Friday, March 24, 2017

Fraudulent Publishing

The New York Times reports on one effort to uncover fraudulent journals and conferences. 

Although these journals have been referred to as predatory, I am inclined to agree with Jeffrey Beal’s assessment

Dr. Beall, who until recently published a list of predatory journals, said he believes many researchers know exactly what they are doing when they publish there.
“I believe there are countless researchers and academics, currently employed, who have secured jobs, promotions, and tenure using publications in pay-to-publish journals as part of their credentials and experience for the jobs and promotions they got,” Dr. Beall said.

Although the Times article does not mention it, my colleague Margaret Ray published similar research last year

Ray, Margaret. "An Expanded Approach to Evaluating Open Access Journals." Journal of Scholarly Publishing 47, no. 4 (2016): 307-327.

She found numerous “journals” that were happy to publish (for a price) papers written by her daughters and their friends for 8th to 10th grade classes. “One of the writers described her paper as ‘not some of my best work.’”


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