African Journal of Biological Sciences: A predatory journal in Scopus

 Hello Team RetractionWatch,

I would like to report a case of a journal named "African Journal of Biological Sciences". 

The journal is index in Scopus at https://www.scopus.com/sourceid/21101106407

Scopus does not mention a homepage for the journal nor given a link to the journal. Scopus has calculated CiteScore 2023 as 0.8. All the articles of the journal are indexed in Scopus.

It is interesting to note that all the text on the homepage "About the Journal" and "Journal Policies" are images.

The image on the homepage shows the cover of a print version of the first issue of the journal bearing ISSN XXXX-XXXX.

Editors with no relation to the field

On the page "About the Journal" (https://www.afjbs.com/about-the-journal) the the Editor-in-chief is "Dr Eugene A Silow" without any affiliation. But on the page, Editorial Board (https://www.afjbs.com/editorial-board) the "EDITOR IN CHIEF" is "Dr. SHERIF Hassan". From the affiliation, he seems to be a pediatrician. Among other editorial board members, the next two persons are from the field of Chemisty and Electrical Engineering; one is from Social Sciences, one from the Nursing Service Department, and another two from the "Department of Art Education" and "School of Business Administration". They all seem odd choices for editorial board members of a journal in biological sciences. 

Volume of articles

From a video that was uploaded less than three months back, one can see Scopus has indexed only 35 documents in 2024 till then (https://youtu.be/C455lMOCHRo?t=459). But within 80 days it became 1441 documents which is unbelievable (https://www.scopus.com/sourceid/21101106407#tabs=2). 

Scope of coverage

In its first paragraph of its homepage, the journal ascertains, "Its scope embraces Animal Sciences, Biochemistry, Bioinformatics, Biotechnology, Botany, Cell Biology, Developmental Biology, Ecology, Environmental Sciences, Ethno Medicine, Food Science, Freshwater Biology, Genetics, Immunology, Marine Biology, Microbiology, Molecular Biology, Physiology, Plant Sciences, Structural Biology,Toxicology,Zoology etc."

The most recent articles published by the journal are not within the content coverage as the title suggests. For example, 

• "Natural Crisis in Post-modern Era: A Scientific Study of Select Novels of Hilary Mantel" 
• "The Role of Higher Education in Shaping Feminine Identities in Manju Kapur's Difficult Daughters and A Married Woman"
  
• "An Approach on school website and student management system"
  
• "Counterfeit Product Identification Using BlockChain Technology", 
• "FACTOR WHICH INFLUENCE ROLE NURSE IN IMPROVED PATIENT SAFETY",
• "Strategies for Teaching Vocabulary Effectively to ESL Students: Identifying and Resolving Challenges : An Emperical Study", 
• "Perceiving the Self and Others: A Phenomenological Analysis of Character Consciousness in Anita Nair's Fiction",  
• "FASTAG BASED SMART FUEL SYSTEM" etc 

No physical address

The corresponding address of the journal is simply "African Science Publications" without a physical address.

Clone journal?

One can also see another journal from Egyptian domain with the same title at https://ajbs.journals.ekb.eg/. 

The journal seems to have all the attributes of a predatory journal. Scopus seems to be lazy while considering such journals for inclusion.

--

Sanjo Jose

Librarian,

St Thomas' College (Autonomous),

Thrissur - 680 001

Kerala - INDIA