P*****t
发帖数: 4978 | 1 The scientists who were recruited to appear at a conference called
Entomology-2013 thought they had been selected to make a presentation to the
leading professional association of scientists who study insects.
But they found out the hard way that they were wrong. The prestigious,
academically sanctioned conference they had in mind has a slightly different
name: Entomology 2013 (without the hyphen). The one they had signed up for
featured speakers who were recruited by e-mail, not vetted by leading
academics. Those who agreed to appear were later charged a hefty fee for the
privilege, and pretty much anyone who paid got a spot on the podium that
could be used to pad a résumé.
“I think we were duped,” one of the scientists wrote in an e-mail to the
Entomological Society.
Those scientists had stumbled into a parallel world of pseudo-academia,
complete with prestigiously titled conferences and journals that sponsor
them. Many of the journals and meetings have names that are nearly identical
to those of established, well-known publications and events.
Steven Goodman, a dean and professor of medicine at Stanford and the editor
of the journal Clinical Trials, which has its own imitators, called this
phenomenon “the dark side of open access,” the movement to make scholarly
publications freely available.
The number of these journals and conferences has exploded in recent years as
scientific publishing has shifted from a traditional business model for
professional societies and organizations built almost entirely on
subscription revenues to open access, which relies on authors or their
backers to pay for the publication of papers online, where anyone can read
them.
Open access got its start about a decade ago and quickly won widespread
acclaim with the advent of well-regarded, peer-reviewed journals like those
published by the Public Library of Science, known as PLoS. Such articles
were listed in databases like PubMed, which is maintained by the National
Library of Medicine, and selected for their quality.
But some researchers are now raising the alarm about what they see as the
proliferation of online journals that will print seemingly anything for a
fee. They warn that nonexperts doing online research will have trouble
distinguishing credible research from junk. “Most people don’t know the
journal universe,” Dr. Goodman said. “They will not know from a journal’s
title if it is for real or not.”
Researchers also say that universities are facing new challenges in
assessing the résumés of academics. Are the publications they list in
highly competitive journals or ones masquerading as such? And some academics
themselves say they have found it difficult to disentangle themselves from
these journals once they mistakenly agree to serve on their editorial boards.
The phenomenon has caught the attention of Nature, one of the most
competitive and well-regarded scientific journals. In a news report
published recently, the journal noted “the rise of questionable operators”
and explored whether it was better to blacklist them or to create a “white
list” of those open-access journals that meet certain standards. Nature
included a checklist on “how to perform due diligence before submitting to
a journal or a publisher.”
Jeffrey Beall, a research librarian at the University of Colorado in Denver,
has developed his own blacklist of what he calls “predatory open-access
journals.” There were 20 publishers on his list in 2010, and now there are
more than 300. He estimates that there are as many as 4,000 predatory
journals today, at least 25 percent of the total number of open-access
journals.
“It’s almost like the word is out,” he said. “This is easy money, very
little work, a low barrier start-up.”
Journals on what has become known as “Beall’s list” generally do not post
the fees they charge on their Web sites and may not even inform authors of
them until after an article is submitted. They barrage academics with e-mail
invitations to submit articles and to be on editorial boards.
One publisher on Beall’s list, Avens Publishing Group, even sweetened the
pot for those who agreed to be on the editorial board of The Journal of
Clinical Trails & Patenting, offering 20 percent of its revenues to each
editor.
One of the most prolific publishers on Beall’s list, Srinubabu Gedela, the
director of the Omics Group, has about 250 journals and charges authors as
much as $2,700 per paper. Dr. Gedela, who lists a Ph.D. from Andhra
University in India, says on his Web site that he “learnt to devise wonders
in biotechnology.”
Another Beall’s list publisher, Dove Press, says on its Web site, “There
are no limits on the number or size of the papers we can publish.”
Open-access publishers say that the papers they publish are reviewed and
that their businesses are legitimate and ethical.
“There is no compromise on quality review policy,” Dr. Gedela wrote in an
e-mail. “Our team’s hard work and dedicated services to the scientific
community will answer all the baseless and defamatory comments that have
been made about Omics.”
Readers’ Comments
But some academics say many of these journals’ methods are little different
from spam e-mails offering business deals that are too good to be true.
Paulino Martínez, a doctor in Celaya, Mexico, said he was gullible enough
to send two articles in response to an e-mail invitation he received last
year from The Journal of Clinical Case Reports. They were accepted. Then
came a bill saying he owed $2,900. He was shocked, having had no idea there
was a fee for publishing. He asked to withdraw the papers, but they were
published anyway.
“I am a doctor in a hospital in the province of Mexico, and I don’t have
the amount they requested,” Dr. Martínez said. The journal offered to
reduce his bill to $2,600. Finally, after a year and many e-mails and a
phone call, the journal forgave the money it claimed he owed.
Some professors listed on the Web sites of journals on Beall’s list, and
the associated conferences, say they made a big mistake getting involved
with the journals and cannot seem to escape them.
Thomas Price, an associate professor of reproductive endocrinology and
fertility at the Duke University School of Medicine, agreed to be on the
editorial board of The Journal of Gynecology & Obstetrics because he saw the
name of a well-respected academic expert on its Web site and wanted to
support open-access journals. He was surprised, though, when the journal
repeatedly asked him to recruit authors and submit his own papers.
Mainstream journals do not do this because researchers ordinarily want to
publish their papers in the best journal that will accept them. Dr. Price,
appalled by the request, refused and asked repeatedly over three years to be
removed from the journal’s editorial board. But his name was still there.
“They just don’t pay any attention,” Dr. Price said.
About two years ago, James White, a plant pathologist at Rutgers, accepted
an invitation to serve on the editorial board of a new journal, Plant
Pathology & Microbiology, not realizing the nature of the journal. Meanwhile
, his name, photograph and résumé were on the journal’s Web site. Then he
learned that he was listed as an organizer and speaker on a Web site
advertising Entomology-2013.
“I am not even an entomologist,” he said.
He thinks the publisher of the plant journal, which also sponsored the
entomology conference, — just pasted his name, photograph and résumé onto
the conference Web site. At this point, he said, outraged that the
conference and journal were “using a person’s credentials to rip off other
unaware scientists,” Dr. White asked that his name be removed from the
journal and the conference.
Weeks went by and nothing happened, he said. Last Monday, in response to
this reporter’s e-mail to the conference organizers, Jessica Lincy, who
said only that she was a conference member, wrote to explain that the
conference had “technical problems” removing Dr. White’s name. On Tuesday
, his name was gone. But it remained on the Web site of the journal.
Dr. Gedela, the publisher of the journals and sponsor of the conference,
said in an e-mail on Thursday that Dr. Price and Dr. White’s names remained
on the Web sites “because of communication gap between the EB member and
the editorial assistant,” referring to editorial board members. That day,
their names were gone from the journals’ Web sites.
“I really should have known better,” Dr. White said of his editorial board
membership, adding that he did not fully realize how the publishing world
had changed. “It seems like the Wild West now.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/08/health/for-scientists-an-expl |
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