3 ms·

Does anyone know the credibility of this site or the journal this article is in? The subtitle is odd enough to make me question the legitimacy “comparison to Ca

by harles 5y ago

Does anyone know the credibility of this site or the journal this article is in? The subtitle is odd enough to make me question the legitimacy “comparison to California Safe Harbor Levels”.

spekcular 5y ago
It's run by a reputable publisher (Springer) and the editorial board consists of scientists at major universities: https://foodcontaminationjournal.biomedcentral.com/about/editorial-board https://foodcontaminationjournal.biomedcentral.com/about/edi....
- timr 5y ago
  It's not a great journal. Per the metrics: 0.882 - Source Normalized Impact per Paper (SNIP) 0.37 - SCImago Journal Rank (SJR) 4 - Cite Score This is a place where niche papers get published. Springer runs tons of crap journals. (for reference, SJR scores for all journals: https://www.scimagojr.com/journalrank.php https://www.scimagojr.com/journalrank.php)
  - spekcular 5y ago
    Low citation count does not imply it's an untrustworthy journal. Sometimes niche knowledge is useful – as in the present case of food contamination studies!
    - timr 5y ago
      No, but it implies they have a low bar for acceptance. You can't take impact factor of the journal as the sole indicator of quality for a particular paper (even NEJM publishes garbage), but it should strongly influence your prior. Especially for general-interest studies like this, if the results were impactful and well done they'd be published in a better journal. Assuming that this is done well (I have no idea), the fact that it's in a super-niche journal means that it's likely not surprising/interesting to anyone in the field.
      - spekcular 5y ago
        Let's not conflate "quality" of the paper with whether the results are surprising or interesting to experts. As far as I tell, the work is competently done and provides useful information to consumers. Namely, that commercially available ceramic mugs likely do not pose a lead hazard, with quantitative estimates of the lead they leach. It's not going to win a Nobel prize – but I don't think that should be the bar for taking food safety research seriously.
        timr 5y ago
        I'm not conflating the two. I said explicitly I don't have any basis to judge.

by harles 5y ago

Does anyone know the credibility of this site or the journal this article is in? The subtitle is odd enough to make me question the legitimacy “comparison to California Safe Harbor Levels”.

spekcular 5y ago

It's run by a reputable publisher (Springer) and the editorial board consists of scientists at major universities: https://foodcontaminationjournal.biomedcentral.com/about/editorial-board https://foodcontaminationjournal.biomedcentral.com/about/edi....

timr 5y ago
It's not a great journal. Per the metrics: 0.882 - Source Normalized Impact per Paper (SNIP) 0.37 - SCImago Journal Rank (SJR) 4 - Cite Score This is a place where niche papers get published. Springer runs tons of crap journals. (for reference, SJR scores for all journals: https://www.scimagojr.com/journalrank.php https://www.scimagojr.com/journalrank.php)
- spekcular 5y ago
  Low citation count does not imply it's an untrustworthy journal. Sometimes niche knowledge is useful – as in the present case of food contamination studies!
  - timr 5y ago
    No, but it implies they have a low bar for acceptance. You can't take impact factor of the journal as the sole indicator of quality for a particular paper (even NEJM publishes garbage), but it should strongly influence your prior. Especially for general-interest studies like this, if the results were impactful and well done they'd be published in a better journal. Assuming that this is done well (I have no idea), the fact that it's in a super-niche journal means that it's likely not surprising/interesting to anyone in the field.
    - spekcular 5y ago
      Let's not conflate "quality" of the paper with whether the results are surprising or interesting to experts. As far as I tell, the work is competently done and provides useful information to consumers. Namely, that commercially available ceramic mugs likely do not pose a lead hazard, with quantitative estimates of the lead they leach. It's not going to win a Nobel prize – but I don't think that should be the bar for taking food safety research seriously.
      - timr 5y ago
        I'm not conflating the two. I said explicitly I don't have any basis to judge.