[open-science] Fake Cancer study published in 157 Open Access Journals

[Brian Hole]

I think this is where professional associations like OASPA have a critical
role to play. Publishers can only join if they can show that they are
reputable and follow best practice, and this needs to be monitored and
responsive to community feedback. If a publisher is a member, this should
give authors and others confidence in the journal's procedures and metrics.
While some OASPA members were caught out in this 'sting', the organisation
is investigating this and working to see what it can do to ensure good
conduct, all positive steps to ensure higher quality.

It was interesting that despite sending the sting article out to plenty of
newspapers, the author/Science were not willing to share it with OASPA
equally in advance despite repeated requests. To my mind this is a further
indication that the intention was much more to portray OA in a negative
light than to present a balanced analysis, and to put the OA community on
the back foot as much as possible.

Best,
Brian


On 4 October 2013 17:48, Paola Di Maio <paola.dimaio at gmail.com> wrote:

> Samuel
> metrics are good ad your suggestions go in the right direction imho
>
> but rejection rates can be artificially  inflated too by having  totally
> irrelevant bogus worthless article submitted by friends and family just to
> get the rejection figure up.
>
> as scientists know, everything that a can be proven can also be disproven
>
>
> P
>
>
>
>
> On Fri, Oct 4, 2013 at 9:58 PM, Samuel Leach <samuel.leach at gmail.com>wrote:
>
>> Hi everyone,
>>
>> In terms of metrics, it would be great if journals would publish:
>>
>> - Impact factor (I do have reservations about using this metric in
>> isolation)
>> - Rejection rate.
>>
>> and if we could develop some kind of
>>
>> - Journal reputation score (depends on various factors including the
>> editors and referees' standing - welcome suggestions here).
>>
>> That ought to separate out many of those predatory publishers bogus
>> journals who are forever spamming academics.
>>
>> Sam Leach
>>
>>
>> On 4 October 2013 15:53, Paweł Szczęsny <ps at pawelszczesny.org> wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> On Fri, Oct 4, 2013 at 3:46 PM, Egon Willighagen <
>>> egon.willighagen at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>>
>>>> But the paper *does* *not* show a cause-effect between OA and this
>>>> problem. They just did not do the correct experiment for that. A
>>>> reviewer should have caught that... but, oh wait, peer review is
>>>> broken as the paper found out...
>>>>
>>>>
>>> In principle I agree, however Klaus points out in quite an interesting
>>> direction. Gold OA (APC version) _enabled_ or _let flourish_ (choose your
>>> version) particular predatory business model. Before introduction of OA and
>>> article processing charges pushing weak paper through the journal willing
>>> to 'cooperate' wasn't that easy, as the transfer of benefits wasn't as
>>> automated as today (it was just harder to _pay_ to get your bogus paper
>>> "published"). Apparently, intrinsic problems of peer review (the same for
>>> OA and non-OA publishing) are much easier to be exploited in Gold OA (APC
>>> version).
>>>
>>> For example, if I were predatory publisher I would start to optimize
>>> ratio between image/impact/IF and rejection rate to maximize income (maybe
>>> you could trade a bit of IF but have much smaller rejection rate than PLoS
>>> One?). Such strategy seems to guarantee long-term survival on the market,
>>> as long as APC dominates Gold OA.
>>>
>>> Of course, the original piece doesn't reach that far. However, maybe,
>>> when speaking out on the issue, we should mention PeerJ, as an example of
>>> OA journal that removes a direct incentive for the publisher to publish
>>> more at the cost of quality? The fact that PLoS One rejected the bogus
>>> paper does not help much, as the predatory journals and P1 have in
>>> principle the same business models.
>>>
>>> Best wishes
>>> PS
>>>
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>>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Samuel Leach
>> Mobile: +44(0)7447515032
>> slea.ch
>> @samuelleach
>>
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