How an NC academic publisher ended up under FTC sanction

An academic publisher founded by two Western Carolina University professors three decades ago now operates as a subsidiary of an Indian company that a federal court ordered to pay $50.1 million in 2019 in a Federal Trade Commission (FTC) case over deceptive academic publishing practices. And many current professors, including in North Carolina, still publish in their journals.

Allied Academies was incorporated in 1996 by Jim and JoAnn Carland, then a husband-and-wife pair on the business faculty at Western Carolina University. In a 2018 filing in its lawsuit against OMICS Group for fraudulent publishing practices, the FTC said OMICS treated Allied Academies as one of its subsidiaries, citing the company’s own internal records. The court ruled in favor of the FTC the following year and named an Allied-branded entity directly in its permanent injunction.

The disclosure adds another layer to a continuing Carolina Journal investigation: Public-university researchers in the state, working with federal and state grant funding, have been publishing their work in academic journals whose ownership, peer-review practices, or business structures have come under question.

Carolina Journal reported in April that UNC Asheville’s North Carolina Center for Health & Wellness cited a paper in the Journal of Higher Education Theory and Practice — a product of the North American Business Press (NABP) — as justification for a federally and foundation-funded health program. That journal’s editor-in-chief, Robert Tian, also sits on the editorial board of an Allied Academies publication.

From Western Carolina to a London virtual office

The Carlands started small. According to the official Allied Academies history, Jim and JoAnn Carland convened a small conference in Myrtle Beach in October 1994 and launched a single journal the following year. By 1996, they had incorporated Allied Academies as a nonprofit umbrella organization, with operations based in Candler, North Carolina, a community west of Asheville and nearby Western Carolina University.

The Carlands had built reputations in their field. Both held doctorates and taught at Western Carolina University’s College of Business. In 2003 they designed the first Master of Entrepreneurship program in the United States, an effort the United States Association for Small Business and Entrepreneurship recognized in 2005 as the best of its kind in the country. Jim Carland’s research has been cited more than 5,000 times.

Their stated mission for Allied Academies was to provide an outlet for “teaching-school” faculty at small and mid-sized colleges and universities — researchers, they argued, who were shut out of elite academic journals dominated by tenure-track scholars at major research institutions. By the late 2000s the operation had grown to encompass 14 affiliate academies and 17 journals. The Carlands’ son, James “Trey” Carland III, joined as executive director in 2001 and oversaw the company’s transition to an online submissions process.

JoAnn Carland died at the family’s home in Arden, North Carolina, in August 2013. Two years later, the company signed the contract that would put it on a path toward foreign control.

In December 2015, the academic publishing watchdog Jeffrey Beall added Allied Academies to his widely cited list of potential predatory publishers. The designation has dogged the company ever since.

The 2015 contract

The path from a Carland family business to OMICS subsidiary appears to trace to a single contract signed in 2015.

In 2016, Allied Academies distributed an open letter responding to its Beall’s List addition. In that letter, reprinted by Beall in an essay for the Emerald City Journal, the company stated: “Jim Carland signed a contract with a publishing company last year that was offering to give us website and copyediting support. That contract enabled them to post other journals to the Allied website, which we did not think would be an issue.”

Beall identified the “publishing company” as OMICS International. He also reproduced an email he said demonstrated OMICS using the Allied Academies name to solicit acquisitions of other journals — offering “complete ownership” of academic titles in exchange for “a fixed royalty amount” as a one-time payment.

Around the same time, according to the FTC’s 2018 court filing, OMICS founder Srinubabu Gedela also chartered a near-namesake entity, “Allied Academics Limited,” in the United Kingdom — separate from the Carlands’ North Carolina nonprofit — alongside other OMICS-affiliated foreign shells.

In response to the controversy, Allied split its operations: the company’s original portfolio of academic-business journals migrated to a separate website operated as “Allied Business Academies” at abacademies.org, while alliedacademies.org retained the broader catalog, which had grown to include dozens of open-access medical and scientific journals in the OMICS style.

Despite the split into separate websites, both Allied operations now list the same postal address — a virtual office at 40 Bloomsbury Way in London, United Kingdom.

OMICS and the FTC

OMICS International is a Hyderabad, India–based academic publishing and conference company. The FTC sued OMICS in 2016, alleging the company deceived researchers by hiding publication fees, making false claims about peer review, and listing prominent academics on editorial boards without their knowledge or consent. In March 2019, US District Judge Gloria Navarro ruled in the FTC’s favor and imposed a $50.1 million civil penalty — one of the largest enforcement actions in the agency’s history against an academic publisher.

The court’s final order named “Allied Academics Limited” — the UK entity Gedela had registered — among the Corporate Defendants permanently restrained from those practices. The court’s definition of Corporate Defendants also reached “any other entity engaged in Publishing Activities or Conference Activities that is owned or controlled, in whole or in part, by any Defendant.”

The acquisition of Allied Academies fits a broader pattern. OMICS has previously absorbed other legacy publishers, including Canada-based Pulsus Group and Andrew John Publishing. That’s a practice that critics have described as using established academic names as cover for open-access journal operations.

Current operations

Despite the FTC judgment, Allied Academies continues to operate. Its website lists more than 100 journals across medical, scientific, and business disciplines, with a separate calendar of conferences scheduled in US and international locations.

Among the publisher’s continuing imprints is the Academy of Educational Leadership Journal, on whose editorial board Robert Tian currently serves. Tian appears prominently in both the Allied Academies and the North American Business Press publishing networks. It is unclear what the relationship between these two large publishing groups may be or if they are both part of a wider network.

Earlier questions to Tian about both Allied Academies and North American Business Press by CJ went unanswered as of publishing time.

Response

Trey Carland, who served as Allied Academies’ executive director from 2001 through 2017, declined to discuss with Carolina Journal the company’s history.

“I’m sorry I’m not at liberty to discuss that,” he wrote in an email.

Jim Carland, who currently serves as director emeritus of the Carland Entrepreneurship Institute at Anaheim University, did not respond to a request for comment by press time.

CJ also asked the UNC System office whether it maintains standards governing which academic journals are appropriate venues for faculty research, particularly research supported by federal or state grants.

Andy Wallace, director of media relations for the UNC System Office, said in an email that the system does not maintain central policies, guidelines, or lists of approved or prohibited academic journals. Given the volume of journals across disciplines, he wrote, those judgments “are generally handled at the institutional, departmental or faculty level.”

Carolina Journal is reviewing the publication and editorial records of UNC System faculty members in Allied Academies and North American Business Press journals and will report separately on its findings. At least two UNC System faculty — at Appalachian State University and North Carolina A&T State University — are currently listed on the editorial boards of journals published by Allied Business Academies.

“How an NC academic publisher ended up under FTC sanction” was originally published on www.carolinajournal.com.