4 ms·

I mean, I agree that coin-op journals are a problem in their own right, but most of those coin-op journals aren't considered leading journals of their field: h

by Natsu 4y ago

I mean, I agree that coin-op journals are a problem in their own right, but most of those coin-op journals aren't considered leading journals of their field: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender,_Place_%26_Culture https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender,_Place_%26_Culture "leading international journal in feminist geography" That's the one that published the study claiming that dog parks in Oregon engage in rape culture that won an award from the journal. Inasmuch as the leading journal of the field is a coin-op journal that awarded a hoax paper, I think that is going to reflect poorly on the field.

tptacek 4y ago
That journal was, when I looked a few months ago, the #15th(!) ranked journal in gender studies, and the paper they got submitted was ostensibly based on 1,000 hours of logged field work; as I remember, the authors had to sign a contract confirming they actually did that work, which they lied about. Here, the Sokal hoaxers are counting on their audience not to understand another important academic distinction: the one between journal review and reproduction/verification. Last time we had a thread about this, after I rattled off my own experience doing journal review (ACM and Usenix), someone else in a different STEM field jumped in to say that in their entire academic career they'd never even heard of someone requesting and verifying the raw data of an article they were reviewing for a journal. That's not what journal review is. Journal reviewers spend less than an hour, typically, with each submission. Again: the only thing these people have more contempt for than the woke academics are the rubes they're selling this story to. It's comprehensively premised on their audience being ignorant of how science works: * That there are low- and high- status journals in every field * That there are pay-for-play journals of last resort in most fields * That journal review and reproduction are radically different enterprises (reproductions are research projects in their own right!) * That "review-and-resubmit" is not in fact an indication that a journal is primed to publish your paper, but rather a nice way of saying "no" (several of the papers they crowed about were exclusively review-and-resubmit) * That 1,000 hours of field work is approximately 2/3rds of a full time job for a research assistant or grad student * That getting published in a journal doesn't establish your ideas in the scientific firmament, but rather puts them on the stage to be engaged with and debated by other scientists (this note from Stefan Savage) We could probably go on and on. It's a pretty sickening stunt, and the people involved should be embarrassed.
- Natsu 4y ago
  > That journal was, when I looked a few months ago, the #15th(!) ranked journal in gender studies, > That there are pay-for-play journals of last resort in most fields Sure, but this is supposedly the #1 journal in feminist geography, at least if Wikipedia can be trusted. Seems bad for that field's leading journal to be coin-operated. Honestly, the fact that peer review does so little is part of the problem. I do think that the journals should be responsible for minor details like whether the people doing the study actually exist and can be contacted, and reviewers should catch it if someone reports something about 33% of an n=2 sample. The fact that there's no real review in journal publishing is itself part of the scandal, though you're right that this is by no means unique here. And I don't share your experience: I've yet to find anyone who has heard of this who isn't aware that the academic publishing model is pretty much broken everywhere. > Last time we had a thread about this, after I rattled off my own experience doing journal review (ACM and Usenix), someone else in a different STEM field jumped in to say that in their entire academic career they'd never even heard of someone requesting and verifying the raw data of an article they were reviewing for a journal I've yet to see nonsense of this type published in Cell, Nature, Science, ACM, or Usenix, though I won't claim it impossible. Are you aware of hoax papers in anything close to a leading journal in other fields?
  - tptacek 4y ago
    At the point where we're litigating what peer review is across all of academia, we've stopped discussing things productively. Each time this story comes up, somebody always wants to make the whole thing about peer review being intellectually bankrupt. That's only a live debate if you have a misconception about what a journal article is meant to represent in the sciences --- all of the sciences, not just the floofy ones. It's telling that you rattled off Cell, Nature, Science, ACM, and Usenix: top-tier journals. Yes: top-tier journals do better than low-impact journals-of-last-resort at being selective! That's why they're top journals! I just looked: Gender, Place, and Culture is currently the 21st-ranked gender studies journal. From what I can tell, it is the only journal dedicated to feminist geography. Also: we have now officially reached the point in this discussion where I took time to go figure out what feminist geography was, and where feminist geographers publish (not in G.P.C.! there are higher-ranked cultural geography journals, just not feminist-specific ones).

by Natsu 4y ago

tptacek 4y ago

That journal was, when I looked a few months ago, the #15th(!) ranked journal in gender studies, and the paper they got submitted was ostensibly based on 1,000 hours of logged field work; as I remember, the authors had to sign a contract confirming they actually did that work, which they lied about. Here, the Sokal hoaxers are counting on their audience not to understand another important academic distinction: the one between journal review and reproduction/verification. Last time we had a thread about this, after I rattled off my own experience doing journal review (ACM and Usenix), someone else in a different STEM field jumped in to say that in their entire academic career they'd never even heard of someone requesting and verifying the raw data of an article they were reviewing for a journal. That's not what journal review is. Journal reviewers spend less than an hour, typically, with each submission. Again: the only thing these people have more contempt for than the woke academics are the rubes they're selling this story to. It's comprehensively premised on their audience being ignorant of how science works: * That there are low- and high- status journals in every field * That there are pay-for-play journals of last resort in most fields * That journal review and reproduction are radically different enterprises (reproductions are research projects in their own right!) * That "review-and-resubmit" is not in fact an indication that a journal is primed to publish your paper, but rather a nice way of saying "no" (several of the papers they crowed about were exclusively review-and-resubmit) * That 1,000 hours of field work is approximately 2/3rds of a full time job for a research assistant or grad student * That getting published in a journal doesn't establish your ideas in the scientific firmament, but rather puts them on the stage to be engaged with and debated by other scientists (this note from Stefan Savage) We could probably go on and on. It's a pretty sickening stunt, and the people involved should be embarrassed.

Natsu 4y ago
> That journal was, when I looked a few months ago, the #15th(!) ranked journal in gender studies, > That there are pay-for-play journals of last resort in most fields Sure, but this is supposedly the #1 journal in feminist geography, at least if Wikipedia can be trusted. Seems bad for that field's leading journal to be coin-operated. Honestly, the fact that peer review does so little is part of the problem. I do think that the journals should be responsible for minor details like whether the people doing the study actually exist and can be contacted, and reviewers should catch it if someone reports something about 33% of an n=2 sample. The fact that there's no real review in journal publishing is itself part of the scandal, though you're right that this is by no means unique here. And I don't share your experience: I've yet to find anyone who has heard of this who isn't aware that the academic publishing model is pretty much broken everywhere. > Last time we had a thread about this, after I rattled off my own experience doing journal review (ACM and Usenix), someone else in a different STEM field jumped in to say that in their entire academic career they'd never even heard of someone requesting and verifying the raw data of an article they were reviewing for a journal I've yet to see nonsense of this type published in Cell, Nature, Science, ACM, or Usenix, though I won't claim it impossible. Are you aware of hoax papers in anything close to a leading journal in other fields?
- tptacek 4y ago
  At the point where we're litigating what peer review is across all of academia, we've stopped discussing things productively. Each time this story comes up, somebody always wants to make the whole thing about peer review being intellectually bankrupt. That's only a live debate if you have a misconception about what a journal article is meant to represent in the sciences --- all of the sciences, not just the floofy ones. It's telling that you rattled off Cell, Nature, Science, ACM, and Usenix: top-tier journals. Yes: top-tier journals do better than low-impact journals-of-last-resort at being selective! That's why they're top journals! I just looked: Gender, Place, and Culture is currently the 21st-ranked gender studies journal. From what I can tell, it is the only journal dedicated to feminist geography. Also: we have now officially reached the point in this discussion where I took time to go figure out what feminist geography was, and where feminist geographers publish (not in G.P.C.! there are higher-ranked cultural geography journals, just not feminist-specific ones).