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"The list now features more than 250 publishers that he considers to be "potential, possible, or probable predatory" companies, which take advantage of academic
by Jun8 13y ago
"The list now features more than 250 publishers that he considers to be "potential, possible, or probable predatory" companies, which take advantage of academics desperate to get their work published."
Right there, the root cause of the problem: If you're "desperate" to get your research published, it most probably is not worth anything. These academics are not innocent victims, they usually know that these journals are not worth the paper they're printed on. But hey, it's another item in te resume.
- HarryHirsch 13y ago> These academics are not innocent victims, they usually know that these journals are not with the paper they're printed on. Are the poor sods publishing there supposed to live on air and light? They are publishing there because the rules of the game demand that they publish somewhere. Seriously, what alternative do you suggest? I do agree that there are many colleges and graduate schools that ought to be shut down today, but neither myself not anyone else has any suggestion how to go about it.
- rch 13y agoPart of the problem is that the bar for getting a terminal degree is set lower than it should be. Maybe we should be reforming the committee selection process, before taking on the publishing industry.
- Luyt 13y agoThey are publishing there because the rules of the game demand that they publish somewhere. If I were in such a situation, I would rally up my peers and create some brand new open-access publisher specifically for ourselves (and other people we like). And charge $0 ;-) And do Google searches to avoid plagiarism.
- gcr 13y agoHow is that not equivalent to just publishing on the authors' website? Everything hinges on reputation.
- wmf 13y agoThe rules of the game demand that academics publish in respectable venues, not "somewhere". Publications in fake non-peer-reviewed journals ought to count for nothing and convincing people to hire or promote you based on fake publications is a form of fraud. Maybe these people can find jobs on Wall Street.
- HarryHirsch 13y agoThere is this bizarro world of minor colleges, the kind that accepts anyone and hands out worthless Bachelors and Masters degrees. They all survive because these days even for the tea lady a high school certificate isn't sufficient, she has to have a college degree. They cannot lay the bar too high, or else they would scare off their clientele, and they have to do "research", and they have to "publish", because this is what a university does, doesn't it? That is the target audience of these journals.
- wmf 13y agoYet another reason to separate teaching and research.
- cantankerous 13y agoPublish or perish, unfortunately. If you lack the pubs, you won't get tenure. If you don't get tenure, you're shown the door. Sometimes research is actually not well understood and not published, but most of the time if it's not accepted to more mainline publications (and there are many non-predatory venues that are "easy publications") it's probably garbage. I get emails asking me to submit to bizarro conferences in strange places now and again. I think they scraped my info off publications from other areas, but I'm not sure. Either way it's pretty incredible what's going on here.