SCIgen's "Rooter" was accepted in 2005. I think the next step would be submitting an array of bogus articles citing each other to achieve an impressive h-index. Maybe adding AI-generated articles to the batches would be one of the ways to verify the reviewers in more serious journals.
Another scam paper published in a “scientific” journal
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Re: Another scam paper published in a “scientific” journal
#42Earlier quoted context omitted.
Unfortunately, the truth is much more unfunny than you think. In the past, you could get tenure at community or regional colleges just by teaching. If you were interested you might from time to time publish an article in the institution's journal or maybe even in a real journal - as a botanist or astronomer you can do citizen science without much equipment. That's how it ought to be. But nowadays, administration has…
I don't understand this claim - because publishing in a 'journal of convenience' won't work for tenure because they don't just count your publications they look at what impact your publications have.
There are "teaching schools", where teaching is your full-time job. Even these schools now require some publications, which is where the predatory journals come in. Schools where research is supposed to be part of your job will have a list of journals that count, and they may have a point system. Better schools have shorter lists. This is enforced at the dean level, since deans don't have the expertise to evaluate individual papers. Here predatory journals won't help you.
Re: Another scam paper published in a “scientific” journal
#43Earlier quoted context omitted.
Maybe it's an unpopular opinion, and biased by fields I've worked in as a grad, but I think you really just can't validate a particular paper without a background in the field. You need lots of context: recent works of that university department, credability/background of the last author post doc/professor, state of the art and cornerstone works in that field. You could probably gain an entry level background (except…
> literature reading full-time students Nobody keeps reading full time, that would not only be insane it would also be conterproductive since it’s time not spend actually doing something or writing papers. In most place it’s not necessary to know all the recent papers, and if a really important one is missing as a reference, a reviewer will note it in the comments.
I worded that poorly. I meant full-time students (as in they're not just reading about something out of curiosity while sitting on the toilet) that read literature as a part of their job.
Re: Another scam paper published in a “scientific” journal
#44As a lay-person who reads scientific papers sometimes because they’re referenced on HN, how do I validate the credibility of a journal? Does a directory of journals exist with scoring, or is there a strategy I can use when evaluating a paper or journal to determine credibility?
You can start by making sure it has many citations, not self citations, and ideally also people challenging it.
Then you can judge the arguments of the paper and the papers referencing it.
Usually a paper with thousands of citations and only weak arguments against it is trustworthy.
Re: Another scam paper published in a “scientific” journal
#45I would love to read a parody scientific journal, we may even stumble on some hidden truths.
The closest thing I know of is the annual proceedings of Sigbovik. It's a humorous conference traditionally held on April 1st and "was formed in 2007 to celebrate the inestimable and variegated work of Harry Quacksalver Bovik. We especially welcome the three neglected quadrants of research: joke realizations of joke ideas, joke realizations of serious ideas, and serious realizations of joke ideas."
In 2020, there was even a paper about improving the peer review process called "State-of-the-art reviewing: A radical proposal to improve scientific publication"
Re: Another scam paper published in a “scientific” journal
#46Ok, so here's what you do next: make a list of all of the authors published in those journals and track their careers. Anyone want to bet the results will be entertaining?
Unfortunately, the truth is much more unfunny than you think. In the past, you could get tenure at community or regional colleges just by teaching. If you were interested you might from time to time publish an article in the institution's journal or maybe even in a real journal - as a botanist or astronomer you can do citizen science without much equipment. That's how it ought to be. But nowadays, administration has…
> In the past, you could get tenure at community or regional colleges just by teaching. (...) But nowadays, administration has taken over, and everyone gets to fulfill the publication metric, or there won't be tenure.
Completely true! I'm an adjunct teacher (meaning I have no tenure) at a non-US state college. Here, if we want tenure, we must go through a public panel when there are open vacancies, and the jury will validate certain criteria.
At my last attempt (to get tenure), the criteria was 50% "scientific" (papers, journals, projects), 30% pedagogical (teaching experience, pedagogical materials) and 20% organizational. Although I fared well in the pedagogical components, I got behind in the "scientific" one, as I only published 4/5 papers (in decent venues), 1 book (in a predatory publisher) and 1 chapter of a book (in another predatory publisher)..
The papers (which have almost no citations => no viewers) got more points than an ebook that I have about Python programming which has 3.1k stars on github (which got zero points).
Just to say that teaching scores less than number of papers..
Re: Another scam paper published in a “scientific” journal
#47While I think it's great that these journals get exposed and it's fun to read how they are being exposed in lots of interesting ways I disagree with the following:
>Those who evaluate c.v.s, however, often don’t know which journals are bogus.
In fact the expert who evaluate cv's in academia typically know well which journals are bogus (or better they know which journals are not bogus and if there are journals they don't know about they look them up and quickly see if they are bogus).
Having published in such a journal will quickly get you removed from potential applicants lists or graded poorly in grants applications.
Therefore the only time I have ever seen these been cited were in PhD position applications from developing countries (because the students are told publications are increasing their chances and they want to get ahead, while in fact it disqualifies them).
So, like it is so often, these journals predate on the weak.
Re: Another scam paper published in a “scientific” journal
#48[deleted]
Re: Another scam paper published in a “scientific” journal
#49As a lay-person who reads scientific papers sometimes because they’re referenced on HN, how do I validate the credibility of a journal? Does a directory of journals exist with scoring, or is there a strategy I can use when evaluating a paper or journal to determine credibility?
I believe you can probably get a good answer to your question with Beall's list: https://beallslist.net/
^ That was the standard blacklist, but I thought it was shut down in 2017?
It's really tricky, because the move to open access publishing (which typically requires that authors pay) is a good thing on one hand, but facilitates these junk journals (and inflates publication count) on the other hand.
There are also Cabell's lists, both of predatory and "quality" journals.
Re: Another scam paper published in a “scientific” journal
#50Ok, so here's what you do next: make a list of all of the authors published in those journals and track their careers. Anyone want to bet the results will be entertaining?
Unfortunately, the truth is much more unfunny than you think. In the past, you could get tenure at community or regional colleges just by teaching. If you were interested you might from time to time publish an article in the institution's journal or maybe even in a real journal - as a botanist or astronomer you can do citizen science without much equipment. That's how it ought to be. But nowadays, administration has…
A quote from someone when I volunteered at the IEEE Southeast Regional Conference and wondered why almost none of the authors showed up: "They're students at schools that require a certain number of publications to graduate. We don't care as long as they pay the fee to register."