It is now widely known that the Australasian Journal of Bone and Joint Medicine (AJBJM), complete with honorary editorial board, was in fact an advertising ploy for Merck, created by Elsevier; see, e.g., here for details.
A few comments and questions:
1. It has been reported that all of the articles included in AJBJM were legitimate peer-reviewed articles already having appeared in ``real'' journals. So the primary deception appears to have been in collecting Merck-friendly research into a single neutrally titled volume -- so that an unsuspecting reader would conclude that these articles were chosen only for their scientific merit and not for conclusions favoring the drug company. If Merck had bundled the same articles into a volume entitled, say, Merck Research Review, and had explicitly said in a ``from the editor'' page that these articles were chosen to highlight Merck's contributions to medicine, then there would have been no fraud. Moreover, assuming that the articles involved in this scandal all originally appeared in respected journals, it seems to me that an honestly labeled presentation would have had essentially the same advertising impact.
2. Were the authors of the original papers clearly and honestly informed of Elsevier's republication of their research in this context? (Were they paid?) If these authors were unaware, then the author copyright agreements Elsevier and most journal publishers require need to be modified. How aware were the members of the honorary editorial board?
3. I wonder if the editors at non-fake journals from Australasia (for example, The Australasian Journal of Dermatology) are offended by this abuse of their geography. I'd also be interested in the process that led to Merck/Elsevier choosing this particular location.
4. Questionable journals are not limited to medical research. For several years I received e-mail announcements for the Antarctica Journal of Mathematics, which appeared to exist somewhere on the border between fraud and self delusion.
