Predatory publisher OMICS fined $50 million by US court for defrauding scientists

The publisher and conference organiser OMICS Group has been ordered by a federal court in the US to pay $50.1 million (£38.3 million) to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) for deceptive and predatory publishing activities. In 2016 the FTC brought charges against the company, along with its founder Srinubabu Gedela and two affiliated companies – iMedPub and Conference Series – alleging they had deceived thousands of researchers with claims about their journals and conferences. The complaint said that in order to lure academics into submitting articles to thousands of online open access publications, OMICS falsely claimed they were peer-reviewed and that they were listed in reputable databases such as PubMed.