An amusing cautionary take has come to light.
Anna O. Szust is a young polish researcher, starting out her academic career, and she has made a great start. She has been accepted as an editor in some 40 journals, and indeed became editor in chief at four journals. All this despite having no publications herself indexed in the major academic databases such as Web Of Science, no publications listed in any academic journals, and no citations to her work from any other publications. She had no prior experience as an editor or even a reviewer.
Her C.V. does include various publications, but none in academic journals; and some book chapters. And even those publications listed were actually fakes.... as was her degree.
And her name, in Polish, is unfortunate... Anna O. Szust. "Oszust" is the Polish word for fraud.
Anna is, in fact, an entirely fictitious individual, created specifically for an investigation of predatory "scientific" journals. The results were written up in nature. See: Predatory Journals Recruit Fake Editor. (Nature, v 543, no 7646, 2 March 2017, by P. Sorokowski, E. Kulczycki, A. Sorokowska, and K. Pisanski)
There have also been a couple of reports of this in the regular news. For example, in the Sydney Morning Herald: Scientists outwit predatory publishers by tricking them into appointing a fake editor. Or read an interview with one of the authors at the blog "Retraction Watch" interview with Katarzyna Pisanski. (Retraction Watch tracks and reports on retractions in scientific literature.)
Reading the links will give a bit more background to the state of play in which predatory journals exist. When I was working as an academic (long ago) I often received invitations myself to be an editor at some obscure journal which I generally binned without further ado.
I'm sure other TWeb members working academia can say the same.
Cheers -- sylas
Anna O. Szust is a young polish researcher, starting out her academic career, and she has made a great start. She has been accepted as an editor in some 40 journals, and indeed became editor in chief at four journals. All this despite having no publications herself indexed in the major academic databases such as Web Of Science, no publications listed in any academic journals, and no citations to her work from any other publications. She had no prior experience as an editor or even a reviewer.
Her C.V. does include various publications, but none in academic journals; and some book chapters. And even those publications listed were actually fakes.... as was her degree.
And her name, in Polish, is unfortunate... Anna O. Szust. "Oszust" is the Polish word for fraud.
Anna is, in fact, an entirely fictitious individual, created specifically for an investigation of predatory "scientific" journals. The results were written up in nature. See: Predatory Journals Recruit Fake Editor. (Nature, v 543, no 7646, 2 March 2017, by P. Sorokowski, E. Kulczycki, A. Sorokowska, and K. Pisanski)
There have also been a couple of reports of this in the regular news. For example, in the Sydney Morning Herald: Scientists outwit predatory publishers by tricking them into appointing a fake editor. Or read an interview with one of the authors at the blog "Retraction Watch" interview with Katarzyna Pisanski. (Retraction Watch tracks and reports on retractions in scientific literature.)
Reading the links will give a bit more background to the state of play in which predatory journals exist. When I was working as an academic (long ago) I often received invitations myself to be an editor at some obscure journal which I generally binned without further ado.
I'm sure other TWeb members working academia can say the same.
Cheers -- sylas
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