THE FULL STORY OF 90 HIJACKED JOURNALS 
FROM AUGUST 2011 TO JUNE 2015
Creators: name: Jalalian, Mehrdad
name: Dadkhah, Mehdi
Publisher: name: izdavac
Year: 2015

description: Geographica Pannonica; Vol 19, No 2, 2015. ISSN 1820-7138
description: During recent years, the academic world has suffered a lot from the threats of hijacked journals and 
fake publishers that have called into question the validity and reliability of scientific publications. The 
purpose of this paper is to tell the in-depth story of hijacked journals. This paper addresses the hijack
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ers themselves, the methods they use to find their victims in the academic world, the methods they 
use to collect money from unsuspecting researchers by charging them to publish in hijacked journals, 
how they hide their identities, and how the academic world can best protect itself from these cyber
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criminals. Without identifying specific journal hijackers, we tell the story of how an assistant profes
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sor of computer and information science from Saudi Arabia (who holds a Ph.D. from a Malaysian uni
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versity) and his team of Word Press experts from Pakistan hijacked at least six journals including journal 
of technology, BRI’s Journal of Advances in Science and Technology, Magnt Research Report, Scientif
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ic Khyber, Saussurea, and created one of the four fake websites for Texas Journal of Science. We also 
tell the story of how some conferences are integrated with hijacked journals, and how a cybercrimi
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nal with a fake address in United Arab Emirates used the pseudonym “James Robinson” to mass hijack 
more than 20 academic journals (Journal of Balkan Tribological Association, Scientia Guaianae, Journal 
of American Medical Association, Cadmo, Entomon, Italianistica, Revue scientifique et technique, Kar
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diologiya, Agrochimica, Terapevticheskii Arkhiv, Ama, Tekstil, Fauna Rossii I Sopredel Nykh Stran, Azari
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ana, PSR health research bulletin, etc.). We also address the European cybercriminal with pseudonym 
“Ruslan Boranbaev” who hijacked the Archives des Sciences in October 2011 and created the “Science 
record journals” (to host three hijacked journals Including “Science series data report”, Innovaciencia, 
and “Science and nature”; and seven fake journals) for the first time in the academic world in August 
2011. We tell how Ruslan Boranbaev designed a systematic approach to mass hijack more than 25sci
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entific journals, including Bothalia, Jokull, Cienia e tecnica, Wulfenia, Doriana, Revista Kasmera, Mit
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teilungen Klosterneuburg, Sylwan, HFSP journal, Natura, and Cahiers des Sciences Naturelles. We also 
tell the story how this genius cybercriminal, whom we could call the king of hijacked journals, creat
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ed a fake “web of sciences” portal in 2015 on a dedicated server in France to launch an automated spam 
broadcasting machine of calls for papers for his hijacked journals. We also present how the Ruslan Bo
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ranbaev created numerous online payment portals for collecting the publication charges of hijacked 
journals, and cheated the Thomson Reuters to provide hyperlinks to the fake website of three hijacked 
journals in his masterpiece “revistas-academicas.com”. We also tell the story of how someone adopted 
the Ruslan Boranbaev approach to cheat the Thomson Reuters to create hyperlinks from master jour
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nal list of Thomson Reuters to two of his hijacked journals (GMP review: http://www.euromed.uk.com, 
Allgemeine Forst und Jagdzeitung: http://www.sauerlander-verlag.com). Finally, we present the most 
comprehensive list of hijacked journals available, including all of those that we have detected from Au
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gust 11, 2011 to June 15, 2015.