This post (linked in the Terras piece) and its comments are also quite illuminating.
Comment on Frontiers Launches OA Library Science Journal by billwilliams
↧
↧
Comment on Frontiers Launches OA Library Science Journal by I'd rather not - Ocasapiens - Blog - Repubblica.it
[…] bibliotecari accademici perché pubblichino, al costo di $1.900 per articolo, su una nuova testata, scrive Jeffrey Beall che non l'ha ancora messo fra i predoni dell'open access. Ci manca poco, credo, anche […]
↧
Comment on Frontiers Launches OA Library Science Journal by Nils
Two salient points of Dr Terras’ story:
1) The Editor in Chief published an article in his own journal and personally selected the sole reviewer.
2) Despite the fact that Dr Terras never signed any agreement (and rejected the article’s first version), Frontiers refuse to remove her name from their site, thereby suggesting she endorses the paper.
Hardly the hallmarks of ethical publishing practices. Once again, it shows that one should think carefully before accepting to be an editor… and now even a reviewer, in cases where your name would be published with the paper.
↧
Comment on Frontiers Launches OA Library Science Journal by Nils
@billwilliams: do you mean this link?
http://deevybee.blogspot.co.uk/2015/06/my-collapse-of-confidence-in-frontiers.html
↧
Comment on Frontiers Launches OA Library Science Journal by billwilliams
>@billwilliams: do you mean this link?
http://deevybee.blogspot.co.uk/2015/06/my-collapse-of-confidence-in-frontiers.html
Thanks, Nils.
Yes, I did mean that link – sorry, it got omitted in my post.
↧
↧
Comment on Is SciELO a Publication Favela? by MRamos (@NativeLibrarian)
I am a member of SALALM and I can’t agree with your statement, Mr. Trombatore. Some of us acquired print sciences materials while others do not based on our institutions’ research needs. Our vendors are excellent in finding and supplying sciences materials and much as social sciences and humanities. They can also customize their lists to identify any topic you want to acquire, including sciences.
Now, it is also important to remember that in the sciences the emphasis is to acquire journals, no print monographs. Many of us already subscribed to many Latin American and Caribbean sciences print and online journals. SciELO is a great resource of OA sciences journals in Latin America and its content complements our holdings. As mentioned already, SciELO content is searchable in Web of Sciences, Scopus, and Google Scholar so our faculty already gets access to this important resource.
↧
Comment on OMICS Goes from “Predatory Publishing” to “Predatory Meetings” by I'd rather not - Ocasapiens - Blog - Repubblica.it
[…] s'è appena comprato la partecipazione a una conferenza organizzata a Birmingham, UK, dallo spenna-polli Omics, in qualità di chief scientist dell'Immuno Biotech Ltd e di cliniche […]
↧
Comment on Frontiers Launches OA Library Science Journal by OAguy
What Dr Terras failed to mention in her long blog post is the fact that the paper that she reviewed was not an empirical research article, but merely an extended form of an editorial statement wherein the EIC develops his vision of the field and for the new journal. This is why it only had one reviewer.
↧
Comment on Frontiers Launches OA Library Science Journal by Max
Nils, what you said makes no sense.
If the purpose of having reviewer is to show endorsement from the field then why stop at one? Isn’t it better to have “endorsement” from more reviewers like normal research articles on Frontiers journals? Or perhaps even better, get more co-authors from the editorial board?
If the Frontiers is really as shady as Melissa believes I’m sure the editor won’t have any problem to find enough friends for that. Instead they went through all the trouble to get her in the play field and she handed them a delayed publication process (7 months) which is obvious for people with scientifically trained eyes. Apparently she didn’t “endorse” as much as “causing trouble”. Following your logic if this shows “endorsement” then those reviewers who helped articles published in weeks must be declaring they themselves took bribes!
Even tho I believe Melissa had no harmful intentions, what she did was in practice a typical malicious review that delayed the paper for more than half a year, before she (unintentionally) tried to add insult to injury by undoing the months spent for both the author and herself with name removal. In such situations most publishers won’t offer her as much patience as Frontiers central did, as shown in her blogpost. Frontiers had multiple occasions to get rid of her by e.g. not letting her review the 2nd time and comply with her request to opt for favourable reviewers, but they did not go for the easy cut and seemed to adhere to some standard. If more scientists would treat their negative data as Frontiers with Melissa, we’d be dealing with far better science than we have today.
↧
↧
Comment on Appeals by Hayder Fatlawi
Hello Mr.Beall …
Please … Can you explain why you list
European Journal of Scientific Research in your list and is that mean impact factor of it is fake ? Thanks
http://www.europeanjournalofscientificresearch.com/
↧
Comment on Two OA Journals Share the Same Title and Each Claims the Other is Not Legitimate by Craig Hassapakis
Amphibian & Reptile Conservation continues to publish significant papers that advance our knowledge of amphibians and reptiles species worldwide:
NEW MAJOR PAPER PUBLISHED ON THE CONSERVATION REASSESSMENT OF AMPHIBIANS AND REPTILES OF CENTRAL AMERICA.
CITATION: Johnson JD, Mata-Silva V, Wilson LD. 2015. A conservation reassessment of the Central American herpetofauna based on the EVS measure. Amphibian & Reptile Conservation 9(2): 1–94 (e100).
↧
Comment on Open-Access Journal Publishes Review Article with Questionable CoI Statement by Klaas van Dijk
‘The Open Ornithology Journal’ is another journal of Bentham Open. Quite a few recent papers in this journal list “PATIENT’S CONSENT Declared none.” This is also the case for papers without information about Humans (H. sapiens).
An example is http://benthamopen.com/contents/pdf/TOOENIJ/TOOENIJ-7-55.pdf Please note that the first author is the EiC of this journal. I am curious about opinions of native speakers of English about the level of English in this paper. This paper does not list the name of the photographers of the pictures of the birds depicted in figure 1 (page 58).
http://benthamopen.com/contents/pdf/TOOENIJ/TOOENIJ-8-10.pdf is an example of a paper with details about Humans and birds (“Lake use by three avian piscivores and Humans”). Still with the statement [ “PATIENT’S CONSENT Declared none.” ].
http://benthamopen.com/contents/pdf/TOOENIJ/TOOENIJ-6-52.pdf is a paper with two authors and with a COI statement which lists: [“CONFLICT OF INTEREST. The author(s) confirm that this article content has no conflicts of interest.”]
↧
Comment on More Published Pseudo-Science from Chinese Publisher SCIRP by Onolay
Why shatter the image of SCIRP?? I mean, its just an open access journal…You can find both quality and non quality publications there. Maybe you should rather alert the proper authorities that some of their reviewers are not properly reviewing the articles.
Another thing is that, you could help them by volunteering to review some of their articles to enhance quality.
↧
↧
Comment on Frontiers Launches OA Library Science Journal by Nils
Max, I’m sorry, but I am not able to follow you here.
If an EiC publishes in his own journal, and the paper is not to be considered as an editorial or an opinion piece, the normal thing to do would have been to ask one of the other editorial board members to handle the review process. This is an elementary step to avoid practices as those used by El Naschie and consorts, who published hundreds of paper in their own journal.
You make a harsh accusation by qualifying Dr Terras’ “delay” as a typical malicious review (btw, it strikes me as disrespectful to call a third party by their first name in a conversation when you are not personally acquainted with them, do you hold a personal grudge against Dr Terras?). In my field, waiting at least half a year for a review is considered to be the norm. I don’t even bother to contact the editorial office earlier than six months after I have submitted a paper. Perhaps habits are different in digital humanities, but even though, stigmatising a few month’s delay as malicious seems far-fetched to me.
You seem to resent “malicious reviewers”. In my field, we have a very simple and effective way of preventing its worst consequences: whenever we submit a paper, we deposit it on the arXiv and/or similar repositories. This will not prevent a reviewer of delaying the review process, but at least it will prevent them from scooping you. Also, the harm of a few month’s delay in publication is much reduced, because your work is already available as a preprint.
Finally, please don’t forget that there is another side to the coin: if the review process is not properly handled, it can happen that reviewers lack impartiality by giving positive advice on a low-quality paper. There even have been a number of cases of fake reviewers, who managed to review their own or their friend’s works under forged identities.
(Disclaimer: I do not know Dr Melissa Terras, I never met her,
nor have I had any correspondence with her before writing this reply).
↧
Comment on Another Fleet Startup: JSciMed Central by D.B. Green
One of my coauthors picked a JSciMed journal as a target for a manuscript we wrote, based on some names she knew from an article in the journal. Having never heard the JSciMed, I’m glad I decided to do a little homework. Consistent with others reviewing JSciMed, I found nothing but “scam,” at best. Before I completely wrote them off, despite being on the Beall’s “Index Librorum Prohibitorum” of scientific journals, I decided to get more information. 4 emails to 3 different JSciMed addresses and a phone call later, I still have not heard from a single representative of JSciMed with answers to my questions.
My conclusion? The answers to my questions probably would result in us not submitting to their journal anyway, so why bother? Or, perhaps, a live person doesn’t even exist at these addresses and phones. Either way, we submitted elsewhere.
I have been asked repeatedly to review articles for fraudulent OA journals and respectable OA journals, and the difference in the requests has been sufficient for me to turn down *every* fraudulent OA journal request. Every time, every fraud journal, the review request is to comment on the quality of the writing, not on the quality of the science. I don’t know if this is universal but my sample size is 3 from different fraud journals, which is a large enough sample size for me to believe it’s the norm.
Among the biggest problems that I see with these fraud journals with their suspect science and suspect review policies is that the researchers in my and other’s labs will come across these journals and cite the articles or try to apply the presented science. The work may be high quality and valid, and that’s great, or it may be incomplete work or junk science and then I have members of my lab wasting their valuable time following poor leads. Because of this, I have instituted a policy that all references obtained by Google searches have to be backed up with other abstracting services (e.g., Chemical Abstracts Services, Science Citation Index, et al.) for validation. Not being in CAS or SCI is not an immediate disqualification, but does make us stop to consider the journal. Naturally, bad science will be published everywhere, but based on my experience journal mill articles, like JSciMed, they are more apt to get in the way of the scientific endeavor.
↧
Comment on Appeals by Jeffrey Beall
It’s a fake journal that accepts pretty much everything submitted. It really has no connection with Europe; it is from Mauritius.
↧
Comment on Frontiers Launches OA Library Science Journal by herr doktor bimler
Much unlike Amway, there is no financial incentive for topic editors, they do not get paid for recruiting authors.
There are indeed financial incentives for Special Topic editors, in the form of a discount for their own publications in Frontiers.
For one recent Special Topic in Frontiers in Neurology, the editor / instigator / chief reviewer was an anti-vaccine loon, providing a forum for other anti-vaccine loons.
http://scienceblogs.com/aetiology/2015/08/04/another-frontiers-in-journal-steps-in-it/
↧
↧
Comment on Frontiers Launches OA Library Science Journal by Max
Nils, I agree that my accusation of malicious review was way too harsh and I leave my sincerest apologies here for Dr. Terras should she read our comments.
First of all I’m from a Scandinavian country where the cultural norm is to address even the most respected persons in firstname. Calling someone Dr X is considered alienating and bizarre. Now we both learned our respective way isn’t always the norm elsewhere.
You have no proof for your point 1 since the paper in question was not edited by the author himself but Dr. Ganascia. Dr. Terras even said she “dealt with the editorial team, not Frederic”. Readers got the perception that Fred handpicked his own reviewer simply because he initially asked her if she can be a reviewer for the journal, which is different from asking her to review a specific paper. Again she was later contacted by the editorial team and not Fred. As a founder of DH he probably recruited multiple reviewers personally so whenever he publishes something chances are the paper gets reviewed by someone he enlisted. As much as Dr Terras deserves an apology from me Dr Kaplan may use an apology from you.
Dr Terras then said after the 2nd review she only pointed out minor errors and agreed the manuscript can be published after correcting the typos. Her concerns were 1) after her initial rejection the modified manuscript went back to her rather than to another reviewer; and 2) she was the sole reviewer; she didn’t ask for name removal because she strongly opposed the paper’s content.
Now your 2nd point, what if they did remove her name? If Frontiers follow a certain standard, removing her name means the paper becomes un-reviewed and must go along with her name. She is technically asking for a retraction. Right there it’s a grey zone: on one hand Frontiers could’ve asked for more reviewers while on the other hand Dr. Terras helped ensure the paper was technically sound so why should it become collateral damage? The decision eventually went to some editor (still not Frederic) who kept her name and the paper. Frontiers reasoning, altho somewhat ambiguous, is not completely unjust given the circumstances.
Now to your other points: in our field we usually don’t deposit data on arXiv. Even if we do malicious reviews should still be despised since it prevents people from citing your work when publishing is delayed and/or lowers your aggregate IF, which sadly remains the standard for performance evaluation. Regarding the issue of fake reviewers I believe the direct submission model of PNAS is where a fix is most necessary due to the journal’s high reputation.
(Disclaimer: I’m a complete bystander and not in any way associated with the journals or persons I mentioned in this discussion)
↧
Comment on Open-Access Journal Publishes Review Article with Questionable CoI Statement by MC
” I am curious about opinions of native speakers of English about the level of English in this paper.”
The first article is written poorly, but it is more read-able than some of the other stuff that gets published in other predatory journals. However, when the first sentence isn’t grammatically correct, it’s hard to give out too much credit:
“Songbirds evolution (Aves, Passeriformes, Passeri) have
frequently been studied.”
I also liked this:
“DISCUSSION
Some topics and questions arise from our results. ”
haha, right….
I am unhappy to see that none of the birds consented to being studied.
↧
Comment on The OMICS Publishing Group’s Empire is Expanding by Chem
I hope CrazyDomains, GoDaddy and Network Solutions take strict action on Austin Group (http://austinpublishinggroup.org/). Their action depend on the quantity and seriousness of complaints they receive. Thus, authors cheated by the Austin Group should write to these domain registrars. Jeffrey sir, what do you think?
↧
More Pages to Explore .....
