Science Magazine "Sting Operation" Catches Predatory Journals In the Act

sciencehabit writes "A sting operation orchestrated by Science's contributing news correspondent John Bohannon exposes the dark side of open-access publishing. Bohannon created a spoof scientific report, authored by made-up researchers from institutions that don't actually exist, and submitted it to 304 peer-reviewed, open-access journals around the world. His hoax paper claimed that a particular molecule slowed the growth of cancer cells, and it was riddled with obvious errors and contradictions. Unfortunately, despite the paper's flaws, more open-access journals accepted it for publication (157) than rejected it (98). In fact, only 36 of the journals solicited responded with substantive comments that recognized the report's scientific problems. The article reveals a 'Wild West' landscape that's emerging in academic publishing, where journals and their editorial staffs aren't necessarily who or what they claim to be."

Comments

Click

[mynamestolen]

How many of the open access journals rely on click through advertising? Follow the money, I say.

Re:Click

[ATMAvatar]

In this "experiment", what was the control group?

Controls?

[Anonymous Coward]

Did he send the bogus articles to closed publishers too? How did the rates compare? I tried to RTFA, but didn't see anything about controls.

Democratization

[SecurityTheatre]

A lot of people cite the democratizing power of "open access" and "crowd sourcing". I feel this is an example of the same principle at work.

On one hand, it is easier for those that are not entrenched within the bastions of power to be heard, but on the other hand, all data received from these sources must be treated much more cautiously.

In the past "being published" was a big deal, as it required a fairly high bar of factual accuracy, and that is still the case of many prestigious journals, but in the rush to Twitter-ize research and accept as many publishable details as rapidly as possible in the name of profit and prestige, the barriers to entry have eroded.

In much the same way that hard investigative journalism with strong ethical guidelines, verifiable sources and solid editing will always have a place in my heart, these reputable journals can serve to establish a foundation of trust in the scientific arena. And now, in much the same way that one should treat any writing within the "blogosphere" as suspect until verified, many open access journals must now be treated with the same level of suspicion until it is proven otherwise that they hold themselves to a higher standard.

TLDR: Democratization is not always a good thing.

Re:Democratization

[fermion]

First the disclaimer. I do believe that professionally peer reviewed journals and reporting still has a place. I pay significant sums of money to subscribe to a newspaper, a few top magazines, as well as Science and Nature. They serve a purpose and, to me, are worth the costs.

That said Science is not beyond reproach on accuracy. Both journals has had a very scandalous path over the past few years with their accepting clearly fraudulent papers. In July, evidently, Alirio Melendez had a paper retracted. This researcher fooled many major journals with at least 13 papers. Science also published the paper on bacteria living on arsenic, which is generally seen as having major issues. I recall reading a paper related to dancing and sexual attraction, maybe in Nature, being retracted due to fabricated data.

That said, there is little wrong with a single suspect paper being published. This is how scientists communicate. There is little protection against fraud such as occurred in this case because it is so patently silly. Building a system to protect against such silliness would mean that we would no longer be focused on science. The real problem here is that the popular media does not understand the difference between a single piece of research and the process of research. Places like /. should know better, but they don't. The process of science is to reproduce and extend results. When a bad paper corrupts the process, as has happened when Science and Nature has published suspect paper, that is a problem. These journals, having high impact factors, have a responsibility to proctor what they publish. A backwater online journal does no necessarily have such responsibility, rather relying on the ethics of the researcher and a faith in the process of science to ferret out unethical and silly people like these.

What is truly alarming is the simple bad science present in this research project. This experiment has no control group and does not try to match the target journals to an equivalent paper journals.

If the research was done properly the open access journals would be matched with closed journals on the basis of several relevant criteria, like impact factor, cost to publish, region predominately served, or the like. This is the way research is done. One can't just go out onto the street, ask 10 people who you don't like if they ever thought of killing someone, then claim that everyone in this group are murderers if 7 say yes.

The paper would then be submitted to all the journals, the results generated using well known statistical methods, and then, if there is some degree of confidence, the results published.

My prediction is that if you were paying a closed source low ranking journal to publish a paper asserting that the moon was composed of coagulated casein in a mesh of lipids they would not blink at printing it.

At the end of the day, in this case Science is no better than your average corrupt advertising agent.

Re:Bias

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, it's really really badly done.

To actually make any of the conclusions (or inferences) about the quality or rigor of open-access journals REQUIRES a control group of traditional journals to be operated on in a similar manner. In other words, there needs to be a sting on both open-access and traditional journals simultaneously.

Without that, no claims can be made. None. Not even one. Because we DO NOT KNOW how many traditional journals, like Science, would also have accepted their falsified paper(s). It's possible the traditional journals could have lower standards of quality and rigor than the open-access group.

Science and AAAS (of which I'm presently ashamed to be a member) should be blasted for publishing this tripe. It needs to be retracted, immediately. If they want to have the slightest shred of credibility here, they should at least conduct scientifically rigorous stings.

Disgusting.

Re:Bias

[goodmanj]

Yes, but. This isn't entirely a binary scientific question. If the question were "are open-access journals worse than traditional journals?", you'd obviously need a control. But "Is the peer review process at open-access journals acceptable?" is not a scientific question, but one of values and personal preference. Most people would decide that a 50% failure rate is not acceptable, control or no control.

Now, we're all *very* curious to know whether traditional journals fare better than open ones, and Science is showing bias and intellectual dishonesty by avoiding that question, BUT that doesn't mean that this study has no value.

Re:The total number of these journals is irrelevan

[semi-extrinsic]

In Norway, we have a "level" system that is used in academia throughout the country. It is used for evaluating researchers and research groups when it comes to employment, tenure, funding etc. Your "point score" is summed up, 2 points for publication in a "level 2" journal, 1 point for "level 1".

A journal is either "level 2", "level 1" or "level 0". "level 2" is a selection of top journals from each field in science, 2000 in total (for all of science, from computational physics to the sociology of music). "level 1" means the remaining serious peer-reviewed journals. "level 0" either means "bullshit journal" or "journal that was founded just last year".

Researchers may nominate journals for a change in status, e.g. 2->1, 0->, etc. The decisions are made by a government-appointet body on a yearly basis. It's nowhere near perfect, but it's a lot better than nothing.