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Comment on Instead of a Peer Review, Reviewer Sends Warning to Authors by Cesar


Comment on Beall’s List of Predatory Publishers 2015 by Jeffrey Beall

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There are several journals with this title … can you send a link so I am sure I know which one you’re referring to?

Comment on Instead of a Peer Review, Reviewer Sends Warning to Authors by Franck Vazquez

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Dear Mr. Beall,
This is Dr. Franck Vazquez, Chief Scientific Officer of MDPI. As I indicated to Dr. Gromov (and cc to you yesterday 16.12.2015) we could not disclose the report of the second reviewer without his formal agreement. This is the second basic principle of peer-review guidelines of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE)(http://bit.ly/1iIQdwf ), also mentionned in §2.a of the recommendations of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE)(http://bit.ly/1Yoj46y ).
We received the reviewer’s consent to make his report public on 16.12.2015 we have shared his report with Dr. Gromov today (17.12.2015). Of note, the Editor-in-Chief of Atmosphere is a renowned expert in atmospheric sciences. He made the decision to accept this paper for publication after evaluation of both reviewers’ comments. He may be willing to comment on his decision later. Atmosphere is indexed in SCIE and has an Impact Factor since 2013.

Comment on Instead of a Peer Review, Reviewer Sends Warning to Authors by Jeffrey Beall

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It’s regrettable that the “renowned expert” editor missed the scientific flaws that the reviewer tried to report.

You can try to hide behind your SCIE and impact factor all you want, but it won’t change the fact that MDPI is an easy-acceptance open-access publisher.

Comment on Instead of a Peer Review, Reviewer Sends Warning to Authors by Jeffrey Beall

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Franck, also, one of the documents you link to <a href="http://www.icmje.org/recommendations/browse/roles-and-responsibilities/responsibilities-in-the-submission-and-peer-peview-process.html" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">says </a>this: "Editors are encouraged to share reviewers’ comments with co-reviewers of the same paper, so reviewers can learn from each other in the review process." You need to work on your reading comprehension. Can't MDPI do any better than this?

Comment on Misleading Metrics by epg

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Dear Prof. Beall,
What can you say about “The International Journal of Science, Mathematics and Technology Learning” of Common Ground CG Publisher? http://ijlsmtl.cgpublisher.com/

Is it a predatory journal/publisher? Thanks.

Comment on Instead of a Peer Review, Reviewer Sends Warning to Authors by From Morocco

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Though MDPI is removed from Beall’s List, it’s still hovering on the frontiers of predatory publishers. I can’t deny that in MDPI there is some improvement compared to what was before.
The paradox: What if we call MDPI as a HYBRID publisher (legitimate & predatory)?

An interesting blog by Leonid Schneider exposing double standard of Nature (NPG): Optionally transparent peer review https://forbetterscience.wordpress.com/2015/12/17/optionally-transparent-peer-review-a-major-step-forward-but-which-direction/
Here are some cherry-picked passages:

“Nature Communications was primarily intended as such specialized journal, with the purpose of catching all these manuscripts rejected upstairs at the Nature family. …… if a paper is rejected for not being good enough, the elite journal retains its reputation and precious impact factor, but loses the cash from the publication fees. To avoid the customer’s dollars, euros, pounds and yen from going elsewhere, publishers introduce new journals to catch up the papers rejected at their premium outlets.”
“The article processing charges (APC) at Nature Communications are princely €3,700 per article, nothing to be sniffed at. Later on, as Nature Communications gained respectability, NPG has introduced Scientific Reports, another open access journal where papers previously rejected at Nature Communications are often published. The APC at Scientific Reports is not bad either: €1,165 per article.”

Comment on Instead of a Peer Review, Reviewer Sends Warning to Authors by Farzad

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It appears that the manipulation of peer-review process is not only widespread but also is evolving and taking new shapes given the technological advances made in the area of online submissions and manuscript review process.

The latest of these unscrupulous methods is perpetrated by creating counterfeit emails and accounts that are used to get around genuine and authentic peer-review process and provide fake review reports for the manuscripts.

I came across a retracted article in the Scientific World Journal published by Hindawi Corporation in which a previously published article was withdrawn because it was found to be accepted for publication according to false review reports submitted to the editors of the journal via bogus reviewers` accounts.

Below I provide a link related to this act which is also accompanied by a statement from the publisher.

http://www.hindawi.com/journals/tswj/2014/629412

It is my hope that Dr. Beall will look into this matter and shed light on how it could be possibly carried out and what publishers have been affected by this ostensibly systematic fraud.


Comment on Beall’s List of Predatory Publishers 2015 by Andy

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Hi Prof Beall; Is being predatory not illegal and punishable by the law? I am just pondering why predatory journals and publishers are flourishing all over and the law is just blind. I am tempted to likened them to scammers!!!
Sorry for taking you from another angle!!
Andy

Comment on Beall’s List of Predatory Publishers 2015 by Jeffrey Beall

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In most cases, freedom of the press allows the predatory publishers to operate with impunity. If they add names to their editorial boards without permission, this may be identity theft.

Comment on Misleading Metrics by Jeffrey Beall

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Common Ground, the publisher, is out of scope for my work because it’s not an open-access publisher. However, I receive many inquiries about it, an indication to me that researchers find it questionable.

Comment on Instead of a Peer Review, Reviewer Sends Warning to Authors by Nils

Comment on Instead of a Peer Review, Reviewer Sends Warning to Authors by tekija

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The real threat of predatory journals on science integrity does not lie in the predatory journals themselves. It lies in traditional publishers increasingly copycating their practices and fees and adjusting their services toward these lower and thus less costly standards, such as publishing papers without copy editing. Wherever you publish, read very, very carefully the small print in the instructions for authors.

For an example see e.g. the comments thread in: http://retractionwatch.com/2015/11/23/mystery-a-bullet-with-no-entrance-wound-in-a-paper-with-no-spell-check/

Comment on Beall’s List of Predatory Publishers 2015 by fsuzun

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Ofcourse not! In the contrary, they followed a serious process with three different reviewers with at least two or three revisions and corrections. It was not an easy process as we compare with the other high level journals. That is why I wonder you included this journal in the list?

Comment on Instead of a Peer Review, Reviewer Sends Warning to Authors by Robert Cameron

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I worry about your last sentence. If cases are not heard in the open, how do we get a handle on the extent of real bad practice? Sure, there are some plain bad reviewers defending their own turf as well as fake reviews. As I said earlier, it is helpful if editors send reviewers the anonymous responses of other reviewers. If I find that my comments are ignored , it helps if I see that other reviewers have very different views. Ultimately, the decision has to rest with the editor, but it is easier to accept if I can be shown to be out of line with others. While I think Jeffrey’s response to you is a tad cynical, there is enough bad practice around that editors (perhaps unfortunately) should be able to answer charges like the one that started this string in public.


Comment on Instead of a Peer Review, Reviewer Sends Warning to Authors by Robert Cameron

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Basically, a reply to WK Dawson. Thanks: I think the moral here is for editors to tell reviewers why their recommendation has been discarded. I guess what annoyed Gromov was not getting any feedback from the editors.
In my experience, it more often happens the other way round: I recommend acceptance (maybe with modification) but I learn later that the journal has rejected it. Sometimes, I get to see other reviews. The editor of course has the final decision. This raises a different can of worms: being asked to review for a journal that has an 80%+ rejection rate. I have refused a few review requests in these cases, though I know the editors of some journals try to weed out the terminally unsuitable before asking for reviews.
And some authors are also unscrupulous: As an associate editor I accepted a paper but spent a lot of time improving the English and the organisation of the text. I sent it back to the author for approval of my editorial changes and never heard again: Having had a free service, the paper went to different journal!
Sorry, this is drifting a bit. What I don’t like, but others evidently do, is the idea of everything being up there in the public domain for open, post-publication review. Having a public disagreement about a properly reviewed and published paper is a different matter.

Comment on Instead of a Peer Review, Reviewer Sends Warning to Authors by wkdawson

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A reply to Robert Cameron: Thank you also. Again, I probably largely agree with you.

Certainly a “post-decision” explanation was clearly lacking and exacerbated by a failure to genuinely engage the aggrieved reviewer. Though it may not have assuaged Gromov’s bemusement, at least some of the heat would have been focused directly on the responsible party.

There are times when a reviewer will never be satisfied and the editor must make the call. I cannot tell if this is what happened here, but the editor should not stonewall either. Authors can abuse the system too, forgetting that it is a privilege to publish and even so much as besmirching the good faith of the review process.

I don’t think everything should be published. The “signal” is probably weak in most of the journals Beall complains about. However, that does not mean that it is _always_ pure noise. That is where I find I have problems.

Is it better that an expression like “z = x + iy” from an obscure surveyor in the Netherlands should sit in a musty archive for some 80 years before some librarian stumbles on the work while moving material around and happens to know a prominent French mathematician? Most of that archive probably was just paper, but we should never forget that gems can appear in unexpected places, as in this rare example. I consider it fair to raise a flag, but work should not be dismissed (or accepted for that matter) simply based on where it was published. Such judgements should be made only after reading the paper (or at least making an attempt to read it and then perhaps finally confronting the author).

Comment on Instead of a Peer Review, Reviewer Sends Warning to Authors by Weekend reads: 179 researchers indicted; how to reject a rejection; breaking the law on clinical trial data - Retraction Watch at Retraction Watch

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[…] of a peer review, a reviewer sent a warning to a manuscript’s authors, Jeffrey Beall […]

Comment on Criteria for Determining Predatory Open-Access Publishers (2nd edition) by Alexandra

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Dear Jeffrey: An invitation was sent to our University from Pinnacle Journal Publication and the link of course was distributed to all the teachers who trusted and submitted articles, is it 100% scam? or there is a chance that they are valid? thank you

Comment on Open-Access Journal Offers to Pay Peer Reviewers by fexadom

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Fake open access journals should know better than to send spam to Jeffrey Beall!

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