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An Indian journal publisher and his companies in the United States have been fined over USD 50 million for making deceptive claims to academics about the nature of their work and taking millions of dollars from aspiring researchers and writers.

The United States District Court for the District of Nevada has ordered Srinubabu Gadela of Andhra Pradesh and his companies OMICS Group Inc., iMedPub LLC, Conference Series LLC to pay the amount to resolve the charges of brought against them by America's consumer protection agency Federal Trade Commission (FTC).

"These publishing companies lied about their academic journals and took millions of dollars from aspiring researchers and writers," said Andrew Smith, Director of the FTC's Bureau of Consumer Protection.

"We're pleased with the court's strong order holding these companies and its owner responsible for the damage they caused," Smith said.

The court issued the summary judgment order on March 29.

In its 2016 complaint, the FTC alleged that "OMICS, iMedPub, Conference Series and their owner Srinubabu Gedela advertised hundreds of online academic journals and international conferences for scientists and medical professionals, and deceptively claimed that their journals provided authors with rigorous peer review and had editorial boards made up of prominent academics".

The FTC in a statement said that in reality, many articles were published with little to no peer review, and many individuals represented to be editors had not agreed to be affiliated with the journals.

The FTC further alleged that the defendants represented that their journals had been accepted by prominent academic indexing services such as the National Institute of Health (NIH)'s "PubMed Central".

The FTC also alleged that Srinubabu Gedela and his companies failed to properly tell authors who submitted papers for consideration that they would charge the authors significant publishing fees. They also failed to allow authors to withdraw their articles from submission, making their research ineligible for publication in other journals.

Finally, the complaint alleged that to promote their scientific conferences, the defendants deceptively used the names of prominent researchers as conference presenters when in fact many of those researchers had not agreed to participate in the events.

In the summary judgment decision, the court found that "the defendants violated the FTC Act by making deceptive claims regarding their academic journals and scientific conferences, and by failing to adequately disclose their publishing fees".

The resulting final order prohibits Srinubabu Gedela and his companies from making misrepresentations about their academic journals and conferences, including that specific persons are editors of their journals or have agreed to take part in their conferences, that their journals are included in any academic journal indexing service, that their journals engage in peer review or the extent to which their journals are cited.

It also requires that the defendants conspicuously and clearly disclose all costs associated with submitting or publishing articles in their journals.

The order also requires the defendants to obtain express written consent from any person the defendants represent to be associated with their academic journals or scientific conferences.

-Sangam Sowmya