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Blinded by scientific gobbledygook Bad chemistry: How fake research journals are scamming the science community By Tom Spears, OTTAWA CITIZEN April 21, 2014 http://www.ottawacitizen.com/technology/Blinded+scientific+gobbledygook/9757736/story.html OTTAWA — I have just written the world’s worst science research paper: More than incompetent, it’s a mess of plagiarism and meaningless garble. Now science publishers around the world are clamouring to publish it. They will distribute it globally and pretend it is real research, for a fee. It’s untrue? And parts are plagiarized? They’re fine with that. Welcome to the world of science scams, a fast-growing business that sucks money out of research, undermines genuine scientific knowledge, and provides fake credentials for the desperate. And even veteran scientists and universities are unaware of how deep the problem runs. When scientists make discoveries, they publish their results in academic journals. The journals review the discovery with independent experts, and if everything checks out they publish the work. This boosts the reputations, and the job prospects, of the study’s authors. Many journals now publish only online. And some of these, nicknamed predatory journals, offer fast, cut-rate service to young researchers under pressure to publish who have trouble getting accepted by the big science journals. In academia, there’s a debate over whether the predators are of a lower-than-desired quality. But the Citizen’s experiment indicates much more: that many are pure con artists on the same level as the Nigerian banker who wants to give you $100 million. Last year, science writer John Bohannon sent out a paperwith subtle scientific errors and showed that predatory journals were oftenfailing to catch them. The Citizen covered his sting, published in Sciencemagazine. Estimates of their numbers range from hundreds to thousands. To uncover bottom-feeding publishers, the simplest way was to submit something that absolutely shouldn’t be published by anyone, anywhere. First I had to write it. My short research paper may look normal to outsiders: A lot of big, scientific words with some graphs. Let’s start with the title: “Acidity and aridity: Soil inorganic carbon storage exhibits complex relationship with low-pH soils and myeloablation followed by autologous PBSC infusion.” Look more closely. The first half is about soil science. Then halfway through it switches to medical terms, myeloablation and PBSC infusion, which relate to treatment of cancer using stem cells. The reason: I copied and pasted one phrase from a geology paper online, and the rest from a medical one, on hematology. I wrote the whole paper that way, copying and pasting from soil, then blood, then soil again, and so on. There are a couple of graphs from a paper about Mars. They had squiggly lines and looked cool, so I threw them in. Footnotes came largely from a paper on wine chemistry. The finished product is completely meaningless. The university where I claim to work doesn’t exist. Nor do the Nepean Desert or my co-author. Software that catches plagiarism identified 67 per cent of my paper as stolen (and that’s missing some). And geology and blood work don’t mix, even with my invention of seismic platelets. I submitted the faux science to 18 journals, and waited. Predators moved in fast. Acceptances started rolling in within 24 hours of my submission, from journals wishing to publish the work of this young geologist at the University of Ottawa-Carleton. First came the Merit Research Journal of Agricultural Science and Soil Sciences, which claims it sent me to “peer review” by an independent expert in the field who gave me a glowing review. It laid out my article and was ready to post it online 48 hours after submission — for $500. That’s cheap. The going rate at genuine journals is $1,000 to $5,000. I didn’t pay. There are seven more acceptances from the International Journal of Science and Technology, Science Journal of Agricultural Research and Management, the International Journal of Current Research, Science Park, Australian Journal of Basic and Applied Research (actually based in Jordan), American Journal of Scientific Research, and International Journal of Latest Research in Engineering and Computing. Yes, “Latest.” Makes you wonder what other kind there is. Several others are still considering and a couple are silent and appear to have shut down. Only two turned me down, for plagiarism. And one of these will turn a blind eye and publish anyway if I just tweak it a bit. The acceptances came embarrassingly fast. A real journal needs weeks at the very least to ask reviewers — outside experts — to check an author’s work. I wrote back to one of these publishers explaining that my work was “bilge” and the conclusions don’t stand up. The journal wrote right back offering to tweak a few passages and publish anyway. And by the way, it asked, where’s the $500?... read the complete story: http://www.ottawacitizen.com/technology/Blinded+scientific+gobbledygook/9757736/story.html * * * Pierson’s ideas on beating the predators: • “You don’t just count publications (to evaluate a young researcher). A bunch of us crusty old guys will actually read them. It’s sad for an old career person to say this has become a game but I think that’s the reality.” • Stick with the established publishers such as Science, Nature, and Cell, even though their costs are high. • Researchers might only take on students who have previously studied under a colleague they know and trust. STEPHEN B. ALAYON Data Bank Senior Information Assistant Library and Data Banking Services Section Training and Information Division Aquaculture Department (AQD) Southeast Asian Fisheries Development Center (SEAFDEC) Tigbauan, Iloilo 5021 Philippines URL: http://www.seafdec.org.ph Telephone No.: 63 33 5119170 to 71 local 409 Fax No.: 63 33 5119174 Mobile Phone No.: 63 919 4506688 Email Add: [email protected], [email protected] -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Filipino Librarians" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/filipinolibrarians. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
