Pulsus Group is a

health informatics Health informatics is the field of science and engineering that aims at developing methods and technologies for the acquisition, processing, and study of patient data, which can come from different sources and modalities, such as electronic hea ...

and

digital marketing Digital marketing is the component of marketing that uses the Internet and online based digital technologies such as desktop computers, mobile phones and other digital media and platforms to promote products and services. Its development duri ...

company and publisher of scientific, technical, and medical literature. It was formed in 1984, primarily to publish

peer-reviewed Peer review is the evaluation of work by one or more people with similar competencies as the producers of the work (peers). It functions as a form of self-regulation by qualified members of a profession within the relevant field. Peer review ...

medical journals Medical literature is the scientific literature of medicine: articles in journals and texts in books devoted to the field of medicine. Many references to the medical literature include the health care literature generally, including that of denti ...

. , Pulsus published 98

hybrid Hybrid may refer to: Science * Hybrid (biology), an offspring resulting from cross-breeding ** Hybrid grape, grape varieties produced by cross-breeding two ''Vitis'' species ** Hybridity, the property of a hybrid plant which is a union of two dif ...

and full open-access journals, 15 of which had been adopted as the official publications of related medical societies. Pulsus Group also conducts conferences in association with scientific societies.

OMICS Publishing Group OMICS Publishing Group is a predatory publisher of open access academic journals. It started publishing its first journal in 2008. By 2015, it claimed over 700 journals, although about half of them were defunct. Its subsidiaries and brands in ...

, an open access publisher widely regarded as

predatory Predation is a biological interaction where one organism, the predator, kills and eats another organism, its prey. It is one of a family of common feeding behaviours that includes parasitism and micropredation (which usually do not kill th ...

, purchased Pulsus in 2016, causing controversy and putting the future of the journals into question. The company has been placed on

Jeffrey Beall Jeffrey Beall is an American librarian and library scientist, best known for drawing attention to "predatory open access publishing", a term he coined, and for creating what is now widely known as Beall's list, a list of potentially predatory op ...

's list of "Potential, possible, or probable" predatory open-access publishers.

History

The company was founded in 1984 by Robert Kalina to provide Canadian doctors with an alternative to American journals. In December 2015, Pulsus sold four of its journals to the open access publisher

Hindawi Publishing Corporation Hindawi is a publisher of peer-reviewed, open access, scientific journals currently active in scientific, technical, and medical (STM) literature. It was founded in 1997 in Cairo, Egypt, but purchased in 2021 by John Wiley & Sons, a publishing ...

. In 2016, Pulsus was bought by

, an open access publisher widely regarded as predatory,"On the Net, a scam of a most scholarly kind"
''

The Hindu ''The Hindu'' is an Indian English-language daily newspaper owned by The Hindu Group, headquartered in Chennai, Tamil Nadu. It began as a weekly in 1878 and became a daily in 1889. It is one of the Indian newspapers of record and the secon ...

'', 26 September 2012. causing controversy and putting the future of the journals into question. Kalina, the owner of Pulsus Group was retiring but could not find buyers for Pulsus Group's remaining journals, but claimed that the sale negotiated with OMICS would continue to protect the interests of the societies that own the journals. Since the takeover by OMICS, several

editors-in-chief An editor-in-chief (EIC), also known as lead editor or chief editor, is a publication's editorial leader who has final responsibility for its operations and policies. The highest-ranking editor of a publication may also be titled editor, managing ...

have resigned and a number of societies have decided to take their journals to a different publisher. The CEO of OMICS has promised that the journals published by Pulsus will be run independently by the respective societies that they belong to, with OMICS only providing hosting, PDF formatting, and design. Nonetheless,

added Pulsus Group to his list of "Potential, possible, or probable" predatory open-access publishers.

Acquisitions

In September 2016, Pulsus Group acquired another Canadian publisher, Andrew John Publishing, including 17 medical journals associated with medical societies of the Middle East and Canada, and some journals from the

London London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...

based

Future Science Publishing Group Future Medicine is a privately owned company based in London, England, United Kingdom. It is part of Future Science Publishing Group, primarily to publish peer-reviewed medical journals. Future Medicine publishes hybrid and full open access jou ...

operating as Openaccessjournals.com.

Predatory behavior

In 2019 it was reported that Pulsus journals were listing on their mastheads three

professor Professor (commonly abbreviated as Prof.) is an Academy, academic rank at university, universities and other post-secondary education and research institutions in most countries. Literally, ''professor'' derives from Latin as a "person who pr ...

s from the

University of Toronto The University of Toronto (UToronto or U of T) is a public research university in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, located on the grounds that surround Queen's Park. It was founded by royal charter in 1827 as King's College, the first institution ...

, two of whom had disassociated themselves from the journals in 2014 and 2016, and the third of whom had never agreed to be associated with the journal. After this discovery, the professors' names were removed from the journals.

Indian operations

Pulsus is operating from Chennai, Delhi, Hyderabad and Visakhapatnam providing services in HealthTech, health informatics, medical publishing, and pharmacovigilance services. Pulsus has 5,000 employees. Pulsus'

Visakhapatnam , image_alt = , image_caption = From top, left to right: Visakhapatnam aerial view, Vizag seaport, Simhachalam Temple, Aerial view of Rushikonda Beach, Beach road, Novotel, Novotel Visakhapatnam, INS Kursura (S20), INS ...

and

Chennai Chennai (, ), formerly known as Madras ( the official name until 1996), is the capital city of Tamil Nadu, the southernmost Indian state. The largest city of the state in area and population, Chennai is located on the Coromandel Coast of th ...

offices translate their annual conferences and medical journals' information in local languages such as

Telugu Telugu may refer to: * Telugu language, a major Dravidian language of India *Telugu people, an ethno-linguistic group of India * Telugu script, used to write the Telugu language ** Telugu (Unicode block), a block of Telugu characters in Unicode S ...

Hindi Hindi (Devanāgarī: or , ), or more precisely Modern Standard Hindi (Devanagari: ), is an Indo-Aryan language spoken chiefly in the Hindi Belt region encompassing parts of northern, central, eastern, and western India. Hindi has been de ...

Tamil Tamil may refer to: * Tamils, an ethnic group native to India and some other parts of Asia **Sri Lankan Tamils, Tamil people native to Sri Lanka also called ilankai tamils **Tamil Malaysians, Tamil people native to Malaysia * Tamil language, nativ ...

Bengali Bengali or Bengalee, or Bengalese may refer to: *something of, from, or related to Bengal, a large region in South Asia * Bengalis, an ethnic and linguistic group of the region * Bengali language, the language they speak ** Bengali alphabet, the w ...

. Pulsus

has created more women employment since inception, through the campus placements in and around Andhra Pradesh. Taking the inspiration from

Narendra Modi Narendra Damodardas Modi (; born 17 September 1950) is an Indian politician serving as the 14th and current Prime Minister of India since 2014. Modi was the Chief Minister of Gujarat from 2001 to 2014 and is the Member of Parliament from ...

, PULSUS employees conducted "Say no to plastic campaign" in association with

Software Technology Parks of India Software Technology Parks of India (STPI) is an S&T organization under Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) engaged in promoting IT/ ITES Industry, Innovation, R&D, Start-ups, Product/ IP creation in the field of emergin ...

and conducted rallies to support

Andhra Pradesh Andhra Pradesh (, abbr. AP) is a state in the south-eastern coastal region of India. It is the seventh-largest state by area covering an area of and tenth-most populous state with 49,386,799 inhabitants. It is bordered by Telangana to the ...

Disha act and to secure women employees.

References

External links