Your experience encountering those journals with similar names brought to mind this piece, http://scholarlyoa.com/2013/01/25/omics-predatory-meetings/ from Jeffrey Biell. The same Biell who created the now famous list of so-called 'predatory journals'. Some of the journals in that list (most of them from the biomedical sciences) have titles that are similar to long-established journals.
Miguel ----- Original Message ----- From: "Mike Palij" <m...@nyu.edu> To: "Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS)" <tips@fsulist.frostburg.edu> Cc: "Michael Palij" <m...@nyu.edu> Sent: Saturday, October 5, 2013 10:12:15 AM Subject: Re: [tips] Beware the Open-Source Journal On Fri, 04 Oct 2013 18:04:05 -0700, Miguel Roig wrote: >This blog provides an interesting point of view on that Sokal-like >demonstration: http://www.michaeleisen.org/blog/?p=1439 >Miguel >(Back on TIPS after a briefly being furloughed from TIPS by some >mysterious glitch) Good to have you back. ----- Original Message ----- On Friday, October 4, 2013 3:41:49 PM, Karl L Wuensch wrote: > Many or most of them are crap. > http://www.sciencemag.org/content/342/6154/60.full.pdf This is a really complicated situation and I just want to make a few points for consideration: (1) One way to view this situation is in terms of a 2x2 table where: Rows represent submitted manuscripts that are either (a) good or valid or represent a sincere scientific effort and (b) bad scientific effort or outright fraud, and Columns represent journals that consider (a) good or publish high quality work and (b) journals that publish almost anything as long as they get paid. Ideally, I think we would prefer the combination of (row a, column a) and avoid the combination of (row b, column b). An argument can be made for the combination of (row a, column b) but, depending upon journal, it is likely that articles published in such journals will have what Stevan Hanad calls low "research impact" -- it is where journal articles go to die. The combination of (row b, column a), that is, bad articles in good journals should not occur very often but the realization that this may occur relatively often has become the concern of professional societies and researchers; for example, see the APS special issue on replicability in psychology; see: http://pps.sagepub.com/content/7/6.toc The above "model" is based on traditional, peer-reviewed journals (e.g., the first tier journals of the APA, journals of the Psychonomics Society, etc.) and there is the question of whether open source journals will produce a 2x2 table with comparable frequencies or inflated numbers in the cell (row b, column b), that is, bad papers in bad journals. The Science article linked to above suggests that this might be case. The response to it by Eisen, which appears to focus on the situation in (row b, column a) suggests that maybe most scientists underestimate how many bad research papers get published even in the "good" journals. (2) As I read the articles linked to above, one thought came to mind: "What is the rejection rates for open access journals?" The Science article suggest that these rejection rates would be very low since even the most obvious crap gets published. For first tier APA journals, one can get the rejection rates from here for various years: http://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/statistics.aspx For 2012, the Journal of Applied Psychology had the highest rejection rate of 93% (it typically is the highest to close to the highest) -- is this an indication of the quality of the journal or that it is a crap magnet? For 2012, the journal "Experimental and Clinical Psychopharmacology" has the lowest rejection of 52%; JEP: Animal Behavior Processes is close behind with a rejection rate of 53%. Both also have the lowest number of manuscripts (94 and 84, respectively, vs. 853 for JAP). Is this an indication of the quality of these journals or the preference of researchers to publish in journals outside of the APA (psychopharmacological research has more of an impact if it is published in a biomedical journal and is listed in the Medline/PubMed database). The Science article really is about whether the peer review process of open access journals works as well as that of traditional journals. One implication of this is that bad articles should still be rejected but good articles may have a higher probability of being published. One would expect a lower average rejection rate (for APA first tier journal it is 76%) but not one close to zero which the Science article suggests might be the case. I guess the rejection rate of open access journals should be readily available for comparison purposes (well, all journals should provide this information). (3) Stevan Harnad, long time editor of the journal "Behavioral and Brain Science" and founder of the e-journal Psycoloquy (see his Wikipedia entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stevan_Harnad ) Harnad provides what I think is a useful review of the different types of publication models and distinctions (e.g., publishing for "research impact", such publishing in scientific journal without the expectation of any immediate financial return, versus "Publishing for Income" which covers scientific writing for magazines, textbooks, popular press books, etc., where research impact is less important than making a buck). See: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/265617/ (4) I have a experience to share: I recently wrote a book review of an edited volume based on a conference held at a U.S. university. It essentially contained the papers presented at the conference and responses. In doing background research on the participants and the topics I came across a review article by the editors that was a pretty fair summary of the focus and scope of the book. The problem was determining where it was published. There are two journals with almost the exact same name except one begins with "The". The journal without "The" has a website that provides an ISSN number for the journal, other library relevant information, and makes it appear much like any other academic journal. The journal *with* "The" lacked an ISSN number, had very little information about the publisher, and seemed unlike the website of most journals I was familiar with. This was the journal that the editors had chosen to publish their review article which was available for immediate download. I am not entirely sure what to make of this situation but the Science article has suggested some ideas as well as resources to examine. I thought it very odd that two journals would have such similar names and would be so easily confused with each other. -Mike Palij New York University m...@nyu.edu --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: miguelr...@comcast.net. To unsubscribe click here: http://fsulist.frostburg.edu/u?id=1133043.af3ec43309a63197bc82eb6702801542&n=T&l=tips&o=28491 or send a blank email to leave-28491-1133043.af3ec43309a63197bc82eb6702801...@fsulist.frostburg.edu --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: arch...@jab.org. To unsubscribe click here: http://fsulist.frostburg.edu/u?id=13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df5d5&n=T&l=tips&o=28497 or send a blank email to leave-28497-13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df...@fsulist.frostburg.edu
