Talk:Predatory publishing/Archive 2

Archive 1

Archive 2

criticism missing

Hi!
I'm missing critical information on beall's list. see e.g. [1], [2], [3] or [4].
Of cource, those websites are not the best or most reputable references. But it seems pretty obvious that beall's list is very controversial. -- seth (talk) 10:19, 18 August 2017 (UTC)

Please be aware that Beall is a living person; refs about what a person does and about a person are somewhat different, but these cross the line and are are blogs -- they fail BLP by a very, very wide margin. Do not post more links like there. If you have reliable sources discussing controversy over the list please feel free to post them for discussion. Jytdog (talk) 19:56, 18 August 2017 (UTC)

The Wikipedia page on the subject lists the deceptive practices of the predators which I endorse and for two reasons. First each is provided with authentic documentation. Second most of these are in my personal experience stated as follows.

    . Predatory journals usually start with an e-mail message inviting an academic to submit a paper for their forthcoming issue introducing the journal and its editor. The journal is usually part of a group of journal an organization publishes. For example, an International Journal with open access wrote to me that the publication is interdisciplinary, is peer reviewed and published monthly. It is dedicated to increasing the depth of research across disciplines with the ultimate aim of improving current research. It gave a list of the materials welcomed for publication and the facilities provided to the contributors. The managing editor of another journal wrote that he happened to read in a journal such and such an article of mine and was impressed by its quality, wanted to include my name in the reviewers’ list, requesting finally to send an unpublished paper for the forthcoming issue of the journal. In a two other cases, the journal editor wrote that he had read that title as an MPRA paper and sought my permission to publish it in their journal.
     In cases where contribution was sought, a within a week review result was promised. In one case I allowed the publication. A formatted copy of the paper was sent to me for proof reading that I did and returned the paper to the journal. They thanked me asked to remit $300 as publication fee. I told them that the journal had commissioned the article and there was no prior disclosure about the charge. The demand was not justified; the article may be dropped. They published it. After that incident, whenever I received any such request, I wrote back that I do not pay for publishing as a matter of principle. I was surprised to find that some were willing to and did publish free of charge. There is cut throat competition among the fast multiplying predators. Presumably, such journals are not getting enough paid work to fill space and survive. They are offering concessional rates to publish students’ research work.

ZUBAIR HASAN Professor Emeritus INCEIF — Preceding unsigned comment added by 42.111.22.138 (talk) 04:36, 5 November 2017 (UTC)

More sources

I've posted these to Jimbo's page as well. Some of them are already used in this article. These also cover predatory conferences.

A study reported in the Japan Times[5] by James McCrostie looks at fake conferences in Japan. McCrostie discusses submitting fake papers generated by SCIgen to fake conferences all of which were accepted. It also discusses both the cost to attendees for these conferences (which are cheap to run) and the damage that can be done to reputations.

The New York Times published an article last month[6] called "Many Academics Are Eager to Publish in Worthless Journals". It also discusses aspects of predatory journals such as using names almost identical to prestigious ones, the fact that many or most don't have paper publications or do serious reviews, etc. And the fact that publishing in them is a way for academics to get promoted. "Many faculty members — especially at schools where the teaching load is heavy and resources few — have become eager participants in what experts call academic fraud that wastes taxpayer money, chips away at scientific credibility, and muddies important research." Senior academics publish in them -- 200 McGill University professsors, for instance.[7]

They also run fake conferences where by paying a hefty fee an academic can be listed as a presenter even if they don't attend. It's also easy to become an editor of a fake journal. A fictional academic with ludicrous credentials applied to 360 open-access journals asking to become an editor, with 48 accepting her, 4 making her editor-in-chief.[8][9] See also this article.

There are now more predatory conferences than scholarly ones.[10] Many of these are run by Waset: "research into Waset, which is registered in the United Arab Emirates, shows that it will hold some 183 events in 2018, although these will cover almost 60,000 individual “conferences” – averaging 320 at each event. Conferences are scheduled almost every day up until the end of 2030." These take place in small rooms with multiple conferences held in each room but few attendees, although many will have paid a large sum to attend.

An article last month in Die Zeit[11] says the ownership of WASET is unknown, and "website of Waset does not give an address anywhere. Interested parties can only fill out an anonymous form or send an SMS - with the United Arab Emirates dialing code." "The purpose of a waset conference is to extend the CV by a conference as well as a contribution in a scientific journal. Because every lecture is published in an online publication, which is also published by Waset. Over 40,000 articles are said to have come together since 1999, according to the website."

There are more sources of course, I could go on and on. And warnings from academics.[12][13][14][15]

This raises serious issues from Wikipedia. The obvious one is that it is now very difficult for most editors to distinguish between reputable journals and predatory ones, especially when the contributor seems "normal". My other issue is whether Wikipedia or the WMF has a role to play in the fight against these. Maybe we don't, I'd like to think there is something we can do. We do have Predatory open access publishing which oddly doesn't linketo Predatory conference. Perhaps one of the relevant wikiprojects should set up a working party to improve all the related articles?

The DeSmogBlog ran an article about them a few months ago in relation to a climate conference.[16] PubMed has banned OMICS, but not very successfully."PubMed may be consciously or unwittingly acting as a facilitator of predatory or unscrupulous publishing." New owner of two Canadian medical journals is publishing fake research for cash, and pretending it's genuine "Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Predatory Publishing but Were Afraid to Ask" "Is predatory scientific publishing “becoming an organized industry”?" Doug Weller talk 14:20, 9 November 2017 (UTC)

Well having articles about predatory journals that explain they are predatory with references I think is good.

We do need a list of predatory publications ourselves to keep these publications out of Wikipedia. I am not sure how much of this we can do by bot? Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 00:01, 16 March 2018 (UTC)

Beall's reason for discontinuing lists stated clearly in NIH article

A source cited in the article, nature.com, stated that Beall would not state his reason for discontinuing his list of predatory publishers. Following is a link to the Nature article, also found at footnote 5 in the Wikipedia article: <ref:https://www.nature.com/news/controversial-website-that-lists-predatory-publishers-shuts-down-1.21328>

However, contrary to that assertion, Beall stated clearly his reason in an article published by the National Institutes of Health: "In January 2017, facing intense pressure from my employer, the University of Colorado Denver, and fearing for my job, I shut down the blog and removed all its content from the blog platform." Here is a link to the NIH article: <ref:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5493177/> Gary Henscheid (talk) 04:05, 18 March 2018 (UTC)

Already in article: "In January 2017, Beall shut down his blog and removed all its content, citing pressure from his employer." Banedon (talk) 05:19, 18 March 2018 (UTC)

Banedon, indeed it is already in the article, thanks. Shouldn't the following be moved to the last paragraph of the Beall's List section, before or after the sentence you pointed out? "A demand by Frontiers Media to open a misconduct case against Beall was reported as the reason Beall closed the list. An investigation by the university was closed with no findings."[6][7] It seems confusing to have the alleged reason mentioned in the first section and Beall's stated reason so far apart. Gary Henscheid (talk) 13:02, 18 March 2018 (UTC)

Alternatively, Beall's stated reason for discontinuing his list could be moved to the first paragraph. Considering the relative importance of the matter, perhaps it would be better there, together with the other reasons speculated about; in my opinion, it is misleading for the two accounts to be listed separately and so far apart. Gary Henscheid (talk) 14:33, 19 March 2018 (UTC)

Nature article

Mar 16 2018

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-02921-2

Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 05:54, 24 March 2018 (UTC)

• Interesting! The list they talk about is at https://beallslist.weebly.com/. We used Beall as a reliable source, but that was based on him being a reputed professional academic librarian. Not sure we can do the same with this list. Any other opinions? --Randykitty (talk) 09:54, 24 March 2018 (UTC)

Move discussion in progress

There is a move discussion in progress on Talk:List of open access projects which affects this page. Please participate on that page and not in this talk page section. Thank you. —RMCD bot 02:01, 3 June 2018 (UTC)