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Earth The Media Science

Alleging 'Malpractice' With Climate Skeptic Papers, Publisher Kills Journal 314

sciencehabit writes "A European publisher today terminated a journal edited by climate change skeptics. The journal, Pattern Recognition in Physics, was started less than a year ago. Problems cropped up soon afterward. In July, Jeffrey Beall, a librarian at the University of Colorado, Denver, noted 'serious concerns' with Pattern Recognition in Physics. As he wrote on his blog about open-access publishing, Beall found self-plagiarism in the first paper published by the journal. 'In addition,' says another critic, 'the editors selected the referees on a nepotistic basis, which we regard as malpractice in scientific publishing.'"
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Alleging 'Malpractice' With Climate Skeptic Papers, Publisher Kills Journal

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  • Wait- There's More! (Score:4, Informative)

    by Ol Olsoc ( 1175323 ) on Friday January 17, 2014 @08:24PM (#45994319)
    It's always interesting to follow the money - The journal’s editor-in-chief, Sid-Ali Ouadfeul, works for the Algerian Petroleum Institute

    http://scholarlyoa.com/2013/07/16/recognizing-a-pattern-of-problems-in-pattern-recognition-in-physics/ [scholarlyoa.com]

    Then again, there is Retraction Watch in case deniers just want to claim that the scientists are sitting on their billion dollar yachts sipping their mojitos, and selectively killing only articles about global warming - hey, might as well add creationism while we are into denialism.

    http://retractionwatch.com/2014/01/17/climate-skeptic-journal-shuttered-following-malpractice-in-nepotistic-reviewer-selections/ [retractionwatch.com]

    • Re: (Score:2, Troll)

      by cold fjord ( 826450 )

      Since I think we know that few scientists are billionaires, and yet scientific fraud is documented to exist, you just might be distorting the picture. (I like the bit about, "might as well add creationism while we are into denialism." It really added to your argument. You should have suggested a more sophisticated cocktail for sipping on a "billion dollar yacht" though.) Thank goodness that everyone associated with climate science is clean [weather.com], eh?

      False positives: fraud and misconduct are threatening scient [theguardian.com]

  • Oh my God... (Score:5, Informative)

    by Nezic ( 151658 ) on Friday January 17, 2014 @08:33PM (#45994399)

    There were three *entire* sentences that were self-plagiarized? They shouldn't just kill the journal, but the author himself!

    The horror.

    But seriously, it seems to me that the librarian-blogger is full of himself, and that the publisher may be hyper-sensitive to any form of criticism (or might have people making decisions whose virtually religious views on the topic of climate change align with the librarian, and this was used as an excuse to smack down the journal). Of course that is just supposition.

    This instance of self-plagiarism doesn't exactly seem like it was malicious, I imagine it was an oversight that the journal and author(s) would have no problem correcting.

As you will see, I told them, in no uncertain terms, to see Figure one. -- Dave "First Strike" Pare

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