The sole purpose of university education is the “creation” (discovery and innovation) and the “dissemination” of knowledge. The “Creation” of knowledge comes from research activities, while “dissemination” is the transfer of knowledge or information that is readily available in books, magazines, journals, etc.
Unfortunately, most universities in third-world countries are engaged only in the dissemination of knowledge. For instance, in the knowledge transfer/dissemination system, one can hardly find any fundamental differences between an intermediate-level college and a university, particularly in Bangladesh. Albeit, a small group of lecturers and post-graduate students from different universities in Bangladesh are trying to involve them in the ‘research and publication’ business. Unfortunately, several factors such as lack of proper guidance from senior faculty members, poor management/guidance by the University Grant Commission, old or outdated government policy on university education, etc. created an environment to publish the research findings in predatory or fake journals/publishers. By publishing an article in a predatory or fake journal, a researcher can’t achieve anything from the international community except the addition of ‘garbage’ or ‘extra baggage’ to his/her CV.
Any journal that is not indexed by ‘Web of Science (Clarivate Analytics)’ or ‘Scopus (Elsevier)’ is considered a predatory or fake journal. The ‘Web of Science” indexing platform consists of ‘Science Citation Index (SCI)’ and ‘Science Citation Index Expanded (SCIE)’ for science and engineering disciplines journals, ‘Social Science Citation Index (SSCI)’ for social science disciplines journals, and ‘Arts & Humanities Citation Index (AHCI)’ for arts & humanities disciplines journals. Note that, SCI and SCIE contain over 9622 journals across science and engineering disciplines, SSCI contains over 3575 journals across social science disciplines, and AHCI contains over 1,800 journals across arts & humanities disciplines.
In a nutshell, any journal indexed by ‘SCI, SCIE, SSCI, and AHCI’ is considered as ‘Institute of Scientific Information (ISI)’ indexed/cited journal. Note that, All ISI-cited journals are indexed by Scopus but not all Scopus-cited journals are indexed by ISI. However, all ISI-cited journals usually have a non-zero ‘impact factor’ and are accepted worldwide. Authors having publications in ISI-cited journals are eligible to receive offers for academic jobs, promotions, scientific recognition, awards, etc. from universities and other platforms internationally. The total number of ISI/Scopus cited papers published by a university in a single year is also used as a barometer for determining the global ranking of that particular University. Remember, a journal indexed in ‘The Emerging Source Citation Index (ESCI)’ under ‘Web of Science’ is also considered a sub-standard journal, and all journals under the ESCI category do not have any impact factor, hence, are not accepted or recognized internationally.
One can easily check the indexing status of any journal by going to the homepage of that particular journal. You can see many indexing platforms such as CrossRef, CrossMark, DOI, SAO/NASA.ADS, INSPEC, Google Scholar, Georgetown University (USA), WorldCat libraries, WZB Electronic Journals, etc. is written on the journal home page, and such a journal is identified as a predatory or fake journal. Furthermore, many predatory journals show impact factors on the journal home page. Such an impact factor is ‘bogus’ or ‘false’. Remember, the management of predatory journals normally targets individuals from 3rd world countries. They frequently send emails to the individuals for submitting manuscripts and assure the publication of a paper within a relatively short period, with or without a publication fee. Note that, an ISI journal authority never sends any email to individuals for submission of a manuscript (except if you are an established and leading scientist at the international level!). A list of potential predatory (mostly open‑access) publishers is available at https://beallslist.net/.
In the case of book publication, several publishers such as Nova, Lambert, InTech Open, etc. are considered predatory or fake publishers. Therefore, please do not waste your time by sending your works or paying money to them for publication. A list of predatory publishers is available at https://predatoryjournals.com/publishers/#I. Publishing your work on such a platform adds ‘garbage’ or ‘extra baggage’ to your CV.
Regarding conferences, nowadays many ‘money-making’ conferences are frequently held here and there. Such conference organizers are relatively very cunning. They normally arrange such conferences in big cities, tourist places, hotels, etc. Their main purpose is to collect a good amount of money in the name of the registration fee. Generally, conferences organized by WASET, Conference Series, OMICS, etc. are identified as the money-making categories. A list of predatory conferences/conference organizers is available at https://libguides.caltech.edu/c.php?g=512665&p=3503029. Participation in such conferences will not give any scientific knowledge except for traveling to some places, and again participation record in such conferences, adds ‘garbage’ or ‘extra baggage’ to a CV.
Only conferences organized jointly by well-known scientific societies/leading universities/international organizations, etc. are good conferences, and one may achieve better knowledge, and find opportunities for collaborative research, job offers, etc. by participating in such conferences.
