Science Publishing Group

SPG uses a gold open-access model of publishing which charges the authors. The company claims that articles are peer reviewed by scientific experts before publication. In October 2022, most to all of its journals did not have a scientific editor-in-chief.

The company has been criticized for predatory open-access publishing. In an experiment, university business professor Fiona McQuarrie submitted an article to International Journal of Astrophysics and Space Science from Science Publishing Group, using pseudonyms "Maggie Simpson" and "Edna Krabappel" (characters from the cartoon series The Simpsons). Although the article had been generated by the SCIgen computer program and was nonsense, it was accepted for publication. Librarian Jeffrey Beall, creator of a list of predatory open-access publishers, cites a nonsensical article in American Journal of Applied Mathematics, containing an alleged proof of Buddhist karma. Science Publishing Group has also been cited more directly as a predatory journal and a scam, using more than 200 pseudo-publications like American Journal of Applied Mathematics or International Journal of Transportation Engineering and Technology. The publisher uses techniques related to scams like aggressive emailing (spamming campaigns) with replaced characters (α for a, for example) or invitations to publish in exchange for a payment in order to fool unsuspecting scholars.