Fake journals

[sylas]

of course not. I am talking about these phony "peer reviewed" journals. They claim they are peer reviewed but in fact they just publish anything. Probably charge a fee too.

I thought that was probably the case; glad to have it confirmed. Yes, it is very common for the predatory journals to use an open access model in which the author pays for publications, rather than the reader paying for access. This article I cited in the OP comments further on this.

The first two paragraphs of the article read as follows:

Source: Predatory journals recruit fake editor, in Nature

Thousands of academic journals do not aspire to quality. They exist primarily to extract fees from authors. These 'predatory' journals exhibit questionable marketing schemes, follow lax or non-existent peer-review procedures and fail to provide scientific rigour or transparency.

The open-access movement, although noble in its intent, has been an unwitting host to these parasitic publishers. Bogus journals can imitate legitimate ones that also collect fees from authors. Researchers, eager to publish (lest they perish), may submit their papers with or without verifying a journal's reputability.

© Copyright Original Source

[sylas]

By the way, I met up with a rather sad example of this same phenomenon in another context.

I have a young niece (recently turned 13) who is very bright indeed. She loves to read and to write. She's written two of her stories online (using Wattpad. Link to her Wattpad profile.).

Last year she was delighted to have one of her stories accepted for publication in a book featuring material by young writers. There was no charge for this... though there would be a charge if she opted to buy a copy of the published book. My brother (her father) did a bit of investigation. This was another example of predatory publisher... aimed at children. There was pretty much no review involved; and an easy sale of a glossy book to proud parents. No other real market existed.

Fortunately she was well placed to deal with the disappointment of this, with a very supportive family, lots of recognition already from her school for her work and creativity, and a long standing interest in deceptive advertising practices.

Cheers -- sylas

[Sparko]

By the way, I met up with a rather sad example of this same phenomenon in another context.

I have a young niece (recently turned 13) who is very bright indeed. She loves to read and to write. She's written two of her stories online (using Wattpad. Link to her Wattpad profile.).

Last year she was delighted to have one of her stories accepted for publication in a book featuring material by young writers. There was no charge for this... though there would be a charge if she opted to buy a copy of the published book. My brother (her father) did a bit of investigation. This was another example of predatory publisher... aimed at children. There was pretty much no review involved; and an easy sale of a glossy book to proud parents. No other real market existed.

Fortunately she was well placed to deal with the disappointment of this, with a very supportive family, lots of recognition already from her school for her work and creativity, and a long standing interest in deceptive advertising practices.

Cheers -- sylas

Yeah I have seen that same scam here. Sometimes they even charge a publication fee too. But generally they are leeching off of the parents buying the book. There used to be a similar scam before the internet, for "Who's Who" type publications, where they would target creative people, like authors, or artists, and publish, for a fee, a listing for you making you sound like a serious professional in the field, but in reality the only people who ever looked at the book were the people who were buying a listing in them. I am sure there are online versions of this floating around now.

[TheLurch]

Predatory journals weren't much of a problem in the print days. Print cost a lot, and made predatory publishing economically questionable. Now, with an online only journal, the costs are minimal. And the open access model has made the fee-for-publication aspect of the scam expected by researchers.

I don't see what's going to stop this, since the costs are so minimal. So i expect that evaluating the credibility of journals is going to have to be a permanent fixture of evaluating scientific results.

[Carrikature]

I don't see what's going to stop this, since the costs are so minimal. So i expect that evaluating the credibility of journals is going to have to be a permanent fixture of evaluating scientific results.

How does the layman go about doing this?

[robrecht]

How does the layman go about doing this?

One can look up the journal's impact factor.

[Sparko]

If anyone wants to publish their work in my new journal, "The Big Golden Book of Actual Peer-Reviewed Scientific Papers, Guaranteed" the publishing fee is $10 per article.

[seer]

If anyone wants to publish their work in my new journal, "The Big Golden Book of Actual Peer-Reviewed Scientific Papers, Guaranteed" the publishing fee is $10 per article.

Oh goody! I just finished ground breaking research answering the age old question - if a dog's sense of smell is so good why do they need to stick their nose right in the pile of poop on the side of the road! Can you say Nobel?

[Sparko]

Oh goody! I just finished ground breaking research answering the age old question - if a dog's sense of smell is so good why do they need to stick their nose right in the pile of poop on the side of the road! Can you say Nobel?

hmmm. OK but it will need a scientific sounding title like "Observational Studies of Canine Olfactory Sensitivity in Near Field Fecal Recognition"

[seer]

hmmm. OK but it will need a scientific sounding title like "Observational Studies of Canine Olfactory Sensitivity in Near Field Fecal Recognition"

How did you guess the title! Did you steal my research!

[TheLurch]

How does the layman go about doing this?

I wish there were some magic formula. Impact factor is one thing, but there are some good, specialized journals that have low ones. Another is to look into the publisher. The number of big names - BMJ, PLoS, Elsevier, Springer - are relatively small, and they mostly publish solid journals.

But it's also important to keep in mind that some solid journals will sporadically make mistakes and publish some awful stuff, too. Evaluating the journal is the start of evaluating the article.