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Comment on One Problem with the Scholarly Publishing Industry by Harvey Kane
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Comment on One Problem with the Scholarly Publishing Industry by AnnieL
Nils, you are right, my opening statement was quite unfair and most authors obviously take a great deal of time over their papers, as a fair reflection of the time it took them to do the science they are now communicating. Those papers are a pleasure to edit. But there are certainly a not-insignificant number of (usually very senior) scientists who apparently feel it’s someone else’s job (mine?) to get their paper into a state of legibility. And thus, it appears to me that these researchers are very much relying on the person copy-editing their paper being able to decipher the science.
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Comment on One Problem with the Scholarly Publishing Industry by AnnieL
No personal offence taken, Jaime. But you’re hardly the first person to question the publishing practices of some of the journals run by Elsevier (such as the recent walk-out by the entire editorial board of Lingua). Surely the issues you describe are more a reflection of questionable management practices by this particular publisher rather than anything directly caused by academics migrating into publishing?
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Comment on One Problem with the Scholarly Publishing Industry by Jaime A. Teixeira da Silva
AnnieL, please note that I was not claiming to be the first person to ever question the ethics of Elsevier. Elseviers ethics have always been in question – more precisely Reed-Elsevier – ever since its involvement in the weapon’s industry a decade ago. I was simply bringing forward a real case study that shows how the underqualified nature of a science drop-out in leading a crusade to get me banned, despite not being a seasoned plant scientist, or an ethics expert, had a very real and negative consequence. I was simply bringing forward a single case study since I did not see anyone else present a case yet. The purpose was not to question the ethics of Elsevier. Its clear lack of ethics is not in dispute any longer. What does make me curious is why scientists are not willing to call Elsevier “predatory”. Why is everyone so fearful? Or perhaps by banning a scientist like me seeds fear…
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Comment on Appeals by Dewi
Dear Sir,
Do you include IISTE on your scam journal because they have official website and address and phone number +1-718-485-5656 but I am not sure if that is their Real phone number. Please tell us your opinion about this journal.
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Comment on Appeals by Jeffrey Beall
They are on the list for many reasons, including the ones you mention (lack of transparency, displaying a U.S. telephone number to make it appear they are U.S.-based). This publisher is on my list. I find it low quality and recommend that all researchers avoid submitting work to its journals.
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Comment on Snapshots of Recent Additions to the List of Questionable Publishers by MC
You are citing one isolated incident in a weird journal no one has heard of, in a “field” no one believes in. You run the risk of having an unseen and largely useless career. But if you wanted to make a difference, convince those making the ayurveda “drugs” to take the heavy metals out.
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Comment on One Problem with the Scholarly Publishing Industry by Jeffrey Beall
Yes, there are some, and the number is increasing.
Thank you for alerting me to this journal -- I had not heard of it before. I have analyzed it and added it to my <a href="http://scholarlyoa.com/individual-journals/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">list</a>.
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Comment on Snapshots of Recent Additions to the List of Questionable Publishers by Marco
If your argument is that the journal is predatory because it is focused on pseudoscience, you better add that to your criteria.
At the moment it is not mentioned, and therefore the journal should not feature on your list, unless it does fulfill other criteria.
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Comment on Snapshots of Recent Additions to the List of Questionable Publishers by Jeffrey Beall
In fact it is mentioned.
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Comment on One Problem with the Scholarly Publishing Industry by Greg
Today I would like to ask your opinion about International Journal of Science and Engineering Investigations: http://www.ijsei.com/
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Comment on One Problem with the Scholarly Publishing Industry by Peter A
Dear Jeff
Will you include also in your list a publisher that offers free only the Abstract while the full PDF is available only if you pay them 60 USD? They are not Open Access. However, I wonder if they have serious peer review.
I am waiting your answe
Peter A
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Comment on Another Controversial Paper from Frontiers by Keith Fraser
I don’t think this was written by computer. It looks more like something written by someone with an inflated opinion of their own genius waffling on and on and making reference to all sorts of different things without really saying very much. It reads like the front page of some New Age/pseudoscience/self-help website (or a promo on LinkedIn for a book in a similar vein), not a scientific paper. Notably, it doesn’t seem to describe any actual computation, studies or models; if it were the front page of such a website, I’d expect to have to buy the author’s book or shell out to go on their course to find out their secret.
Check out some extracts from the author’s response to criticism, which is about as coherent as the actual “paper”:
‘To see the interconnectedness/inter-relationships of all biologic systems, and thus the validity of Systems Science, many still prevailing concepts may need to be reconsidered and modified; however, such is the process of discovery, and history often shows that the higher the “temperature” of comments, the more likely the scientific paper does contain contributions that, eventually, prove its usefulness/validity.’
‘all writers are also biologic systems in their own right and can be either system “optimizing” or “non-optimizing.” The outcome of my reflection was the realization that Systems Science highlights the importance of “relationships” and, among all them, the one with “Self” assumes primacy. In such a scenario, the perceived need for defense of “Self’s Ego” by any individual biologic system often invokes the toxic power of emotions eliminating any rationality and simultaneously leaving basic courtesy in any dialog behind.’
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Comment on Beall’s List of Predatory Publishers 2016 by Patricia Keith-Spiegel
Thank you so much for creating this critically important resource, Fraud and corruption are everywhere, and you shine bright on a scourge that sullies the search for excellent and truth in science.
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Comment on One Problem with the Scholarly Publishing Industry by Jaime A. Teixeira da Silva
Vijay, thank you for these comments, and I also thank Jeffrey for allowing these comments to be made, because this issue is an important part of the publishing machine we are all part of. In fact, as authors, we are nothing. We are just disposables, and commodities whose intellect is sold and traded among the highest bidders. At the end of the day, it’s all about profit, and for the larger corporations like Elsevier, it’s about satisfying stock-holders. However, I think we need to take some positive aspects of Elsevier, Springer Nature, Taylor & Francis and Wiley into consideration: they remain the safest depositories of scientific information, partly because of their massive profit margin, so they are able to invest in a safe infrastructure for information. I suspect that this may the reason why no journals from any of these publishers have yet been listed on Beall’s lists.
So, even though we may find bad science, bad editorial work and sloppy editors, and plenty of plagiarism in the literature of at least two of these four publishers, the fact that they are actively doing something about it (see the spike in retractions and errata over the past 2-3 years) indicates that they are “responsibly predatory”, unlike the many of the journals and/or publishers on Beall’s lists that are “irresponsibly predatory”. In other words, even though both “sets” or “categories” are, as I see it, “predatory” (in the sense that they simply want to extract our money and our institutes’ money), what differentiates them is the organizational structure that makes one “safe” and the other “unsafe”.
That is why, I believe, it is also difficult to include Hindawi, MDPI or Frontiers as predatory OA journals/publishers, because the organizational structure they provide has now begun to offer a level of “safety” that cannot be compared with more “suspect” OA journals. Again, by “safety” I am referring to the repository of intellect, indexing, etc. Again, I suspect that Beall, being a librarian, is most interested in this “safety” aspect and how the journals and publishers on his lists fail to provide that “safety”.
People often ask me, if you hate Elsevier so much, then why do you wish to continue publishing in their journals? And the reason lies in this “safety” aspect, where we have to imagine our intellect, our aspirations and our legends in 50 or 100 years from now. We have to ask ourselves, if we spend an X amount of time on research, a Y amount of time on writing a paper and a Z amount of energy trying to get it published, ultimately, where do you want that investment (XYZ) to be published? In most cases, I still believe that scientists wish their intellect to be deposited in one of these four main scholarly repositories. This may be as a result of decades of brain-washing, or from decades of not having any other “safe” choices. Call me traditional, or call me stupid, I still believe that Elsevier is most likely the safest depository of scientific information.
The question is, those who wish for the downfall of Elsevier, think carefully about the future of intellectual information: what happens to the 12 million+ articles if Elsevier takes a nose-dive? This would be a disastrous situation for science. The same applies to the other three behemoths I list above. And that is why these corporations are so powerful: because they know the power of holding the copyright to this intellectual goldmine holds scientists and institutes in check. Holding the right to knowledge represents great, great power, and always has throughout history.
So, another question emerges, why do I fight Elsevier so hard? Why am I calling for the resignation of the Editor-in-Chief of Elsevier’s Scientia Horticulturae? And this is where things get prickly. I do not believe that banning scientists for being critical of the establishment is going to resolve their problems. If anything, it will anger the base and spread bitterness. It will lead scientists to move away from Elsevier towards alternative publishers like PLOS, f1000Research, BioArxiv, or this whole OA industry that has gone nuts. What I believe Elsevier needs to do is to listen to the voices of discontent and enact reform where it is necessary. So, if the EIC of its No. 1 horticultural journal has been caught self-plagiarizing ad manipulating figures, then how is it possible to maintain such an individual as the academic leader of a so-called scholarly journal? How can scientists believe that the publisher’s motivations are truly academic or scholarly if the leaders have a tainted publishing record? And that is why I think, right now, Elsevier is borderline predatory in terms of “safety”, because it continues to ensure a powerful repository of data and information, which science needs, but it is getting sloppy in terms of dealing with scandals, bad literature and cronyism in the editorial rank and file. Again, this is based on my own personal experience and I have no idea how wide this problem may be. At least for Scientia Horticulturae, my severe criticisms saw the disappearance of about 20 editors, without any public explanation, or accountability. When this happened with the Archives of Biological Sciences, it made headlines, but when it happened with Elsevier’s journal, the community stayed silent. So, there is some level of hypocrisy in the air, no doubt.
And to end my long comment, there is one worse, much worse elephant in the room than Elsevier. It is Springer. In recent times, I have detected case upon case of partially duplicated data, figures, manipulation, and self-plagiarism that has made my stomache turn. The worst part is that these errors are NOT being corrected, despite formal complaints. And this is extremely worrisome. In my opinion, Springer Nature (the Springer side of the new venture) is extremely dangerous in that the structure in place to deal with errors and fraud is very, very bad, very, very fragile and very, very inconsistent. If I could, I would nominate Springer as a predatory publisher, long before Elsevier. As I see it, Springer is trying to squeeze as much juice out of the lemon as possible before the truth about the real content of its literature starts to emerge.
What angers me, to be very honest, is the ethical farce of their business operations, claiming to be COPE members, but then not conforming to COPE guidelines. And COPE does nothing. That to me makes them predatory and worthy of mention on the Beall blog.
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Comment on One Problem with the Scholarly Publishing Industry by MC
Not sure what you mean. There are many reputable and top notch publishers that provide the abstract or “the first page” (for older articles w/o abstract) free, but you must subscribe to view the entire article. This is not open access, obviously.
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Comment on Another Controversial Paper from Frontiers by Andy Gilbey
I thought I’d add that Ivo Janecko is a Professor at Harvard and has published in some good journals. However, I have read other similar articles published in Frontiers.
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Comment on One Problem with the Scholarly Publishing Industry by Jeffrey Beall
I think this is a very problematic publisher. It promises a one-day peer review in some cases. I have added it to my list. Please don’t submit any articles to it.
Thank you for bringing it to my attention.
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Comment on OMICS Goes from “Predatory Publishing” to “Predatory Meetings” by Jeffrey Beall
I cannot give legal advice. Perhaps you need to consult an attorney.
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Comment on Another Controversial Paper from Frontiers by Klaas van Dijk
I would like to refer readers of this blog post to various public statements of couragous Iraqi ornithologists and conservationalists about a faulty paper on the breeding biology of the Basra Reed Warber in a Taylor & Francis journal. These statements have been copy/pasted to an entry at Pubpeer, see https://pubpeer.com/publications/CBDA623DED06FB48B659B631BA69E7
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These couragous Iraqi scientists expect leadership from COPE, after COPE told me on 26 July 2015 that my three complaints filed at COPE against publisher Taylor & Francis about their refusal to retract this faulty paper were valid, that COPE should contact publisher Taylor & Francis, and that I should get in cc the correspondence.
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In stead, all of us have been turned down by COPE, and already several times. Nothing of the correspondence of COPE with publisher Taylor & Francies has been received until today, despite numerous reminders to various parties. The membership assistant of COPE is in charge to process my three complaints. This membership assistant of COPE is Iratxe Puebla. She is an employee of PLOS (currently Managing Editor of PLOS ONE). Iratxe Puebla does not respond and queries to PLOS about this ongoing issue only yields loads and loads of auto-replies from PLOS.
I am hereby inviting Mirjam Curno to explain to me in this blog post why I have until now not received this correspondence with Taylor & Francis about the faulty paper on the breeding biology of the Basra Reed Warbler in a Taylor & Francis journal. I am also inviting Mirjam Curno to provide the readers of this blog post with her opinions about this paper.
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I also would like to note that I am closely working together with at least three persons who are EiC (or hold a more or less similar position) of journals who are not member of COPE. The three journals in question are:
* The Bulletin of the British Ornithologists’ Club ( http://boc-online.org/bulletin/ ).
* Sandgrouse ( http://www.osme.org/sandgrouse ).
* British Birds ( http://britishbirds.co.uk/ ). This journal did not hesitate to publish http://britishbirds.co.uk/article/basrareedwarblergate/ (of course also published in the hard copy).
I am hereby inviting Mirjam Curno to explain to me on this blog post the benefits of these three journals to join COPE.
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I am also working closely together with Dr Burton ( http://www.worldlandtrust.org/about/john-burton ), another co-author of http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09397140.2015.1023424 Dr Burton is a hard-core conservationalist and a very busy man. His e-mails are therefore always very concise. I am inviting Mirjam Curno to comment on an e-mail of Dr Burton sent in cc to COPE on 6 September 2015. (“A summary of the whole affair, but concentrating on the Academia cover up in Nature?”). This e-mail refers to my three complaints filed at COPE against publisher Taylor & Francis (see above).
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I would like to thank in advance Mirjam Curno for het willingness to provide me with a public response at this blog of Jeffrey Beall on all of my queries about the faulty paper in a Taylor & Francis journal, and on the steps COPE has until not set to ensure that the 2013-paper, and a 2015 comment, will be retracted, ASAP, and fully in line with the guidelines of COPE.
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