Publishing stings find predatory journals, shoddy peer review

With the rise of digital publishing, running a fake journal for profit has become a viable business model.

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Peer-reviewed scientific papers are the gold standard for research. Although the review system has its limitations, it ostensibly ensures that some qualified individuals have looked over the science of the paper and found that it's solid. But lately there have been a number of cases that raise questions about just how reliable at least some of that research is.

The first issue was highlighted by a couple of sting operations performed by Science magazine and the Ottawa Citizen. In both cases, a staff writer made up some obviously incoherent research. In the Citizen's example, the writer randomly merged plagiarized material from previously published papers in geology and hematology. The sting paper's graphs came out of a separate paper on Mars, while its references came from one on wine chemistry. Neither the named author nor the institution he ostensibly worked at existed.

Yet in less than 24 hours, offers started coming in to publish the paper, some for as little as $500. Others offered to expedite publishing (at a speed that could not possibly allow for any peer review) for additional costs. The journals in this case are scams. Without the expense of real editors and peer review, they charge the authors fees and spend only a pittance to format the paper and drop it on a website. The problem is that it can be difficult to tell these journals from the real things.