Bentham Science Publishers

Bentham Science Publishers
Founded1994
DistributionGlobal
Publication typesScientific journals, e-books
No. of employees300 - 500
Official websitebenthamscience.com

Bentham Science Publishers is a company that publishes scientific, technical, and medical journals and e-books. It publishes over 120 subscription-based academic journals[1] and around 40 open access journals.[2]

As of 2023, 66 Bentham Science journals have received JCR impact factors, and they are a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics.[3] Bentham Open, its open access division, has received criticism for questionable peer-review practices as well as invitation spam; it was listed as a "potential, possible, or probable predatory scholarly open access publisher" in Jeffrey Beall's list of predatory publishers,[4] before the list went defunct.

History

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Bentham was incorporated in 1994 by Atta-ur-Rahman and his friend Matthew Honan as a private business entity at the Sharjah Airport International Free Trade Zone in the United Arab Emirates.[5] An investigative profile from Sujag notes the publisher to have operated out of Pakistan — for the first six years, from the premises of International Center for Chemical and Biological Sciences and then, from private residential blocks at Karachi — in reality, under the banner of a tax-exempt proxy firm, owned by Rahman's sons.[5]

As of 2022, the publisher publishes more than 120 subscription-based journals, indexed in Scopus, Chemical Abstracts, MEDLINE, EMBASE, etc.[6] Bentham Open Access published more than 150 peer-reviewed, free-to-view online journals under Bentham Open.

Criticism of Bentham Open

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Bentham Open journals claim to employ peer review;[7] however, a fake paper that was generated using SCIgen in 2009 was accepted for publication, though it was never officially published and the publisher has since contended that the acceptance was a play-along to catch the author.[8][a] The author, a graduate student at Cornell University, was motivated into the submission after being bombarded with unsolicited invitations to publish in Bentham's journals and offers to serve in their editorial boards for topics beyond his expertise.[10] In consequence, some editors quit the collaboration with Bentham.[9][11] In 2013, the now-discontinued The Open Bioactive Compounds Journal again accepted a blatantly bogus paper submitted as part of the Who's Afraid of Peer Review? sting.[12]

Bentham Open has been accused of spamming scientists to become members of the editorial boards of its journals since 2008.[13] In a 2017 study of invitation spam by publishers, Bentham Open was noted to be a habitual offender.[14]

In 2009, the Bentham Open Science journal The Open Chemical Physics Journal published a study contending dust from the World Trade Center attacks contained "active nanothermite",[15] a well known 9/11 conspiracy theory.[16] The journal's editor-in-chief Marie-Paule Pileni claimed the article was published without her authorization, and resigned.[17] In a July 2009 review of Bentham Open for The Charleston Advisor, Jeffrey Beall accused Bentham Open of exploiting the Open Access model to make quick money, and rejected that they employed any meaningful peer-review.[18] Beall had since added Bentham Open to his list of "Potential, possible, or probable predatory scholarly open-access publishers".[4]

Notes

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  1. ^ Also, another similar paper submitted to the Open Software Engineering Journal in 2009 as part of the same operation was rejected by the publisher after peer review.[9][10][11]

References

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  1. ^ "Bentham stays small for high impact". ACCESS – Asia's Newspaper on Electronic Information Product & Service (50). September 2004. Retrieved 2017-10-12.
  2. ^ "Bentham Science - International Publisher of Journals and Books". Retrieved 2010-12-26.
  3. ^ "Bentham Science Publishers". COPE: Committee on Publication Ethics. Retrieved 2021-09-29.
  4. ^ a b Beall, Jeffrey. "List of publishers". Scholarly Open Access. Archived from the original on 2016-12-22. Retrieved 2014-12-28.
  5. ^ a b Nadeem, Faryal Ahmad (2022-04-23). "A journal full of lies and deception: The shaky foundations of Bentham Science's phenomenal success". Sujag - سجاگ.
  6. ^ "Bentham Science Publishers SCOPUS Index". SCOPUS. Retrieved 7 January 2022.
  7. ^ "Bentham Open Home Page". Bentham Science Publishers Ltd. Archived from the original on 2010-07-27. Retrieved 2010-07-29.
  8. ^ "Science Publisher Suggests It Played Along With Hoax". 18 June 2009.
  9. ^ a b "Chefredaktør skrider efter kontroversiel artikel om 9/11". Videnskab.dk (in Danish). Archived from the original on 2009-12-01. Retrieved 2010-07-29.
  10. ^ a b "CRAP paper accepted by journal – opinion – 11 June 2009". New Scientist. Retrieved 2010-07-29.
  11. ^ a b "Editors quit after fake paper flap". The Scientist. Retrieved 2010-07-29./
  12. ^ Bohannon, John (1 October 2016). "Data and Documents". Science. 342 (6154): 60–65. doi:10.1126/science.2013.342.6154.342_60. PMID 24092725 – via www.sciencemag.org.
  13. ^ Some background on Bentham Open, but just some Peter Suber, Open Access News, April 24, 2008
  14. ^ Clemons, Mark; Silva, Miguel de Costa e; Joy, Anil Abraham; Cobey, Kelly D.; Mazzarello, Sasha; Stober, Carol; Hutton, Brian (2017-02-01). "Predatory Invitations from Journals: More Than Just a Nuisance?". The Oncologist. 22 (2): 236–240. doi:10.1634/theoncologist.2016-0371. ISSN 1083-7159. PMC 5330713. PMID 28188258.
  15. ^ "Active Thermitic Material Discovered in Dust from the 9/11 World Trade Center Catastrophe". Open Chemical Physics Journal. Archived from the original on 2012-07-10. Retrieved 2012-07-23.
  16. ^ Dwyer, Jim (September 2, 2006). "2 U.S. Reports Seek to Counter Conspiracy Theories About 9/11". The New York Times. Archived from the original on May 12, 2011. Retrieved April 30, 2009.
  17. ^ "Chefredaktør skrider efter kontroversiel artikel om 9/11". Vindeskab.dk. 28 April 2009. Retrieved 2012-07-23.
  18. ^ Beall, Jeffrey (July 2009). "Bentham Open" (PDF). The Charleston Advisor. 11 (1): 29–32.
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