Gaslighting the Medical Literature

lterrat's bookmarks 2017-03-25

Summary:

"Real journals may publish fake articles, but they try not to. Real journals often publish articles with irreproducible results. This is a big problem, but it's not done on purpose. Real journals charge a lot of money in author fees, paid subscriptions for readers, and big fees for libraries, plus advertisers. Medical publishing is a big business.

Fake journals may publish real or fake articles from real or fake authors. They prefer to publish real articles of a quality as high as they can get from real authors at real institutions. That is how they may improve their standing and could even aspire to join legitimacy.

To be fair, the professional publishing community is trying to prevent this mess. Retraction Watch most recently summarized some of the efforts of ICMJE (the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors) and COPE (the Committee on Publication Ethics) to deal with this burgeoning problem monster.[5] In addition, INANE (International Academy of Nursing Editors) has published its own recommendations.[6] The WAME (World Association of Medical Editors) is working on definitive recommendations about what poor authors and editors may do to protect themselves. The "best" simple solution is to personally know the competence, morality, and ease of availability of the journal's top editor.

 

The Internet did change everything. Well, not exactly everything—100% of the energy entering earth's atmosphere still comes from the sun; Avogadro's number is still 6.022140857 × 10 23; and Steely Dan still sings Deacon Blues. And they got a name for the winners in the world: Alabama, the Crimson Tide.

So the Internet changed almost everything, including the now positive ubiquity of open access publishing. The emergence of Internet-based predatory publishing is an out-of-control, very disconcerting byproduct of open access publishing."

Link:

http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/877134

From feeds:

Open Access Tracking Project (OATP) » lterrat's bookmarks

Tags:

oa.journals

Date tagged:

03/25/2017, 20:40

Date published:

03/25/2017, 16:40