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Romanian Science Journal Punked By Serbian Academics
schwit1 writes "A group of Serbian academics, disgusted with the poor state of their country's research output, have scammed a Romanian science journal by getting it to accept their completely fabricated hoax article. From the article: 'The paper is replete with transparent gimmicks — obvious, that is, had anyone at the publication been paying attention — including a reference to the scholarship of [singer Michael] Jackson, Weber, [porn star Ron] Jeremy and citations to new studies by Bernoulli and Laplace, both dead more than 180 years (Weber died in 1920). They also throw in references to the "Journal of Modern Illogical Studies," which to the best of our knowledge does not and never has existed (although perhaps it should), and to a researcher named, dubiously, "A.S. Hole." And, we hasten to add, the noted Kazakh polymath B. Sagdiyev, otherwise known as Borat.' Their paper is hilarious and completely ridiculous, and yet it was published in a so-called serious journal without question. The best part is that they list Alan Sokal's hoax paper from 1996 as one of their sources."
Disgusted with the poor state of Serbia's research output, I will now also scam a Romanian science journal.
The "Journal of Modern Illogical Studies" does exist, it's just called slashdot.
"Finally, we give interestingly looking results of a study and show how they could be presented in a visually appealing way."
"[...] and citations to new studies by Bernoulli and Laplace, both dead more than 180 years (Weber died in 1920)."
Bernoulli and Laplace, unlike Ortega and Gasset, are two people, which qualifies them to be "both".
The state of current science publishing is rather appalling in general. I review for various conferences and journals in CS (not bad ones), and I can tell you that papers are often accepted based on author names and affiliations, and not on their contents. I can imagine that in a marginal journal in a small country the standards are even lower.
Everyone disgusted by their country's research output should scam a Romanian journal. Or, even better, it doesn't even have to be related to science, it can be about everything. And it doesn't have to be a journal, you can all come here and shout it in the public square.
I want you to get up right now, sit up, go to Romania, open a window, stick your head out and yell - 'I'm as mad as hell and I'm not going to take this anymore!
Poor slashdot article summary, the In Serbia magazine explains more clearly why this was done: the authors did it to ridicule the "hyperproduction of quasi-scientific works by Serbian professors that are published in the magazines of dubious quality" - they are having a pop at Serbian professors knocking out poor quality rubbish with more concern for volume than quality, and to where ever they can get them published. That said, I'd say this implies there's some definitive criticism at the low editorial quality of the Romanian publication for taking the article without identifying it as a hoax, and probably some commentary on the pressures of being a Serbian academic, looks like their universities or national funding bodies put them under pressure to produce volume and don't look too carefully at the quality when deciding how to fund their researchers.
That makes sense. I get a couple of 'call for papers' emails a day from dubious journals, often with such broad titles as 'The Journal of Modern Research', so it would be completely impossible for them to rate articles. The research establishment in the UK has tried quite hard over the last decade to counter this 'publish loads of crap' incentive. The old Research Assessment Exercise and the new Research Excellence Framework by which departments are assessed requires a small number (about one per year) of 'research outputs'. These can be high-impact papers, books, and so on, and in computer science can include things like published open source software (which counts as technology transfer if you can point to people using it).
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What I recall from my years in a post-Soviet Ukrainian university is a system that works like this. You need to publish N papers and a thesis to get your PhD, then publish M books and a thesis to get your Dr Math / whatever degree, then curate enough students, publish some more books and play some politics to become a Professor. All of this to increase your salary from $200/mo to $300/mo. All this work is judged purely on quantity. There are good scientists that also do something meaningful in parallel, and shameless bureaucrats who just spend the rest of their time looking for more ways to get corrupted. But no-one really takes the publishing game seriously.
In order to get a better bang for their dollar, Serbian government made some radical changes regarding the pay grades of researchers in state universities and institutes. The most important metrics is now the number of publications in the high impact factor journals.
In principle, the idea is not terribly bad. Academic success is being measured by some quantitative objective criteria.
Unfortunately, in practice the system is far from ideal. The problem begins with "impact factor". Too many journals are gaming the system. This is a global international phenomenon.
Upon the introduction of the new system, few unscrupulous Serbian researchers began exploiting the obvious loophole. Namely, there are tons of journals worldwide, who will happily take one's money and publish whatever junk one sends. For whatever reason they carry high impact factor. Few of these "scientists" built entire carriers using this shameful practice.
The prank has been widely publicized in Serbian news outlets and more than served its purpose.
Please check this out:
http://pdos.csail.mit.edu/scigen/
This is a random paper generator, and its output has been accepted at a conference.
There are plenty of low-quality conferences and publications.
Publications are flying onto the shelves faster than the speed of light. Its ok, they contain no useful information so the laws of physics are intact.
http://www.jir.com/
I know this is /. .... :)
but you really should take a few peeks at the paper. It made me laugh
Some investigators agree that simulation through generating random data is an interesting new topic in the field of information discovery, and more and more researchers concur. On the sceptic side, many scientists would agree that, had it not been for the necessity of providing meaningful results, many of existing solutions would be self-sufficient, and, sensing this, we set to show that randomness is indeed often used as an opportunistic “golden standard” of appositeness to further recycle the subject at hand.
Hmm, the humour and sarcasm seem to have been be lost on you.