The full story of 90 hijacked journals from August 2011 to June 2015

During recent years, the academic world has suffered a lot from the threats of hijacked journals and fake publishers that have called into question the validity and reliability of scientific publications. The purpose of this paper is to tell the in-depth story of hijacked journals. This paper addresses the hijackers themselves, the methods they use to find their victims in the academic world, the methods they use to collect money from unsuspecting researchers by charging them to publish in hijacked journals, how they hide their identities, and how the academic world can best protect itself from these cyber- criminals. Without identifying specific journal hijackers, we tell the story of how an assistant professor of computer and information science from Saudi Arabia (who holds a Ph.D. from a Malaysian university) and his team of Word Press experts from Pakistan hijacked at least six journals including journal of technology, BRI's Journal of Advances in Science and Technology, Magnt Research Report, Scientific Khyber, Saussurea, and created one of the four fake websites for Texas Journal of Science. We also tell the story of how some conferences are integrated with hijacked journals, and how a cybercriminal with a fake address in United Arab Emirates used the pseudonym 'James Robinson' to mass hijack more than 20 academic journals (Journal of Balkan Tribological Association, Scientia Guaianae, Journal of American Medical Association, Cadmo, Entomon, Italianistica, Revue scientifique et technique, Kar- diologiya, Agrochimica, Terapevticheskii Arkhiv, Ama, Tekstil, Fauna Rossii I Sopredel Nykh Stran, Azariana, PSR health research bulletin, etc.). We also address the European cybercriminal with pseudonym 'Ruslan Boranbaev' who hijacked the Archives des Sciences in October 2011 and created the 'Science record journals' (to host three hijacked journals Including 'Science series data report', Innovaciencia, and 'Science and nature'; and seven fake journals) for the first time in the academic world in August 2011. We tell how Ruslan Boranbaev designed a systematic approach to mass hijack more than 25scientific journals, including Bothalia, Jokull, Cienia e tecnica, Wulfenia, Doriana, Revista Kasmera, Mitteilungen Klosterneuburg, Sylwan, HFSP journal, Natura, and Cahiers des Sciences Naturelles. We also tell the story how this genius cybercriminal, whom we could call the king of hijacked journals, created a fake 'web of sciences' portal in 2015 on a dedicated server in France to launch an automated spam broadcasting machine of calls for papers for his hijacked journals. We also present how the Ruslan Boranbaev created numerous online payment portals for collecting the publication charges of hijacked journals, and cheated the Thomson Reuters to provide hyperlinks to the fake website of three hijacked journals in his masterpiece 'revistas-academicas.com'. We also tell the story of how someone adopted the Ruslan Boranbaev approach to cheat the Thomson Reuters to create hyperlinks from master journal list of Thomson Reuters to two of his hijacked journals (GMP review: <http://www.euromed.uk.com/> Allgemeine Forst und Jagdzeitung: http://www.sauerlander-verlag.com). Finally, we present the most comprehensive list of hijacked journals available, including all of those that we have detected from Au- gust 11, 2011 to June 15, 2015