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Now this one has a special Canadian connection. As well, it is demonstrating a new and wildly profitable model for predatory journals.

Instead of running a cheap startup website and hunting for clients, it took over the identity — and readership — of an established business.

This is paying off spectacularly. Experimental & Clinical Cardiology published 142 articles in July alone, worth a total of $170,000 U.S. for one month. It operates online only and doesn’t bother with editing, so it has almost no costs.

The result is sloppy, or worse. Some articles are called “Enter Paper Title” — the layout instructions instead of the intended title. One is filled with visible paragraph markers (¶). Some authors’ names are missing.

Scientists are worried because academic journals do more than print research. They also screen it by sending it to independent reviewers — experts in the field who can weed out low-quality work.

But the “predatory” journals skip this step. They accept everything verbatim, making it appear that experts have approved it.

To test the journal, the Citizen sent in an outrageously bad manuscript. The title is a hodgepodge of medical-sounding words adding up to nothing: “VEGF proliferation in cardiac cells contributes to vascular declension.”

For the rest we plagiarized a study on HIV but replaced “HIV” with the word “cardiac” throughout, to make it look (sort of) like cardiology. But it wouldn’t impress anyone who knows the subject.