The Progressive Librarians Guild has issued a statement regarding Elsevier’s publication of fake journals. Here’s a quote:
The Progressive Librarians Guild decries the distortion and abuse of research and science by corporate greed exemplified by Elsevier and Merck, and calls upon librarians to educate the public and researchers about all instances of collusion of academic and scholarly publishing with profit-making business entities in palming- off corporate propaganda through deceptive publishing practices, which debase scholarship and science, conspire against the public interest, and pollute the well of genuine scholarly information and communication.
On another note, in 2007, a coalition called PRISM (Partnership for Research Integrity in Science and Medicine) started a website whose goal it was to “advocate for policies that ensure the quality, integrity, and economic viability of peer-reviewed journals.” This group was established by the Executive Council of the Professional & Scholarly Publishing Division of the Association of American Publishers (AAP). On the AAP Board of Directors sits an Elsevier representative.
This group has nothing to do with the current Elsevier scandal (the coalition was created to lobby against government mandated Open Access policies), but perhaps Elsevier should go back and read some of the principles (see how often the word integrity is used) and goals of this coalition, which was created to tout the importance of private sector publishing:
PRISM seeks to educate all stakeholders about the importance of maintaining the integrity of published information, and sustaining the incentives for all publishers to invest in the system of independent publishing that continues to sustain the public’s trust in scientific and medical research.