Predatory publishers: the journals that churn out fake science | Technology | The Guardian
ab1630's bookmarks 2018-08-11
Summary:
"A vast ecosystem of predatory publishers is churning out “fake science” for profit, an investigation by the Guardian in collaboration with German broadcaster Norddeutscher Rundfunk (NDR) has found. More than 175,000 scientific articles have been produced by five of the largest “predatory open-access publishers”, including India-based Omics publishing group and the Turkish World Academy of Science, Engineering and Technology, or Waset. But the vast majority of those articles skip almost all of the traditional checks and balances of scientific publishing, from peer review to an editorial board. Instead, most journals run by those companies will publish anything submitted to them – provided the required fee is paid.
To demonstrate the lack of peer review, Svea Eckert, a researcher who worked with NDR on the investigation, successfully submitted an article created by the joke site SCIgen, which automatically generates gibberish computer science papers. The paper was accepted for discussion at a Waset conference, which Eckert attended and filmed for NDR. In British universities alone, more than 5,000 scientists have published articles through Omics and Waset in the past five years, according to a Guardian analysis...."