Who are Darcy & Roy?
And do they have anything to do with Siegfried and Roy?
There’s an age old Law in the journalism rulebook called Betteridge’s Law that says you can always answer a headline ending in a question with “No”.
My apologies to Mr Betteridge here, but that one doesn’t cut it here.
After investigating strange species names appearing in the scientific literature, from journals published by Springer Nature, MDPI, Frontiers and more, I stumbled upon Darcy & Roy Press. It lists itself as an Oregon-based publishing house, with journals such as “Frontiers in Computing and Intelligent Systems”, “International Journal of Biology and Life Sciences” and “Computer Life”, which sounds more like my existence, to be honest.
[The answer to the sub-headline is No, so Betteridge’s Law half-holds]
Let’s try and find out who these Darcy and Roy folk are.
For those readers not deeply intimate with the scientific publishing world, you may not have come across the idea of “predatory publishers”.
In short, these are organisations which “publish counterfeit journals to exploit the open-access model in which the author pays. These predatory publishers are dishonest and lack transparency.”1
Basically, these journals exist to make cash. The journals are “pay to publish”, so the authors send in manuscripts and then get invoiced to pay fees. Some journals do this legitimately, and it can be quite useful because those fees mean the research is open access — you don’t need to pay to read them…2
The predatory journals are slightly different. They typically don’t offer the services an academic publisher would — meaning the science may not be peer-reviewed appropriately or vetted at all. They offer the air of legitimacy that might make you think you can chuck a paper on your CV… but those papers count for nought.
Journals published by Darcy & Roy appear in my Master Spreadsheet of weird Latin species names a number of times.
This paper, which I previously covered, is easily the worst offender:
Analysis of the Differences in Gut Microbiota Structure in Anxiety and Depression
It contains a bunch of garbled species names — our Verbi distorti — more than any single paper I’ve seen.3
This paper was my first run in with Darcy & Roy Press and its barebones Open Journal Software website. The branding alone gave me pause.
I checked Beall’s list of predatory publishers, nothing there also. And I checked the Predatory Journals list.4 Nothing there either. I also checked the Hijacked Journals Tracker at RetractionWatch, just in case, but zero there, too!
So who is this publisher? It seems it may be predatory — with many of the red flags you’d worry about.
Looking back in time, the Wayback Machine reveals that www.drpress.org was an Iranian site dedicated to, perhaps, health news? According to a mostly-defunct Instagram page, it was known as Docter Press. The screen captures from 2018 show a fairly simple health news overlay.
The site seems to have been down after 2018 ended but then, at the end of 2020, it spun up as Darcy & Roy Press. Here’s how it described itself then, according to the Wayback Machine:
Darcy & Roy Press is an academic publisher of journals, books and conference proceedings. It’s a global publisher of scientific, technical and medical (STM) content – STM is the leading global trade association for academic and professional publishers. DRP is dedicated to publishing evidenced-based content, including training curricula and multimedia resources, with one focus in mind: advocating for the awareness and protection of victims of maltreatment.
That last sentence is interesting. You can find that exact same description at STM Learning, Inc on its About Us page — no doubt that’s where the STM content comes from.
I don’t think the two sites are connected, because Darcy & Roy later removed the sentence relating to “protection of victims of maltreatment”, and STM seems to be a legitimate website offering legitimate services and books.
So, a dead end, but one of those red flags.
What else? The old Darcy & Roy Press site has an address. The Wayback Machine again provides one from early 2020: 7870 SW NIMBUS AVE, BEAVERTON, OREGON 97008, USA
This address is also listed as the address for Rose Bean events.5 On Google Maps, there’s a big truck in the way, but scooting around, it seems unlikely that Darcy & Roy Press is actually at that address, given they’ve now emoved it from their website.
However, there is another listed address (which is also listed on ZoomInfo6): 2095 NW ALOCLEK DR, HILLSBORO OR 97124 USA.
This corresponds to the Cornelius Business Park in Hillsboro. One listing via the Wayback Machine showed their was a suite number: STE 1111-775025. If that’s even a real suite.
I plugged that into Google Maps and had a look. In 2024, it looked like this:
That doesn’t much look like a scientific publishing office, but it also doesn’t look like much at all. Maybe storage? There’s a fan in the door! Perhaps, at some point, you could use Mastercard and Visa to pay for things at 1111. Presumably you didn’t have to visit there to pay for your article to be processed because that would be a nightmare. Very bad for business.
I made a few phone calls to see if I could get in touch with tenants at the Business Park. The first call I made, I got hung up on. (I think they were very skeptical of my Australian accent). Then I called the Business Park and they didn’t answer.
Finally, I got through via email. After a bit of back and forth… This email:
So, super red flag. The address points to no one. That might seem like it was self-evident from the beginning, but the confirmation is worthwhile.
Seems bad!
There are a bunch of other reasons to believe Darcy & Roy is not a legitimate publisher.
None of the editorial boards of its journals seem to feature real people. You’ve got Eunice Archibald, from Acadia University in Canada at "Highlights in Business, Economics and Management” and Eunice is a ghost. You’ve got “Edmund Wheatley” writing a Preface in the same journal for the PGMEE 2025 conference but this author has no affiliation and doesn’t seem to appear anywhere online, including in the extensive Dimensions.ai database.
Oh and Mr Wheatley wrote the preface for the PGMEE 2023 and PGMEE 2024 … which coincidentally are exactly the same as the 2025 version. Some light self-plagiarism, I guess!
That doesn’t really bring us to a better place to answer the question: Who is Darcy & Roy? Because the answer, I think, is no-one.
The concern I have though is that Darcy & Roy’s journals seem to be mostly targeting Chinese scientists, researchers and academics, although they also feature academics across a broad range of universities: University of Melbourne in Australia, a handful from University College London, Durham University… while other similar journals showcase University of Michigan, University of California and other US institutions. There are lots of organisations here.
How anyone finds these journals in the first instance is the next line of inquiry — I suspect there are many that land in researcher inboxes with offers Too Good To Refuse. That’s the suggestion I have already had…
But there’s more investigating to come here [when I am not preoccupied with the Super Bowl]
For now, I hope to get the word out that the red flags are so numerous and hopefully prevent anyone from being caught up in this system. Then again, if Darcy & Roy are a legitimate journal, offering legitimate services, well, reach out. Respond to any of my emails! That would be great.
And if you know more about Darcy & Roy Press, or if you’ve had a good / bad experience with them, you can get me at my email dctrjr [at] proton [dot] me.
See you next week!
Some scribbles
— A big thanks to my guy Chuck, who supported this newsletter with a tip last week. If you get enjoyment out of this, you can also tip at my Ko-Fi. It all helps. We now have $85 in tips, not a dollar spent.
— I published a piece at the Western Australian outlet Particle last week about dark matter and ghost particles. The story was about 3 years in the making and I first started researching for it back in 2022. If you’re into astrophysics, give it a read.
— I backed the Seahawks to win by more than 10 points and I am so glad the Patriots stunk.
— Last week I attended a workshop with Digital Science. Dimensions.ai has been a huge boon to research integrity investigations. Thanks also to Digital Science for the week of deeper access, which helped checking some red flags in this week’s newsletter.
— Am enjoying Dunk & Egg’s little adventure in Knight of the Seven Kingdoms.
Though, to the surprise of no one, this pay to publish model has corrupted even the “best” journals…
The authors did not respond to request for comment.
I contacted the Predatory Journals team to see if they knew any more about these guys, but haven’t heard back.
I contacted these guys, too, but have not heard back.
I contacted the ZoomInfo team to try and understand where they got this information from. Haven’t had a response.