Dear Sir/ Madam,
There are many complaints that the publisher APC Media LLC, 11210 West Rd, Roswell, GA 30075, USA, and their Transformer Technology publication, are predatory. They started with Transformer Technology as a magazine and due to many problems they made, they changed it recently into a community.
One of the recent problem that we are documenting here is that their editor Corné Dames copied and published an article ‘Smart Asset Management: Digital Power Transformers’ in Transformer Technology magazine/community on 4 June 2020:
https://www.transformer-technology.com/community-hub/technical-articles/1282-smart-asset-management-digital-power-transformers.html
This article is almost a copy-paste of the article ‘Digital Power Transformers -An Intelligent Approach to Smart Asset Management’, written by Dr. Bhaba Priyo Das and Jean Carlos Leicht from ABB company (now: Hitachi ABB Power Grids). The original article was published at AORC International Conference organized by Cigre, March 24-28, 2019, Bali, Indonesia.
Some paragraphs are modified only by replacing some words by synonyms, e.g.: detect – indicate, very useful – critical, etc., or by slight rewording. They have also changed illustrations so that the article looks nice, and they off course removed references to some ABB products, mentioned in the original article.
APC Media and Transformer Technology don’t have in place any kind of review for submitted materials, but their so-called Editor in Chief Alan Ross wrote about the plagiarism of their Editor Corné Dames the following:
“When I first met Corne, albeit by Zoom video rather than in person, I thought, “Now this is one very gifted and smart transformer expert.” Little did I know then just how gifted and smart. As one of our Contributing Editors, her articles were spot on, well documented and written for professionals who need practical insight, not unusable detailed jargon. Corne delivered!
As we have begun the switch to a TransformerTechnology Community from a magazine, she has become even more valuable to our community. We have asked her to write under the byline Technology Insights, and once again she has delivered. It is professionals like Corne who are making our community better and more of the “go to” community for practical, insightful and significant information about transformer technology. Thank you Corne for your commitment to our community.”
Both articles are attached for your review.
We would say that by help of so extensive copy-pasting, everybody can be an expert in any field. However, this is not an ethical but predatory behaviour.
They are also known for sending mass emails to people who have never subscribe to their database. There are thousands of people from this field who claim receiving their email without subscribing to their database, and there are claims that they have stolen a database of contacts from other company in this field.
They are also known for very aggressive approach to companies to advertise in their publications, and the money is the only thing that they are interested in.
Dear Sir/ Madam, There are many complaints that the publisher APC Media LLC, 11210 West Rd, Roswell, GA 30075, USA, and their Transformer Technology publication, are predatory. They started with Transformer Technology as a magazine and due to many problems they made, they changed it recently into a community. One of the recent problem that we are documenting here is that their editor Corné Dames copied and published an article ‘Smart Asset Management: Digital Power Transformers’ in Transformer Technology magazine/community on 4 June 2020: https://www.transformer-technology.com/community-hub/technical-articles/1282-smart-asset-management-digital-power-transformers.html
This article is almost a copy-paste of the article ‘Digital Power Transformers -An Intelligent Approach to Smart Asset Management’, written by Dr. Bhaba Priyo Das and Jean Carlos Leicht from ABB company (now: Hitachi ABB Power Grids). The original article was published at AORC International Conference organized by Cigre, March 24-28, 2019, Bali, Indonesia. Some paragraphs are modified only by replacing some words by synonyms, e.g.: detect – indicate, very useful – critical, etc., or by slight rewording. They have also changed illustrations so that the article looks nice, and they off course removed references to some ABB products, mentioned in the original article.
APC Media and Transformer Technology don’t have in place any kind of review for submitted materials, but their so-called Editor in Chief Alan Ross wrote about the plagiarism of their Editor Corné Dames the following: “When I first met Corne, albeit by Zoom video rather than in person, I thought, “Now this is one very gifted and smart transformer expert.” Little did I know then just how gifted and smart. As one of our Contributing Editors, her articles were spot on, well documented and written for professionals who need practical insight, not unusable detailed jargon. Corne delivered! As we have begun the switch to a TransformerTechnology Community from a magazine, she has become even more valuable to our community. We have asked her to write under the byline Technology Insights, and once again she has delivered. It is professionals like Corne who are making our community better and more of the “go to” community for practical, insightful and significant information about transformer technology. Thank you Corne for your commitment to our community.”
Both articles are attached for your review.
We would say that by help of so extensive copy-pasting, everybody can be an expert in any field. However, this is not an ethical but predatory behaviour.
They are also known for sending mass emails to people who have never subscribe to their database. There are thousands of people from this field who claim receiving their email without subscribing to their database, and there are claims that they have stolen a database of contacts from other company in this field.
They are also known for very aggressive approach to companies to advertise in their publications, and the money is the only thing that they are interested in.
If you need any further support in investigating of this publisher and their media, we are willing to help you. Smart Asset Management_ Digital Power Transformers.pdf 2019_CIGRE AORC Paper_ABB_SG.pdf