Some questions and comments for Mauricio Tuffani. In brief, I question whether Brazilian authors are actually publishing in the journals included in Beall's list, note that whether editing and peer review are slow or fast depend on factors such as speed of communication and do not necessarily reflect quality, and I wonder whether a quadrupling of Brazilian authors' articles in Web of Science really reflects productivity, or increased acceptance of Brazilian authors and/or journals in Web of Science.
Details Whether the inclusion of journals on Beall's list of "Potential, possible, or probable predatory scholarly open-access publishers" in Qualis means that Brazilian authors are actually publishing in these journals is a hypothesis that needs to be tested. I would predict that few (possibly even no) articles by Brazilian authors would be found in these journals. One reason for my hypothesis is that many such journals have low publication rates. For example, Tuffani points to the OMICS Journal of Clinical & Experimental Cardiology: http://rs.gs/wcS. This journal appears to publish monthly, with a total of about 3 - 4 research articles per issue and 1 -2 case reports. Quickly glancing at a few issues, I do not see any evidence suggesting this is a venue used by Brazilian authors. Also, the policy for this journals is that articles are only accepted in English; would this not discourage submissions from researchers writing in Portuguese? To determine whether inclusion of these journals in Qualis reflects Brazilian publishing, it would be a good idea to take at least a sample of these journals and see whether articles from Brazilian authors can be found in them. Tuffani wrote: "in the traditional model maintained by annual subscriptions or fees per article download from the Internet, the reputable journals take months or even over a year to review and accept articles, or rejected them.Accused of prioritizing minimizing costs and maximizing profits, the "predatory publishers" not only reduce to a few weeks the acceptance of articles..." Comment: reviewers and editors of quality scholarly journals do not take weeks or months to review, accept or reject articles. A good reviewer might spend a half day to a day on a review. The lengthy time of traditional journals for this work reflects the development of such journals in a system where both production and dissemination relied on print. Authors used to have to send (by mail) several print copies of articles to editors for review. The editor would then have to mail the articles to reviewers, who would then read, review, and return the articles to the editors also by mail. Every step of the review process - questions from reviewers to editors to authors - would require a repeat of this multi-step process, with delays based on print / mail at every step. Automated journal management software using the internet for communications eliminates these delays in communications. An editor can send a request for review to a potential reviewer asking them to indicate their willingness and availability to review within days. If the reviewer is not available, the editor can move on to find someone else. Traditional journals, even those still publishing in print, that have not speeded up their editing and review process are not taking advantage of the technology available today. Question: Tuffani wrote that "the number of published articles nearly quadrupled since 2000". The source cited is Web of Science. Has the number of articles written and/or published actually quadrupled since 2000, or does some or all of this difference reflect an increase in coverage of Brazilian authors in Web of Science? The former suggests enhanced productivity (which could be due to any of a number of factors; it is highly unlikely that the difference reflects publishing in journals included on Beall's list), while the latter suggests increased international visibility of Brazilian authors (a good thing for Brazilian scholarship). best, -- Dr. Heather Morrison Assistant Professor École des sciences de l'information / School of Information Studies Cross-appointed to the Department of Communication University of Ottawa http://www.sis.uottawa.ca/faculty/hmorrison.html Sustaining the Knowledge Commons http://sustainingknowledgecommons.org/ heather.morri...@uottawa.ca _______________________________________________ GOAL mailing list GOAL@eprints.org http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal
