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

Fri Oct 4 18:02:37 UTC 2013

Hi List,

I am just curious as to what is the greater potential concern here: that
well-intentioned authors are being deceived, or that demand from dishonest
authors has created a large market for dishonest publishers (possibly in an
attempt to deceive employers who assess their output by volume?)

Last week's Economist
piece<http://www.economist.com/news/china/21586845-flawed-system-judging-research-leading-academic-fraud-looks-good-paper/>seemed
to focus on the latter problem (valuing that industry at $150
million in 2009 and rapidly growing).  The discussion around the Science
piece has been less clear, though it seems to have publishers in the
cross-hairs.

In a different vein, Would a more transparent peer review system, as
practised by both some APC-based OA and some subscription journals, have
addressed concerns this piece raises?

On Fri, Oct 4, 2013 at 9:48 AM, 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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>
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-- 
Carl Boettiger
UC Santa Cruz
http://carlboettiger.info/
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