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Romanian Science Journal Punked By Serbian Academics

Posted by Unknown on from the groundbreaking-research dept.

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."

7 of 95 comments (clear)

  1. Great idea! by Narcocide · · Score: 5, Funny

    Disgusted with the poor state of Serbia's research output, I will now also scam a Romanian science journal.

    1. Re:Great idea! by X.25 · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Disgusted with the poor state of Serbia's research output, I will now also scam a Romanian science journal.

      Do you even understand what the story is there?

      This "science journal" has nothing to do with science, they just print anything people pay them to print and call themselves a 'science journal'. This is how various 'scientists' meet their publishing quota.

      By simply publishing shit in a "science journal", they keep their (state funded) privileges.

      3 rebellious guys were tired of watching all those corrupted mediocres get away with it, so they managed to get complete nonsense published in this 'science journal' in order to prove that works published in this piece of shit have no value.

      Things like this have been done for quite some time now, in many countries. There are quite few journals like this.

      Sadly, probably nothing will change.

    2. Re:Great idea! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Disgusted with the poor state of Serbia's research output, I will now also scam a Romanian science journal.

      Sounds like a cunning plan.

      Yes, now Serbia can be proud of not publishing such rubbish. If you can't do well yourself make sure someone else does worse

      The entire point of this stunt obviously fell 20 feet short in your mind(s). I suppose you all fail to see the larger issue here with them being able to get away with this, as I now have to question every process to publish a paper in every country, as I'm willing to bet most review processes are just as pathetic. In fact, I'd love someone to pay this group to exercise this test on a global scale just to prove how much "published" papers have a hell of a lot more to do with revenue than they do results.

      In that way, this reminds me of Amazon product reviews. The difference is we're not using Amazon reviews to create laws and legalize products.

    3. Re:Great idea! by K.+S.+Kyosuke · · Score: 5, Funny

      Disgusted with the poor state of Serbia's research output, I will now also scam a Romanian science journal.

      Great. Now even scientific activism has been balkanized.

      --
      Ezekiel 23:20
  2. "Journal of Modern Illogical Studies" by Chrisq · · Score: 5, Funny

    The "Journal of Modern Illogical Studies" does exist, it's just called slashdot.

  3. Publish or Perish! by physics101 · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

  4. Random paper generator by Laxator2 · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.