The rise of for-profit and fly-by-night enterprises posing as legitimate peer-reviewed research journals are to academia what spam is to email. Possibly worse. It's a scourge that undermines the rigor and validity of scientific discovery and communication by decreasing the signal-to-noise ratio. Thankfully, they are largely unsophisticated and dupe relatively few, but young, inexperienced, and desperate researchers are routinely tempted by the prospect of "easy" publications to pad their vitas.
This looks totally legit, right?
I am glad to learn some information.
ReplyDeleteA legit journal would know that "plz" is written with a 'z'! :)
ReplyDeleteAcademia should experiment with alternative models. The single-gatekeeper approach of academic publication feels very brittle and dated. It also grants too much benefit to publishing houses for very little investment.
ReplyDeleteIn today's world it should be possible to implement trackable reviews and open publishing in a way that would allow a reader to assess the peer-evaluated quality of a paper without having to rely on a journal's reputation.
Agreed. I receive invitations to submit papers to such journals nearly daily. I receive invitations to serve on the editorial board of such journals several times each month. What I find noteworthy is this: whereas I have received invitations to serve on the editorial board of at least 20 of these fly-by-night journals, I have never received an invitation to review a paper for one of these journals. From this, I conclude that their claim to submit papers for peer review is a lie.
ReplyDeleteMost likely they charge authors to publish their papers, perhaps disguising the fees as some kind of expense offset.
ReplyDeleteThey will find a market among 3rd rate authors who want to pad their resumes. Ugh.
Pfft. I got invited to join the Illuminati.
ReplyDeletehttps://plus.google.com/u/0/+NateMcD/posts/45Pxmx3ktLP
Andreas Bartels British would use a s, Americans a z, but a bona-fide publisher would use please.
ReplyDeleteHand in hand with the bogus academic journal publishers are the bogus professional meeting organizers. Weekly I get invited to chair a session at a scientific meeting, typically in China, and always associated with the requirement to pay a big registration fee.
ReplyDeleteThese meetings usually seed the pot by paying one past-his-prime Nobel prize winner to agree allow his name to be included in the list of attendees. The latest wrinkle I have seen is the pyramid scheme scientific meeting, where they agree to waive my registration fee if I persuade ten of my colleagues to register for the meeting.
The usual tip-off that the meeting is bogus is that I am invited to chair sessions on subjects that are entirely outside of my expertise while praising me for my world-famous contributions to the subject. These invitations e-mails are invariably tagged to notify the sender if I delete the message, and they usually are followed by three or four follow-up messages indicating that the meeting organizers are entirely mystified why I have not responded. A pox on all of them.
And then, of course, is the concerted effort by a small group of trolls to disrupt every science-related social media account posting by NASA and other science-y organizations. A pox on these as well. We've all seen them, when, for instance, Curiosity sends a cool pictures, invariable somebody pops up with an anti-science screed that ends up derailing the conversation.
ReplyDeleteBut I don't like spam...
ReplyDeleteMark Bothwell Indeed...they are, collectively, a pox upon my inbox.
ReplyDelete