Fake Academic Journals Are a Very Real Problem 248
derekmead writes "Because its become so easy to start a new publication in this new pixel-driven information economy, a new genre of predatory journals is emerging at an alarming rate. The New York Times just published an exposée of sorts on the topic. Its only an exposée of sorts because the scientific community knows about the problem. There are blogs set up to shame the fake journals into halting publishing. There are tutorials online for spotting a fake journal. There's even a list created and maintained by academic librarian Jeffrey Beall that keeps an eye on all the new fake journals coming out. When Beall started the list in 2010, it had only 20 entries. Now it has over 4,000. The journal Nature even published an entire issue on the problem a couple of weeks ago. So again, scientists know this is a problem. They just don't know how to stop it."
'fake'? (Score:1, Interesting)
What exactly is the difference between a 'fake' journal and a 'real' journal? How much you pay?
FPs on this list are unacceptable (Score:4, Interesting)
Hence if a valid new journal comes up that wants to do business for less, care must be taken to ensure it doesn't end up on the dreaded "fake journal" lists.
I don't debate that most are propaganda but (Score:5, Interesting)
So it is great that the corporate shills are being outed but I would prefer some actual analysis. Look at the articles, look at who funded them. Look for real connections between those who write and those who are publishing. A great example of a superb analysis was when Encyclopedia Britannica called out Wikipedia as basically a bunch of half assed crap while they were the bastions of excellence in research. So a group of people randomly selected a bunch of articles from both, then rigorously fact checked them with the result that at the time they were basically even with Wikipedia adding articles at a fantastic rate.
A simple question that I have about Wikipedia is, what qualification did Jimmy Wales have to start Wikipedia? To be specific his job prior to Wiki was running "a male-oriented web portal featuring entertainment and adult content" Another would be Matt Drudge (love him or hate him) of the drudge report who had "a job in the gift shop of CBS studios, eventually working his way up to manager" just prior to becoming one of the single largest forces in modern journalism.
These people were about as unqualified on paper to do what they did as is possible yet they were massive forces of change. Was slashdot created by a team of experts from the leading technical universities in the world?
Then there are the failings of the best journals themselves. Bad article do slip by. Big companies get their one-sided views in print. Yet right now there is a revolution going on where institutions are sick of paying crazy prices for access to the top journals who are having trouble justifying these prices except to their shareholders.
When I read the criteria to be a "bad" journal some it is quite reasonable such as how open the whole process is, but over and over it basically says, we academics know better and had better be the gatekeepers so that we can keep our jobs. To me a bunch of crap journals are a sign of good things being in the wind. Much like how social media is changing the world with great things that Twitter can bring us it brings us tweets like, "nothin on tv, so bord, YOLO!!!!"
Re:You can start by reading their work (Score:5, Interesting)
Some fake journals try pretty hard to blur the line though. There are a lot of journals out there for publishing really boring results, especially fields that have voluminous compilations and other details results that may be important, but don't represent a break through (e.g. compilations of detail spectroscopy measurements). A lot of researchers in the same field might not even be able to name such journals despite them being respectable, useful, and completely legitimate. Then there are fake journals that seek out and solicit results that are similar, and likely to not end up in more major journals. Or I've seen cases of journals seeking out articles that look like they are from people that don't speak English as well, or are from out of the field. They are legitimate articles, that may have trouble getting into top journals due to being a bit more mundane. Then the fake journal slips in a few articles with no or pointless peer review, interleaved with otherwise decent articles.
It then comes down to a bit of luck and how much time you spend investigating the journal and other articles. I once came across one that had several detailed, articles on semiconductor material properties that seemed legit and in agreement with results our group had. But then all of a sudden there was a paper that the conclusions were based on numerology and which digits they liked better. Further investigation found that maybe one in five or one in ten articles were complete non-scientific BS (with deceptive abstracts), and equal portion of just really bad papers that probably got rejected everywhere else (but with good sounding abstracts), and then the rest was filler from legit, if unpolished, papers.
let me explain (Score:2, Interesting)
As a PhD who was, for a brief period, a world expert in a certain obscure branch of DNA technology:
The idea that people don't know what the real journals are is ludicrous.
In any field, there are 10 or 20 to journals; most scientists spend most of their time in no more then 20 or so journals; you can easily verify this by looking at the citations in any scientific paper.
However, the are a lot of not very good and bad papers; some are sleazy efforts to promote some companies products; others are just the normal work product of scientists (sturgeon's rule applies)
So, driven by profit motive and the desparate need to publish so as to obtain tenure, journals arise to fill the need
However, everyone who is not an idiot knows what the small number of decent journals in their field are.
Re:Even worse (Score:5, Interesting)
Money in the medical field is a double edged sword: it induces corruptness, but it also enables studies at a scale that are unfundable in other fields.
Ban Elsevier! (Score:5, Interesting)
That's terrible. Can someone please contact Jeffrey Beall and tell him to add Elsevier to the fake journals list.
Thank God! We nearly let that one get through!