have some ongoing and upcoming issues, which will be launched shortly.
  If you're interested to write and submit a manuscript, kindly share a Research/Review/Case Report/Case Series/Case Blog/Short Communication (2-4 pages)/Clinical Images (150 words)/Letter to the Editor/Opinion on any topic related to your research interest which falls in the journal scope, so that we can process and publish it for the Volume 02 & Issue 01.
  Timeline for submission is End of February, 2021 and can be extendable if needed.
  Kindly attach your manuscript directly to this email or submit through the following Submission E-mail: submissions@medtextpublications.com
  We would be grateful, if you consider the proposal and submit your manuscript to the issue and make it successful.
  We are also accepting articles from your colleagues, friends and students.
  Looking forward to hearing from you soon.
  Best Regards,
  Vanessa Williams
  Medtext Publications LLC
  6355 N Clairmont Avenue Chicago 60659 United States
• From: Annals of Clinical Cases [editor@medtextonlinejoap.info]
  Sent: Friday, February 5, 2021 3:03 AM
  Subject: Followup: Dear Dr. David H Kaye - We Need your Support for Upcoming Issue - Annals of Clinical Cases (ISSN: 2692-7993)
  Dear Dr. David H Kaye,
  Warm Wishes from Vanessa Williams.
  I hope you are having a busy week..!
  Annals of Clinical Cases (ISSN: 2692-7993) is happy to announce the upcoming issue release in the month of March, 2021. We are thankful and ask for your continued support for the Volume 2 release.
  We kindly invite you for manuscript submission for the upcoming volume and issues. We would be grateful, if you consider the proposal and submit your manuscript to the issue and make it successful.
  Submission Formats: All manuscript formats/types will be accepted, Including Clinical Images/Videos, Short Communications, etc.
  Kindly attach your manuscript directly to this email or submit through the following Submission E-mail: submissions@medtextpublications.com
  I genuinely appreciate your attention to this matter and look forward to your response.
  Best Regards,
  Vanessa Williams
  Medtext Publications
  6355 N Clairmont Avenue Chicago 60659 United States
• From: Annals of Clinical Cases [editor@medtextjoap.org]
  Sent: Saturday, February 27, 2021 4:42 AM
  Subject: Followup: Dear Dr. David H Kaye - Request to submit a manuscript for Trending Issue - Annals of Clinical Cases (ISSN: 2692-7993)
  Dear Dr. David H Kaye,
  [Another "Hearty greetings to you" form letter from "Vanessa Williams" with only the issue number and due date changed.]
• From: Annals of Clinical Cases [editor@onlinemedtextjoap.info]
  Sent: Saturday, May 1, 2021 2:22 AM
  Subject: Followup: Dear Dr. David H Kaye - Pioneer Clinical Image Publishing through: Annals of Clinical Cases (ISSN: 2692-7993)
  Dear Dr. David H Kaye,
  Greetings from Vanessa..!
  Hope you are doing well.
  Annals of Clinical Cases(ISSN: 2692-7993) is planning to release the upcoming issue in the Middle of June, 2021.
  We will accept all full length and short length manuscripts for this issue and this journal are indexed in the following sites like Google Scholar, CrossRef, Index Copernicus, Semantic Scholar, Publons, Scribd, ISI Indexing, CiteFactor, DRJI, etc.
  We are also accepting articles from your colleagues, friends and students.
  Kindly let me know your tentative timeline for manuscript submission.
  All the best for your ongoing research work.
  Awaiting for your positive response.
  Regards,
  Vanessa Williams
  Medtext Publications
  6355 N Clairmont Avenue Chicago 60659 United States

Hilaris Publisher offers suggestions for improvisations

Would you trust the editing of your paper to an online publisher whose website speaks of an "editorial committee comprising reputed authors and academicians [who] offer their suggestions for improvisations, before getting them published finally"? If so, Hilaris SRL is the place to go. Its webpage banners proclaim that it is "Bringing Forth the Latest Scientific, Engineering and Medical Advancements to Limelight" and "Integrating Creativity and Knowledge for Enlightening Young Aspirants."

It is not surprising, then, that Hilaris made it onto Beall's list of predatory publishers and conference organizers. A search of the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) whitelist returned only one Hilaris Journal and identified the publisher as based in Bulgaria. Hilaris's Contact Us" webpage has a Brussels "registered address." The domain names hilarispublisher.com, e-hilaris.com, and hilarisconferences.com are registered by a proxy rather than the actual owners.

A 2015 discussion of Hilaris on Research Gate produced the following observations:

• We submitted an article to a journal from the Hilaris group 3 months ago. They did not acknowledge receiving the manuscript and now they accepted it without any peer review and are charging a huge APC. ... --Mukulika Bose,University of North Carolina at Charlotte
• If you Google the journal's name you see OMICS links (if you click on them you are redirected to Hilaris). Looks like an attempt to cover up that OMICS is behind it, a notorious predatory publisher. Contact info is linked to eScience, iMed.Pub both mentioned in the Beall’s list.--Rob Keller, Charlemagne College, Nijmegen, The Netherlands
• We submitted an article in October, last year. After acceptance, we suspect the journal and decide to withdraw the submission, however they charged us almost 1000 euros with such a "withdrawal charge". We blocked them in the email. We also found out that one of the journal's directors has been dead for 2 years, he was a professor at an university in São Paulo state, Brazil.

A search of the ISSN portal for registration information on the The Journal of Forensic Research, ISSN: 2157-7145, confirms the link to the OMICS group (www.omicsonline.org/jfrhome.php; see also https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q27724675), widely known for its deceptive practices. The ISSN record claims the United States as the home of the Bulgarian-Belgian-Indian journal. Indeed, this blog has an entry devoted to this journal, and the Forensic Science, Statistics, and the Law blog notes that OMICS was the publisher when the journal was specifically included in an injunction secured by the FTC to stop its deceptive practices.

The editors-in-chief are supposed to be

• Dr. Jianye Ge, University of North Texas Health Science Center, Institute of Applied Genetics, USA
• Dr. Jian Tie, Assistant Professor, Department of Legal Medicine, Nihon University School of Medicine, Japan
• Dr. Sheila M Willis, Director, Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform, Forensic Science Laboratory, Ireland.

Actually, the designations for editors are inconsistent. One webpage lists Dr. Willis as an editor-in-chief, but another does not. Both have been said to be fraudulent. \1/ The latter page lists Dr. Ge twice. (That is ironic, since he has told me that he repeatedly sought to have his name removed.) The editorial board is said to include "Peter Gill, Professor of Forensic Genetics, University of Oslo, Norwegian Institute of Public Health, Norway."

The lead article in the most recent issue (11:6, 2020) bears the carefully edited title "A Path of Sympathetic to the Forensic Science from the Sight of Forensic Anthropology." Thankfully, the "in Press" list of articles is blank. \2/ 

NOTES

1. On November 23, 2021, an anonymous comment to this posting observed that "Sheila Willis is a friend and colleague of mine. She has been trying to have her name removed from the journal but has been unsuccessful so far. She is not affiliated with this journal in any way. In addition, the photo and bio provided with Sheila's name are not even hers."
2. In the archives, one can find the (well written) work of researchers and administrators from the U.S. Department of Justice and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Gregory J. Dutton, Gerald M. LaPorte, Iris R. Wagstaff, and H.R. Spivak, Cultivating the Next Generation of Forensic Scientists Through Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM), J. Forensic Res. 2017, 8:4.

Academia.edu promotes the work of flaky publishers

Academia Inc. (better known as Academic.edu) reached out to have me download an article from the flaky American Journal of Engineering (AJER). Other than the publisher's name, Academia provided no information whatever about the article -- no title, no date, no author's name, no abstract -- nada. The email claimed to reflect my "reading history" on Academia -- which is virtually non-existent.

But there were two links, one to download the pdf of the unidentified article and another to view it. The view link was nothing more than a device to get me to buy a summary of the article on whatever it is. Evidently, the only way to find out what matched my alleged reading history was to download the pdf.

So I did. The title of the 2013 article is "The Use of Alternate Ligno-cellulosic Raw Materials Banana (Musa sapientum) Ankara(Calotropis procera ) [sic] and Pineapple (Ananas comosus ) [sic] in Handmade Paper & their Blending with Waste Paper." Now, I read a lot of things -- but not on the Academia site, and I can't imagine how this one is related to my work (or leisure).

Time to unsubscribe to Academia. Well, that's not so easy. Navigating there told me that "Your email address ... is currently opted-out of all Academia.edu email, because of your action or because emails we tried to send received an error code."

Academia.edu has been criticized for its misleading domain name and its efforts to collect fees from authors to promote their research. Pitchbook describes it as a for-profit company of 19 investors last receiving 19 million dollars in late-stage venture capital. The University of Oklahoma library explains the "disadvantages and downsides" for faculty considering uploading their work to Academia and its competitor, ResearchGate.

UPDATE 1/17/21: In reply to a request for help, Academia's support staff reported that they manually removed my account there.