#predatory journals

[tournevis-real]

This is what capitalism in academia is doing. Gotta love what this guy did. Tempting.

The 2005 paper repeats the phrase “Get me off your fucking mailing list” for ten pages. The authors are still on the mailing list.

[nanalineni]

Why is no one talking about this ? or a guide to making the difference between scientific breakthrough and predatory bullcrap on Tumblr

First of all, I want to preface this by saying that I am myself doing a PhD in material science, so I know what I’m talking about, and I also know that academia tends to advantage senior scientists that are already well-known for their research, and that some countries are still under-represented despite their brilliant researchers (it is for example well-known in the field of soft matter that Indians and Chinese know what they are talking about, and yet most of the citations will be Western Europeans and Japanese people). However, I too often see tumblr posts showing the allegedly revolutionary findings of a random scientist that paradoxically no one has heard about, eliciting a strong emotional response and many reblogs, to turn out to be a fake published in a predatory journal that has been refuted years ago. It’s tiring, it creates distrust towards science which is the last fucking thing we need right now (looking at you, anti-vaxxers and 5G fear mongers), and it endangers people as it promotes pseudo-science bullshit (looking at you essential oils fans, and Didier Raoult).

So how to know if the thing you are sharing is truly a cool albeit under-promoted discovery, or if it is someone trying to sell you something dangerous and unethical ?

Without getting in the details of the article, a first easy thing to do, especially if the findings are presented as a huge scientific breakthrough, is to Google it. If it is truly so big, you can be guaranteed that some news outlet will have talked about it, so you can search some key words and the name of the authors to find what is said about it.

For example this post claimed Pr Ezeibe in Nigeria found a cure to HIV, so I went and googled “ezeibe nigeria hiv cure” and here’s what the headlines look like: 

Lots of articles from newspapers of different political sides, half of them written by Nigerian authors, all of them suspicious of this finding, for valid reasons.

Now if you don’t believe news websites (I mean, me neither on some topics but not on everything, but that’s another subject entirely), you can examine the articles more in detail.

The first thing you want to search then is in which journal was the article published ? If you come from a news website you will have to go back to the original article, it’s sometimes a bit of a hassle because newspapers can be shit at citing their sources, but every scientific finding is published in a journal in a very codified way. However not all those journals are equal ! If you can be pretty trusting of any journal published by Springer, Elsevier or Wiley, some more independent ones will require further examination. Indeed in science, whether it be STEMs or humanities, there is the notion of predatory journals. Those journals that send hundreds of emails to researchers, and will publish any article as long as the authors are paying, like this Chinese journal publishing last week a joke article linking electric scooters accidents and hydroxychloroquine without checking it. Luckily, you can find lists of predatory journals that are updated and checked regularly, here are three of them: [x] [x] [x]

Now, not all articles published in those journals are false science however. And some journals are balancing on an edge between pseudoscience and really cool weird findings that could find no other publisher, like PLOS One which has some really interesting publications, and some others with a more -ah- discutable review I’d say. At this point if you still are not sure of how accurate the article is there is only one solution: you have to read it.

When reading an article to try and fact-check it, you are basically doing the job of a reviewer, and that is searching for some specific items. First of all look at the references: how many are they ? Are the citations concentrated in the introduction, as if the author was just trying to show how relevant they are, or are they disseminated throughout the text to explain some models and comparisons and draw common points and differences with other systems ? What proportion of the references are self-citations ? In those citations is the author working alone ? or are they in a team ? Are the co-authors always the same and if yes is it the continuation of a project ? or are they changing, and from various labs working on a similar domain and sharing their expertise ? I would say if the author is quoting themself a lot (as in maybe over one third of the references being themself), if the team never changes when the subject does and everyone seems to be in the same lab, I would be wary, but it can also mean that they are leading the way on a particular topic (that was the case of my team director last year, the lab had conceived a new composite material and was naturally the first to publish on it regarding different aspects), in which case if you’re really curious you can go even further and see how many citations in other works those references have. If it’s a lot of self-reference on different topics that are almost not cited by other authors that’s a huge red flag.

Other things to look for are the sample sizes, the statistics and the calculation for the error margins, especially if the sample sizes are small (small being generally under 100 for complex systems), if  there are figures how are the axes ? Are there error bars ? How are these error bars calculated ? Are there guides for the eyes ? do those look coherent or could any other guide be placed instead and the conclusion would change ? If there are models are those deducted over a hundred data points or just three ? Where do these models come from ? If you’re feeling in a math mood you can try to look up the scientific units in the formulae to see if they’re homogeneous or full bullshit but that’s getting a bit too invested.

With all those hints you should get a better idea of how precise the researchers were and whether the article is interesting or if it is full of false claims ! Of course it cannot prevent genuine error like when we thought we’d proved the existence of superluminal neutrinos, but at least it should stop you from reblogging sensationalist titles leading to a general distrust in scientific research.

If you’ve come this far thank you so much for taking the time to read this !

[fishesinthetrees]

Some hilarious emails from those predatory journals that are always spamming grad students

Hello Dr. [misspelling  of my name],

Hope you are doing well.

 We appreciate your 2 minutes of attention towards my email, as your response in this regard will be highly appreciable. 

 I am scheduling to release the upcoming issue by the mid of December with support of some chosen distinguished scholars. So I would like to have your intervention for successful issue release in time.  Moreover we will provide you the manuscript acceptance letter instantly. Hence I heartily welcome your creative thoughts to sustain our Journal in this competitive open access world.

Your acknowledgement for this email will be highly admirable.

 *************************************************************************************

Dear Professor,

Hope you are doing well!

I have tried to get in touch with you to see if there is a mutual fit between our Journal and your research work. May be the invitation mail we sent to you wasn’t delivered.

We delighted to bring your notice that, we are planning to release an issue in the end of November. Is it possible for you to get participated in this occasion by contributing your article (Research, review, Opinion, etc.) towards our Journal?

I trust this welcome is pleasing to you.

Await your response.

**************************************************************************************** 

Subject: Precious manuscript Dear Professor

Dear Professor,

Greetings!

We need an article for successful release of Volume 23 Issue 2 in our Journal Biomedical Journal of Scientific & Technical Research (Biomedres) with ISSN 2574-1241 Impact Factor 0.548.

Please submit us your Manuscript for this issue release before 10th December, if this is a short notice in your busy schedule, please do send short article, we hope short article isnt time taken for an eminent author like you.

Kindly let me know your feasibility for submitting any of your unpublished paper to our journal.

We look forward to hear a positive response from you.

Await your submissions.

**************************************************************************************** 

Subject: Possibility

Dear Dr. [not a Dr. yet],

Good morning…!

We will be thankful if you could spare your 2 minutes of your valuable time on our request.

We are delighted to update you that Journal of Forensic science and Criminal Investigation is planning to release Volume 12 Issue 5 by the end of 20th November, and we are deficit of One Article to accomplish this issue.

We are anxious that we are having only a few days to release the issue. Hence, I have chosen some well-known people like you to hold up us to release the upcoming issue. So please support us with your contribution of 2 Page Review/Case Report towards publication in JFSCI.

Your prompt submission sustains us a lot and impacts my ranking in the end of 22nd November.

Await your hopeful submission.

[hanktruck]

This not-real journal got so salty they called me “name” in the last email

It cracks me up how little they try. My paper is about evolution biology, specifically sexual selection after mating. I did experiments with beetles.

Their “journal” is about Orthopedics

[mindblowingscience]

Scientific Journals Publish Bogus Paper About Midi-chlorians from Star Wars

Of the nine suspect, open-access journals to which Neuroskeptic submitted the paper, three published it, and one asked for a $360 fee.

Some scientific journals will publish literally anything for a price. That includes a meme-filled paper by “Lucas McGeorge” and “Annette Kin” referencing “midi-chlorians.” Yes, George Lucas’ attempt to explain feeling the Force with faux biology is now published “scientific research.”

The science community has long known that certain “predatory journals” will publish almost any paper for a fee without proper peer review. Some watchdogs have submitted fake papers by fake researchers to these journals to highlight how bogus journals harm the integrity of the Open Access publishing movement, by taking advantage of a loophole. This newest sting from the anonymous science blogger Neuroskeptic is truly astounding for just how silly the fake paper is.

“The goal was to see whether journals would publish a manuscript that, while seemingly scientific, was actually a joke,” Neuroskeptic told Gizmodo in an email. “I didn’t want to just submit nonsense (like a computer-generated text), or a bad paper, but rather something that was verifiably based on fiction (i.e. Star Wars).”

Continue Reading.

[skeptic42]

by Jeffrey Beall, January 3, 2017. Each year at this time I formally announce my updated list of predatory publishers. Because the publisher list is now very large, and because I now publish four, …

Unfortunately, I only just found about this site after it was taken down by the creator.  It’s a good list of journals to be wary of using for source material, be it skepticism or science.

Another good place to check is Retraction Watch

[ialreadyreadthatfanfic]

Predatory Journals Hit By 'Star Wars' Sting - Neuroskeptic

A number of so-called scientific journals have accepted a Star Wars-themed spoof paper. The manuscript is an absurd mess of factual errors, plagiarism and movie quotes. I know because I wrote it. Inspired by previous publishing “stings”, I wanted to test whether ‘predatory‘ journals would publish an obviously absurd paper. So I created a spoof …

This is an enjoyable read, even if you’re not familiar with issues of publishing and quality of scientific journals.  

Especially this:

[californiastatelibrary]

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