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I have sent two research papers to an open-access journal. It seems a very good journal. One of my papers sent back to me for a minor revision (the condition for accepting my paper is the quality of the revision). The second paper is now under review. I just found that the publisher is fake. Hence, I would like to withdraw my papers. I could not find any way to withdraw my papers from the journal website. What should I do? I did not send the revised manuscript to the journal.

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  • Thanks @Louic for your comment. No it will not. As I did not publish yet, just under review.
    – F.family
    Jan 13, 2021 at 15:35

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Simply let the editors know that you withdraw your submission. Tell them that you do not grant them any right whatsoever to internally keep or externally distribute that paper.

Publishing occurs on the basis of a bilateral contract. If one of the parties – in this case: you – does not agree with the agreement's core performance (here: the publication), there is no contract. No obligation arose for you.

Things, however, may get complicated: It is possible that the publisher will claim that a contract was initiated through your submission (and with the help of some hidden agreements and terms of services). In this case, you can argue that entering into that agreement occured "under a mistake as to a matter of fact essential to the agreement". Make sure to list any evidence that would qualify that publisher as predatory, that is, any evidence through which you were misled about their identity. In many laws around the world, there are explicit provisions about contracts being voidable if it was agreed upon under an erroneous belief about the identity of the contract partner.

But let's hope that no argument will arise. Otherwise it would help to know which publisher you are talking about, and which country's law is applicable in your case.

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  • SCIRP publisher.
    – F.family
    Jan 13, 2021 at 17:54
  • Thanks for the clarification. I do not see any hidden terms at SCIRP, so I would not worry about a contract that was initiated through the submission process. - On the contrary, SCIRP says: "[...] authors retain the copyrights of their papers, and all open access articles are distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, CC BY". Thus, you are the licensor -- and according to Creative Commons, you can revoke your license at any time (which would not affect existing licensees, but I would not regard SCIRP as a licensee as long as your paper is unpublished).
    – anpami
    Jan 13, 2021 at 18:45

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