Dear Menno-Jan,
It is now over one year and I have not heard any updates on the SDG book [1] . As far as I am aware, there was no emails received in the GeoforAll lists on this till now. Please correct me if I am wrong. As you are aware, I have personally requested colleagues in the open source Geo community to support the ICA SDG book initiative and they have contributed to this book project in good faith, so I request you to kindly keep them informed. I thank you for your kind understanding. We are now seeing a very disturbing trend with some vendors even starting to trademark “ science” for marketing/sales of their products and “science” is being misused for vendor marketing/sales! . I have raised this issue through an open letter [2] . The good news is that now everyone knows it is just marketing/sales gimmicks of vendor . Science is not owned by any vendors. But two weeks back, I received a email query from a respectable and senior ICA colleague that made me very concerned. He is one of the editors of a GIS journal . They are receiving lot of submissions from a country that are very similar -“ poorly written, poor map design – to the point that they seem written in a factory” . They were all using one proprietary GIS software and deal with some aspect of physical geography. He asked for my advice. I thanked him for sharing this information and though I do not know the background or details of the papers or authors, I am also very concerned to hear about this . It is really sad to see the state of affairs in GIS . I requested him to take strong action against any “factory produced” science and reject them. I am concerned in the rapid increase in “Fake Science” . I requested him to inform this to the wider community through an open letter . But this is not the solution as if one journal rejects these “factory produced science”, then these kind of papers will be submitted to other journals. I won’t be surprised if in future some vendors even start their own journals with their own editorial boards ! What will then happen to the credibility of peer review and scientific quality. I think it is important that editors of all GIS journals and leadership of all GIS Professional bodies like ICA declare any conflict of interest with any vendors (funding/sponsorship/gifts received from any software vendors currently or in the past) to ensure transparency and good practices. I am just a ICA volunteer . I am hoping that you will take principled leadership and action against “Fake Science” , “Factory produced science” and any unethical practices in GIS that is affecting Science and Education from any vendors (open or proprietary) . I thank you for the work on SDG book and looking forward to hear updates. Best wishes, Suchith [1] https://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/geoforall/2017-June/003790.html [2] https://www.rd-alliance.org/group/geospatial-ig/post/open-letter-importance-scientific-freedom-and-public-good This message and any attachment are intended solely for the addressee and may contain confidential information. If you have received this message in error, please contact the sender and delete the email and attachment. Any views or opinions expressed by the author of this email do not necessarily reflect the views of the University of Nottingham. Email communications with the University of Nottingham may be monitored where permitted by law.
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