| Kowsar | |
| Status: | Active |
| Founded: | 2002 |
| Founders: | --> |
| Country: | The Netherlands |
| Headquarters: | Heerlen |
| Distribution: | Worldwide |
| Keypeople: | Seyyed Mohammad Miri (CEO) |
| Publications: | Open access scientific journals |
| Numemployees: | 30 (in 2019)[1] |
Kowsar - now Brieflands - is an STM publishing company which was founded in 2002 by S.M. Miri and Seyed-Moayed Alavian. Kowsar journals have been peer reviewed and are published open access under a Creative Commons Attribution License Non Commercial 4.0.[2] The company is a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics.[3]
The publisher has been included in several studies of predatory journals,[4] [5] and was included on Beall's List prior to its shutdown in 2017.[6] In 2018, PubMed Central conducted a re-evaluation of 16 Kowsar journals indexed in the database; 14 were found to "no longer satisfy PMC's Scientific Quality Standard" and were accordingly delisted.[7] Some of its journals, like Anesthesiology and Pain Medicine, incorrectly claimed to be included in the Directory of Open Access Journals.[8] The issue has been resolved in December 2019.[9]
In 2022, the company - formerly known as KowsarMedical Publishing - became Brieflands.
The first journal published by Kowsar was Hepatitis Monthly. As of October 2019, Kowsar publishes 49 journals.[10] It has published more in the past.[7] The following journals are or were published by Kowsar.