blog on mathematical journals: More reasons to support the Elsevier boycott

“Tim Gowers's excellent blog posting focused the long-standing discontent of the research community with Elsevier and nucleated a boycott which may prove to be a historic moment in scholarly publishing. I urge others to join the thousands of researchers who have signed on at the website Tyler Neylon created at thecostofknowledge.com. Recent articles in publications like Forbes and The Economist indicate that Elsevier and the rest of the business community are taking note... The arguments Gowers laid out focus on Elsevier's high prices, their bundling arrangements and subscription agreements, and their support for new laws that seem aimed at increasing publishers' profits at the expense of wide dissemination of scholarly research... However, there is another reason for researchers to disassociate from Elsevier, which I find even more compelling: their many lapses in ethical and quality publishing practices. Here are some examples: [1] The Elsevier journal Chaos, Solitons and Fractals published more than 300 papers by the journal's Editor-In-Chief (58 in a single year). That these papers were not subject to peer review was later confirmed... [2] Elsevier journals have repeatedly published plagiarized work and duplicate publications... [3] Elsevier math journals have published a number of papers that make me doubt that they were subject to any peer-review whatever. An egregious example is the 2-page paper "A computer application in mathematics" in Computers and Mathematics with Applications, vol. 59 (2010) pp. 296-297... [4] On several occasions, entire editorial boards have collectively resigned from Elsevier, usually citing discontent with their pricing... [5] From 2000 to 2005 Elsevier published six phony biomedical journals, with titles such as the Australasian Journal of Cardiology, in return for an undisclosed sum from a large pharmaceutical company. The journals' contents were provided by the pharmaceutical company and published without further review, mostly reporting data favorable to their products... [6] In 1998, the Elsevier journal Lancet published one of the most significant examples of fraudulent scientific research in recent times, in which evidence was fabricated to link autism to measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine, thereby setting off a health scare that led to deaths and severe injuries and which continues to this day...”