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 
darin olson said
Received similar for CMIL International Journal of Diabetes and Clinical Research, and could only find red flags. This note helped confirm. Thanks. (even though I sure do need another editoiral board to help my promotion packet…)
LT said
My partner got roped into one of ClinicalMed. Journals scams and wrote and article that he wanted published. He asked if it would cost anything even before the submission process and no one ever responded to his email, so he assumed it was okay to send his article to them. He eventually got an article acceptance email and an invoice for $1.5k for publishing. He’s of course not paying for that and doesn’t want his article published, and now realizes that it was a predatory journal that wasted a lot of his time. On their author guideline page, there’s nothing about payments to make the articles open access. He’s looking to find outlets where he can file complains for deception but is there anything else he can or should be doing? He’s more worried at this point that they have his address and email address and it’s been such a bummer.
Thank you.
Jim Till said
If he gets emails from them, I suggest that the sender be added to his blacklist.