Wednesday, June 10, 2009

Another Journal Scandal

Yet another tip of the hat to "The Scientist" for reporting this: a completely faked paper of utter gibberish generated by software was accepted by an open access journal (as long as they paid the fees) telling the authors that the article had been peer reviewed. It's pretty clear what the dynamics here are: the publisher was looking to raise revenue, so they took anything the could get. And to speed the process along, they didn't bother with a lengthy review process.

I'be been a big fan of open access for a number of reasons, but this hurts. Not that this couldn't happen in academic journals that are truely peer reveiwed, but the motivation is clearly not there for the publisher, as retractions rflect pooly on them.

What most disturbs me is that publishing scandals of all sorts are occuring with ever greater frequency. That's trouble for other researchers relying on the publications, but also it diminishes the sterling solid perspective that the public has of science.

You may recall that "The Scientist" broke the news on the Merck/Elsevier fake journal catastrophe. They are really on top of this arena. Thank you.

1 comment:

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