Comment on Should Journalists Cite Material from Predatory Journals? by Robin Hood

Exactly Shawn. That is why the scientific community is now in serious trouble, I believe. Journalism and scientific journalism is, in my opinion, already so biased and opinionated, that it actually doesn’t matter to the academic community. If we look at main-stream US “journalism”, it is evident that each one is pushing for a socio-political agenda. So, scientists should always be suspicious of journalism overall, because most journalists are not scientists and thus have no understanding, in fact, of how it works. The underlying risks that Jeff is referring to are, however, more important for scientists. And allow me to explain using an example. Imagine a scientist does a search on Google or Yahoo for a toic, e.g. salmon eggs. Maybe some OA PDFs appear in the first 2-3 pages of Yahoo or Google, and, because the scientist is too lazy, or too irresponsible to conduct a thorough search on “respected” data-bases, or maybe because the scientist is unaware of the predatory nature of many OA operations, that predatory paper on salmon eggs slips into the reference list of a paper that might be eventually published by a non-predatory publisher. Suddenly, you have a situation where valid publishers, at least those that abide by fairly well established industry codes, are actually supporting predatory OA publishers by “validating” them in reference lists. Thisis the immediate imapct. The mid-term impact which is now becoming evident over 2006-2013, is that papers from predatory publishers can, in the case of one publisher, now start to account for as much as 15% of all references in reference lists (suing Jeff’s lists as the industry standard). Most of these predators have a long-term vision, and if you and others haven’t figured this out yet, then you will never figure it out. Predators are seeking, as a long-term goal, to be massively referenced in as many journals as possible. Then, along comes Thomson Reuters’ spiders and automatic bots, which are simply robots that scour the internet and data-bases in search of key-words, and develop an Impact Factor based on number of times a journal is referenced. Before you know it, clearly predatory publishers, with unqualified editor boards, fraudulent actions, rubbish and non-sensical papers and no scientific quality, quality control or transparency, suddenly appear with an Impact Factor. This is, in the fraudster’s eyes, the ultimate validation. And we, the scientific community, give it to them on a platter. Thus, the first thing that needs to take place is EXACTLY an embargo on clear predators, and their papers should be BANNED from being included in reference lists of valid journals. Of course, many “valid” publishers and journals are themselves predators, in different ways, so soon it will be difficult to differentiate valid from invalid predators, and OA from print predators. Science is in crisis, no doubt. But radical measures like banning and embargos might be the only way to force the hands of fraudsters who only have one objective in mind: profit (by hook or by crook).