Dana, It would be so sad if you accept that there is a sizeable body of literature that might be directly related to your research but that you decide not to read it because you can't read it all *and* base your selection of what to read on crude criteria not relating to the merits of the individual article. If you take a look at the skewed nature of citation frequency of articles in any journal and realize that there even is a positive correlation between impact factors and retractions in the end you should realize that making a distinction in such a crude way is not desirable. That would mean that overall scholarly publishing is not functioning anymore, and that it serves more to advance careers than to advance science. I do not want to accept that: it would be such a waste of talent, money, time etc. and endanger public support and financing of science.
Some suggestions to alleviate this: - make peer review open (that can still be anonymous if you wish) - experiment with and invest in post-pub peer review (e.g. PubMed Commons) - use recommendation systems such as F1000 - next to TOC alerts, also use keyword and citation alerts from Scopus, WoS and other A&I services (e.g. Keep Me Posted alerts in SciFinder) - share the burden of current awareness in a research team - glance over comments, article level metrics and altmetrics links And yes, I do intend to remain realistic: if you have given several articles from a new journal, a non IF-journal, a non US/European, an Open Access journal a chance and they proved to be total rubbish it is completely logical that you will be less inclined to read more papers from that journal. But over time, and especially if an article is exactly on topic, I would advise to give it another chance. But let's return to the topic of this list: do you know of anybody in your institution that has been fooled by a real scam journal? I always ask our faculty but have not yet come across any such person. Almost all have received soliciting emails, but just tossed them aside. Every once in a while faculty approach us with the request to profile a certain journal that they haven't heard about before. That is no big deal. So yes, it is a relatively minor annoyance, something that worries me much less than the peer review crisis. Best, Jeroen Bosman Utrecht University Library -----Original Message----- From: goal-boun...@eprints.org [mailto:goal-boun...@eprints.org] On Behalf Of Dana Roth Sent: donderdag 25 september 2014 5:55 To: Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci) Subject: [GOAL] Re: Interesting Current Science opinion paper on "Predatory Journals" I agree with Chuck ... and feel it is totally unrealistic to assume serious researchers have the time to wade thru anything more than a fraction of what is being published. Is there really anything better than limiting current awareness to high quality peer reviewed journals, and SciFinder, etc. for retrospective searching for very specific information or review articles? Dana L. Roth Millikan Library / Caltech 1-32 1200 E. California Blvd. Pasadena, CA 91125 626-395-6423 fax 626-792-7540 dzr...@library.caltech.edu http://library.caltech.edu/collections/chemistry.htm ________________________________________ From: goal-boun...@eprints.org [goal-boun...@eprints.org] on behalf of David Prosser [david.pros...@rluk.ac.uk] Sent: Wednesday, September 24, 2014 9:05 AM To: Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci) Cc: Siler, Elizabeth; Tokoro, Shoko; Hoon, Peggy Subject: [GOAL] Re: Interesting Current Science opinion paper on "Predatory Journals" I think that every article should be read on it's own merits and it should not have value assigned to it just because it has managed to get into a certain club (journal). It is saddening to me that this suggestion should be considered even vaguely radical. When Science carried out its 'Sting' on open access titles there were journals on Beall's list that rejected the paper. Other not on his list (including one published under the auspices of Elsevier ) accepted it. I'm all for context, but if we are considering a researcher's future and funding surely we owe it to them to judge them on their own merits and not on the arbitrary criteria of one chap in Colorado. David On 24 Sep 2014, at 10:40, Hamaker, Charles <caham...@uncc.edu<mailto:caham...@uncc.edu>> wrote: So every article from every journal should be read under the assumption that peer review markers are a poor way to make a preliminary decision point as to whether the article merits attention? It's going to be difficult to assume every one is expert enough to judge every paper they read solely on the content absent context of labeling or assumption of basic peer review. Journal labels provide a context. Are we to ignore that? Doesn't that make introduction to a literature for novices or the task of anyone reading outside the narrow boundaries of their discipline almost impossible? Chuck Hamaker Sent from my Verizon Wireless 4G LTE smartphone -------- Original message -------- From: David Prosser Date:09/24/2014 4:38 AM (GMT-05:00) To: "Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci)" Subject: [GOAL] Re: Interesting Current Science opinion paper on "Predatory Journals" Of course, sharp practices such as passing yourself off for another company, including the names of Nobel Price winners in your editorial board, repackaging papers into fictitious journals at the behest of pharma companies, etc., etc. are all to be be deplored. They are immoral at best and illegal at worst. But they form a tiny part of the overall scholarly communications landscape. They have no more 'damaged the very foundations of scholarly and academic publishing' than 'Nigerian' scams have damaged the banking industry or paypal scams have damaged the very foundations of e-commerce. Why does Jeffery Beall find it necessary to compile his list of predatory publisher? Well, I'm not privy to Mr Beall's motivations, but his writing on OA certain makes one pause for thought and perhaps provide some clues: http://triplec.at/index.php/tripleC/article/view/525/514 But maybe I am underestimating the effect these journals have. Does anybody know either: a) What percentage of the world's scholarly literature is published in journals listed by Mr Beall b) What percentage of papers from authors in less developed countries goes to journals listed by Mr Beall c) What percentage of the total revenue to publishers (estimated at about $10billion annually) goes to publishers listed by Mr Beall If these journals are really 'damaged the very foundations of scholarly and academic publishing' then I would expect the percentages to be higher than tiny. The interesting point that Raghavan et al make is that these journals are publishing bad papers and that this is bad for research in the long run. They make the suggestion that papers published in such journals should not be counted in research assessment. Here's a radical idea - rather than judge the quality of a paper based on Mr Beall's rather arbitrary criteria, why not judge it on the quality of the research in the paper itself? David On 23 Sep 2014, at 23:51, Dana Roth <dzr...@library.caltech.edu<mailto:dzr...@library.caltech.edu><mailto:dzr...@library.caltech.edu>> wrote: If it is such a minor annoyance, why would Elsevier find it necessary to issue a "Warning regarding fraudulent call for papers" ... See: http://www.elsevier.com/journal-authors/authors-update/authors-update/warning-re.-fraudulent-call-for-papers or the necessity of Jeffrey Beall's extensive listing of predatory publishers at: http://scholarlyoa.com/publishers/ I suspect that David Prosser grossly underestimates the problems these publishers cause for researchers in less developed countries. Dana L. Roth Millikan Library / Caltech 1-32 1200 E. California Blvd. Pasadena, CA 91125 626-395-6423 fax 626-792-7540 dzr...@library.caltech.edu<mailto:dzr...@library.caltech.edu><mailto:dzr...@library.caltech.edu> http://library.caltech.edu/collections/chemistry.htm ________________________________________ From: goal-boun...@eprints.org<mailto:goal-boun...@eprints.org><mailto:goal-boun...@eprints.org> [goal-boun...@eprints.org<mailto:goal-boun...@eprints.org><mailto:goal-boun...@eprints.org>] on behalf of David Prosser [david.pros...@rluk.ac.uk<mailto:david.pros...@rluk.ac.uk><mailto:david.pros...@rluk.ac.uk>] Sent: Tuesday, September 23, 2014 1:30 AM To: Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci) Subject: [GOAL] Re: Interesting Current Science opinion paper on "Predatory Journals" Quote: Predatory publishing has damaged the very foundations of scholarly and academic publishing, No it hasn't. It's a minor annoyance, at most. David On 23 Sep 2014, at 07:47, anup kumar das <anupdas2...@gmail.com<mailto:anupdas2...@gmail.com><mailto:anupdas2...@gmail.com><mailto:anupdas2...@gmail.com>> wrote: Predatory Journals and Indian Ichthyology by R. Raghavan, N. Dahanukar, J.D.M. Knight, A. Bijukumar, U. Katwate, K. Krishnakumar, A. Ali and S. Philip Current Science, 2014, 107(5), 740-742. Although the 21st century began with a hope that information and communication technology will act as a boon for reinventing taxonomy, the advent and rise of electronic publications, especially predatory open-access journals, has resulted in an additional challenge (the others being gap, impediment and urgency) for taxonomy in the century of extinctions. Predatory publishing has damaged the very foundations of scholarly and academic publishing, and has led to unethical behaviour from scientists and researchers. The 'journal publishing industry' in India is a classical example of 'predatory publishing', supported by researchers who are in a race to publish. The urge to publish 'quick and easy' can be attributed to two manifestations, i.e.'impactitis' and 'mihi itch'. While impactitis can be associated with the urge for greater impact factor (IF) and scientific merit, mihi itch (loosely) explains the behaviour of researchers, especially biologists publishing in predatory journals yearning to see their name/s associated with a new 'species name'. Most predatory journals do not have an IF, and authors publishing in such journals are only seeking an 'impact' (read without factor), and popularity by seeing their names appear in print media. This practice has most often led to the publication of substandard papers in many fields, i! ncluding ichthyology. Download Full-text Article: http://www.currentscience.ac.in/Volumes/107/05/0740.pdf _______________________________________________ GOAL mailing list GOAL@eprints.org<mailto:GOAL@eprints.org><mailto:GOAL@eprints.org><mailto:GOAL@eprints.org> http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal _______________________________________________ GOAL mailing list GOAL@eprints.org<mailto:GOAL@eprints.org><mailto:GOAL@eprints.org> http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal _______________________________________________ GOAL mailing list GOAL@eprints.org<mailto:GOAL@eprints.org><mailto:GOAL@eprints.org> http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal _______________________________________________ GOAL mailing list GOAL@eprints.org<mailto:GOAL@eprints.org> http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal _______________________________________________ GOAL mailing list GOAL@eprints.org<mailto:GOAL@eprints.org> http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal _______________________________________________ GOAL mailing list GOAL@eprints.org http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal _______________________________________________ GOAL mailing list GOAL@eprints.org http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal _______________________________________________ GOAL mailing list GOAL@eprints.org http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal
