I’ve received an unsolicited (spam) email informing me that a new open access journal, International Journal of Stem cell Research & Therapy, has been launched. The publisher is ClinMed International Library (CMIL). I was invited to join the editorial board of the new journal, and to submit an editorial. I’ve refused the invitation.
One should undertake due diligence before joining an editorial board (or submitting an article) to a journal of this sort. Currently, CMIL publishes 16 journals. At present, the archives of all of these journals are empty. It’s stated in the Open Access section that the journal uses article processing charges (APCs) to cover its costs, but I could find no information about the magnitude of these APCs. I looked for this information in the FAQs section, but it’s empty at present.
In the Guidelines section, it’s stated that: All the articles are distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided that the published work is properly cited. This seems to refer to a CC BY license, but this isn’t stated.
Finally, I checked Beall`s List of questionable, scholarly open-access publishers. Yes, CMIL was on the list. The criteria for inclusion of publishers onto Beall`s List are available here.
Be openly accessible or be obscure 