Anna University Annexure List: Conundrum or Planned Scam?

Preliminary investigation by Dr. I. Dinaharan, Tsinghua University

Anna university removed Annexure II few years ago and retained Annexure I alone. It updates
the list of journals periodically. The website claims that Annexure I contains only ISI listed
journals from web of science database. ISI list includes many categories of journals such as SCI,
SCIE, ESCI etc. All over the world, ISI list is limited to only SCI journals. Hence, Annexure I is
expected to list only SCI category of journals and remove all other category of journals. The
recent update is a shock to academic community that some controversial SCIE and ESCI
journals were included in the list selectively.

Fig. 1 Web of science index classification

Journal of Manufacturing Processes is one of the top and leading journals in the
field of manufacturing published by Elsevier. It has an impact factor of 2.8 and
follows a rigorous peer review process. The annual rejection rate is 90%. But it
has no place in the Annexure because it moved to SCIE category couple of years
ago. Didn’t any professor from Anna University main campus from production and
manufacturing department notice this? Are they so ignorant?

Fig. 2 Journal of Manufacturing Processes is listed under SCIE category

Leading academic publishers Elsevier, Springer and Taylor and Francis started
many journals in the last decade. All of them are indexed under SCIE or ESCI
category. Therefore, many journals, to name a few, Manufacturing Letters, Journal
of Magnesium and Alloys, Composites Communications, Surfaces and Interfaces,
Metallography, Microstructure, and Analysis, Advances in Manufacturing,
Advances in Materials and Processing Technologies, Journal of Asian Ceramic
Societies, Tribology-Materials Surfaces and Interfaces etc. are not listed in the
Annexure.

18 journals published by Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute (MDPI)

have been included or retained in the recently updated Annexure list. None of
those journals are SCI indexed. All of them can be found under SCIE category. All
MDPI journals are open access journals with a mandatory article processing
charge of 1800 CHF (Swiss Francs) which is equivalent to Rs. 1,23,000. Many
irregularities in the peer review process were reported. They publish in a shorter
period of time. Many MDPI journal editors were removed for following rigorous
review process and delaying the publication. It should be noted that MDPI journals
were once featured in Beall’s predatory journal list. MDPI was founded by Prof.
Shu-Kun Lin with a sheer business motive to earn through open access publishing
(For more information, visit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MDPI#cite_note-2). A
rough search in the MDPI website using key words Chennai, Anna University,
Tamil Nadu etc. shows around 300 articles which mean that researchers from
Tamil Nadu paid approximately Rs. 3.7 Crore to MDPI institute.

Fig. 3 List of MDPI journals in the Annexure

Fig. 4 Article processing fee of 1800 CHF is mandatory for all MDPI journals
33 journals published by Hindawi Publishing Corporation have been included or
retained in the recently updated Annexure list. None of those journals are SCI
indexed. Some of them can be found under SCIE category while others are not at
all indexed but sneaked into Annexure. All Hindawi journals are open access
journals with a mandatory article processing charge of USD 1025 to 2100 which
is equivalent to Rs. 71,000-1,46,000. A rough search in the Hindawi website using
key words Chennai, Anna University, Tamil Nadu etc. shows around 250 articles
which mean that researchers from Tamil Nadu paid approximately Rs. 3 Crore to
Hindawi publishers. Like MDPI journals, many Hindwai journals also featured in
Beall’s predatory journal list.

Fig. 5 All MDPI journals are indexed in SCIE not in SCI

Fig. 6 MDPI publishes in a shorter period of time

A quick glance and search using the word “Brazil” reveal that more than 100
journals from SciELO (SciELO is an electronic library covering a selected
collection of Brazilian scientific journals) are listed in Annexure. They are also not
indexed in SCI (Only SCIE) and most of them collect a mandatory article
processing fee ranging from 300 USD to 1000 USD. The word “SciELO” is not
present in the Annexure. The faculties who prepared Annexure cleverly and
carefully concealed this word that those journals are from “SciELO” online
library. No foot note is included. The publisher’s names are mentioned as the
institute name in which each journal originates. The final column of the Annexure
(publisher’s country) exposes this fact.

Fig. 7 List of Hindawi journals in the Annexure

Fig. 8 All Hindawi journals are indexed in SCIE not in SCI

 Fig. 9 Article processing fee of 1025-2100 USD is mandatory for all Hindawi
journals
I could not investigate all publishers in the Annexure list due to lack of time and
my investigation is limited. Why didn’t standard and top journals indexed in
SCIE feature in the Annexure? Why open accessed, paid, suspicious and
predatory journals were included in the Annexure? A year ago, UGC published
a list of approved journals. Immediately, many journals sent mail to numerous
researchers with the subject line “UGC approved journal-publish with us’. An
investigation later revealed that all those who mailed so were paid and predatory
journals. It is highly possible and speculated that they might have bribed UGC
members to include in the list. The same argument holds good and becomes strong
with evidence against MDPI and Hindawi publishers. They might have either
bribed or engaged a hidden agreement with faculties responsible for updating
Annexure list. Assume 300 articles are published in these journals annually by
Anna University scholars. The publishing company will receive approximately Rs.
3.5 Crore. They can share a percentage of profit with those fraudulent faculties.
This should be investigated thoroughly and action should be taken to remove those
journals from Annexure list and faculties responsible for this.

Moreover, Anna University is dedicated to engineering research and some research

lies in basic sciences and management. What is the requirement to include core
medical journals and pure biological journals in the Annexure? It should be
remembered that few years ago a zoology related paid journal was present in the
Annexure. The hilarious issue was that it accepted engineering articles and some
managed to obtain PhD degree by publishing in that journal. A thorough
investigation should be carried out if the same act is repeated through these
medical and biological journals. I do not know the presence of any paid, open
access medical and biological journals in the Annexure.
Therefore, the inclusion of such a huge number of paid, easily accepting open
access journals will lead to degradation of research quality. Centre for Research
should take immediate action to rectify countless flaws in the updated Annexure.
All paid and open access journals should be removed from the Annexure without
mercy. It is disgusting and disheartening to view Anna University Scopus profile.
52, 467 documents are listed. Top two contributing journals (International Journal
of Applied Engineering Research & European Journal of Scientific Research) are
paid and predatory journals. It suggests that more than 700 PhD degrees were
fruitless without quality. If further action is not taken to rectify and edit the
Annexure extensively, another paid journal from MDPI or Hindawai or other
publishers will reach the status of top contributed journals in a shorter period
of time. This will further degrade and tarnish the reputation of Anna University.
The quality and authenticity of PhD degrees will become questionable.

Fig. 10 Paid predatory journals top the list of contributions from Anna University