It's the 'worst' science paper ever, and journals are clamouring to

[jspa...@linuxquestions.net]

From the article:
--------------------------
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.
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Read it at http://ww2.nationalpost.com/m/wp/blog.html?b=news.nationalpost.com/2014/04/23/its-the-worst-science-paper-ever-filled-with-plagiarism-and-garble-and-journals-are-clamouring-to-publish-it





J. Spaceman

[Dana Tweedy]

Looks like Ray found a publisher for his "book"

DJT

[Richard Norman]

On Thu, 24 Apr 2014 06:58:50 -0700 (PDT), jspa...@linuxquestions.net
wrote:

There have long been for-profit journals who will publish for a fee
just as there have long been vanity presses who will publish anything
an author is willing to send them, again for a fee.

I have been on search committees looking to hire new faculty and on
departmental and college and campus promotion and tenure committees
for several decades and I can say quite definitely that professors
know the quality journals in their own fields and seek out colleagues
they can trust to advise on journals outside their own fields. There
is a wide range of quality in journals with a continuous spectrum from
the most prestigious to the kind described in this article.
Publications in decent journals not at or even near the very top is
common at smaller institutions outside the research powerhouse
universities. But having a publication record that consists only of
bottom feeding isn't going to work.

One danger is that some critics of pseudo-science or creationist
writings argue "it isn't published in a peer-reviewed journal!" The
sad fact is that is a poor criticism because there are schlock
peer-reviewed journals. You just have to pick your peers carefully.

[Burkhard]

On Thursday, April 24, 2014 7:25:39 PM UTC+1, Richard Norman wrote:

> There have long been for-profit journals who will publish for a fee
> just as there have long been vanity presses who will publish anything
> an author is willing to send them, again for a fee.
>

True, in the past, The problem is that there is now increasing pressure,
at least in the UK and most of continental Europe, to make public funded
research available for free - so suddenly, many many more of these dubious
journals pop up, while at the same time, even the established and
reputable ones move to "author pays", at least as an alternative (Springer
e.g. offers the choice) Makes it much more difficult to know if a journal is
legit.

> I have been on search committees looking to hire new faculty and on
> departmental and college and campus promotion and tenure committees
> for several decades and I can say quite definitely that professors
> know the quality journals in their own fields and seek out colleagues
> they can trust to advise on journals outside their own fields. There
> is a wide range of quality in journals with a continuous spectrum from
> the most prestigious to the kind described in this article.
> Publications in decent journals not at or even near the very top is
> common at smaller institutions outside the research powerhouse
> universities. But having a publication record that consists only of
> bottom feeding isn't going to work.
>

Appointment committees are the least odour worries, in my experience -
and I would read the papers anyway, and expect the same from my
colleagues. The problem is teaching - I just about managed to
explain to my students how to use wikipedia, how are we going to
tell them to differentiate between different types of "peer reviewed"
journals? When marking last years essays, I noted that apart from the
reading from the handouts, almost all students used the same literature,
which was really really bad. I was eventually able to reconstruct the search
terms they must have used to get that rubbish top listed on google - and as
far as they could tell, it was all in "academic journals"

[Richard Norman]

I admit I have been out of teaching for a few years now and I am sure
things have really gotton a lot worse since I was involved. Still,
for "introductory" level students (college undergrads who had only
taken an intro biology course) I would give them a list of approved
journals and had them show or email me citations from anything else
they wanted to use unless they could show that the paper was found in
a citation taken from a paper from an approved source.