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It's mildly amusing, sure, but publishing a rehash of a joke made on April 1st two weeks later, on April 15th, feels like seeing someone lag in real life. The p
by ConsiderCrying 6y ago
It's mildly amusing, sure, but publishing a rehash of a joke made on April 1st two weeks later, on April 15th, feels like seeing someone lag in real life. The paper should have been just left alone to be discovered by someone later as a fun curio. Especially since The Week seems to be a completely serious website the rest of the time, what a weird choice to publish that article two weeks after April Fool's.
- emmelaich 6y agoIt's not just a joke, it has a serious purpose. From the article > it does seem to prove his point: That the Scientific Journal of Research & Reviews is among dozens of "predatory journals" that publish low-quality or unreviewed papers, often for an exorbitant fee.
- everybodyknows 6y agoFollowing the thread of the substantive academic issue through the links, https://predatoryjournals.com/about/ https://predatoryjournals.com/about/ https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2017/01/18/librarians-list-predatory-journals-reportedly-removed-due-threats-and-politics https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2017/01/18/librarians-li... We arrive at a 2013 essay by University of Colorado librarian Jeffrey Beall: > To boost the open-access movement, its leaders sacrifice the academic futures of young scholars and those from developing countries, pressuring them to publish in lower-quality open-access journals > The movement relies on unnatural mandates that take free choice away from individual researchers, mandates set and enforced by an onerous cadre of Soros-funded European autocrats. http://triplec.at/index.php/tripleC/article/view/525/514 http://triplec.at/index.php/tripleC/article/view/525/514 Still working on what to make of all this ...
- jhbadger 6y agoThe closed-access traditional publishing field fears the loss of their business model in favor of open access, in which researchers and the public can read articles without a paywall. To do this, they have tried to focus the attention of the public on low-end obscure open-access journals which they term "predatory journals" and hope that this discredits the idea of open access in general. The problem is that while bad open access journals certainly exist, so do bad closed-access journals.
- ConsiderCrying 6y agoI mean, it got published on April 1st, surely they were in on the joke?
- eyelidlessness 6y agoThe author submitted it specifically to expose the predatory nature of the journal, not as a joke. If the journal were "in on the joke", they were alone in there.