Slashdot Mirror
Profanity-Laced Academic Paper Exposes Scam Journal
Frosty P writes: A scientific paper titled "Get Me Off Your F****** Mailing List" was actually accepted by the International Journal of Advanced Computer Technology. As reported at Vox and other web sites, the journal, despite its distinguished name, is a predatory open-access journal. These sorts of low-quality journals spam thousands of scientists, offering to publish their work for a fee. In 2005, computer scientists David Mazières and Eddie Kohler created this highly profane ten-page paper as a joke, to send in replying to unwanted conference invitations. It literally just contains that seven-word phrase over and over, along with a nice flow chart and scatter-plot graph. More recently, computer scientist Peter Vamplew sent it to the IJACT in response to spam from the journal, and the paper was automatically accepted with an anonymous reviewer rating it as "excellent," and requested a fee of $150. Over the years, the number of these predatory journals has exploded. Jeffrey Beall, a librarian at the University of Colorado, keeps an up-to-date list of them to help researchers avoid being taken in; it currently has 550 publishers and journals on it."
/cdn0.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/2478224/Screen_Shot_2014-11-21_at_9.53.24_AM.0.png){kind=link}
/cdn0.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/2478226/Screen_Shot_2014-11-21_at_9.53.39_AM.0.png){kind=link}
Of course I didn't use the word "F******" in my submission, but I suppose Slashdot must be couth.
Anyway, here's a link to the actual paper (warning: PDF) - http://www.scs.stanford.edu/~d...
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
I will promptly submit my paper, The Frist Psot Phenomenon on Slashdot , to the journal.
Mr. Beall's list has been criticized as being not neutral, especially after he came out against Open Access in general on political grounds. Check http://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2013/12/16/parting-company-with-jeffrey-beall/ which is a site that itself is strongly pro-license-fees and anti-open-access but which felt it was necessary to distance itself from Beall.
It's no Chicken Chicken Chicken , but it'll do.
Over the years, the number of these predatory journals has exploded.
If the journal is the predator, who or what is the prey? Pray tell.
Having read the paper, I think although the methodology is good, and uses standard statistics, the conclusions cannot be supported based on the experimental results.
On all these spammers. Complaining to the usual resources, FTC, FCC, IP providers, Web hosting, etc. does nothing to take them down.
...is that there are enough of "scientists" out there paying these submission fees to maintain 550 of these. Although I guess "not even bothering to read these" tells a lot about the situation and many of them are created by same scammers to cover more ground..
Nice job. At first I thought the references at the end of the paper weren't used, but upon closer examination they were cited within the paper.
"The University of Siegen in Germany working in the research and development of an autonomous unmanned ground vehicle (DORIS) project as in figure 1. As it is still a work-in-progress, a problem has been identified in the de- signing and implement a speed control system for DORIS_1 and DORIS_2 where a mechanical transmission and Hydro- static transmission used. An electro hydraulic servo system developed for DORIS_3 [1]." They do not waste monies on grammar the editing.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
A comedic init system written as a prank has been accepted into nearly every linux distribution. Red faced executives and senior technical personnel at major linux vendor Red Hat where the project originated are now too embarrassed to admit that; "yes, systemd was a joke all along".
This is not the first time Red Hat have been left Red Faced after publishing spoof source code. In 2006 under near identical circumstances, Red Hat published a sound daemon called Pulse Audio. To add insult to injury, there is a single prankster behind both code bases.
Red Hat executives were unavailable to comment on this story.
I wonder if this is where all the anti, and all the pro AGW "studies" are done
What I mean is has anyone actually sourced out all the sources on both sides of the isle? does one side use these shady journals to "prove" the other side wrong? Do both do it? or do the studies we get side come from mostly reputable sources
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
Probably shorter and more useful
Thank you for that! I haven't laughed like this at an academic paper in, well, a really blooming long time.
And as a bonus, I've given the folks here at the coffee shop something to stare at. :)
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
because it is reviewed by their so called "review team".
From the official site:
"The International Journal of Advanced Computer Technology (IJACT) was developed for Engineering, Engineering Technology, and Industrial Technology professionals and is a highly-selective, refereed journal. Manuscripts that appear in the IJACT Articles section have been subjected to a tiered review process. This includes blind review by three or more members of the international editorial review board followed by a detailed review by the IJACT editors.Although feedback ordinarily will be given, the editors reserve the right to reject a manuscript for publication without a rationale for their decision."
There are two problems with the situation, one is easy to solve and the other less so.
The first problem is that occasionally researchers (usually junior) will submit actual meaningful work to these journals, likely driven at least in part by the exceptionally low publication charge. Publishing in a top-tier journal is expensive, and even the reputable open-access journals (such as PLoS ONE) can easily be over $1000 to publish. As junior researchers don't have the larger budgets of their senior colleagues they may be tempted to try this route. The solution to this is of course to encourage these people to shy away from the "cheap" open access journals like this one and if need be seek out assistance in covering page costs in reputable journals instead.
The second problem is the volume of garbage traffic that these rags generate. Trying to auto-junk their email with spam filters is not necessarily wise as it could end up decreasing the overall signal-to-noise ratio of said filters and hence increase the false positive rate. These guys excel at hitting just the right mark of spaminess. You could of course try to just blacklist the from addresses but with the rate at which they register new domain names that is a losing battle as well. Then there is also the deluge of invitations to crappy conferences that they send out as well to untold thousands of unsuspecting victims. You can't really win this one, and they aren't breaking any laws either so you can't turn the authorities against them.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Now they're going to put this esteemed journal out of business and their paper will never receive the sort of impact factor needed for tenure.
I am becoming gerund, destroyer of verbs.
So, you're telling me the $300 I paid to the Journal of Experimental Onanism to publish my findings was a waste of money?
Damn. I've already printed up my CV and that paper is at the top of my list of publications. I suppose I should have been suspicious when I saw that the editors that were assigned to peer review my paper were Jack Meihoff and Richard Gazinya.
You are welcome on my lawn.
As a reviewer, I would have rejected the paper because I don't see where either of the references given are cited in the text. However, they would get a point for being up-to-date in citing RFC2821 rather than RFC 821.
http://dspace.mit.edu/bitstrea...
They charge the authors. They take money from the authors on the promise that their article will be published. The implication is that anyone reads or respects this publication, and that by being so published the author will attain fame. That is a lie. They take money from the authors in exchange for that lie. Nobody reads journals that are full of crap that no respectable journal would publish. These predators make their money off the authors, and deliver a lie in return.
Behold the Turbo Encabulator
Left MS Windows for Linux Mint and never looked back!
Vote for Bernie in 2016!
There are sham politicians, sham journalists, sham non-open-access-journals, sham universities, sham scientists, even sham-poo. Why shouldn't there be sham-open-access-journals? What are these people trying to prove?
Next time some AGW douche tries to play the "peer reviewed" card. Because now we know where IPCC findings are submitted.
It took two computer scientists to write up this document? I fear for the future
The paper isn't mis-using religious concepts or entities or terminology for secular and negative purposes, it's using vulgar terms instead of more polite ones. People keep f******* mistaking the two concepts.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
/unsubscribe /unsubscribe
fucking
"All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy"
Stop fucking linking to shitty box media scum sites.
Because, that's what SPAM is intended to do, only a fraction of a percentage of the people have to give them money (even if it's as a joke, opposite research or any reason whatsoever) for them to be profitable.
These sites are literally auto-generated for any field you can think of (I work in association with physicists, biologists and neurologists, they have at least a dozen journals across these fields). I get daily spams from at least 5 of them. The websites are identical (replacing the $field), the journals look identical and they're auto-generated. It is potentially a one-person operation having these half-wit professors publishing close to $3000/month/journal + advertising pages for what is an entirely electronic "journal".
There are similar sites offering help writing your papers, offering help getting NIH/NSF/whatever funding. A small team could easily lift close to $1M/month in a self-enclosed, self-propagating ecosystem of 'products and services'; everything from the creation to the publishing of an entire study.
The problem is not necessarily that these people are doing that (after all, it's a great idea to create an entirely fake ecosystem), the problem is that our public resources (in the form of government and tuition sourced grant money) are being used to publish these professors in fake, non-peer reviewed journals. Universities and government institutions actually accept these fake journals as 'credentials' because being published in a number of official-sounding journals trumps quality research for the beancounters.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
I was e-mailed a paper from a server at the time JGR Solid Earth for review.
The path and has tags looked legit so I clicked on a link to get the "paper" to review it.
Well! The paper that came across was not what I would say a "research paper."
I did review it! It was a monster of disinformation and misunderstanding!
I scored it as such and recommending rejection.
Just a few weeks later I get another e-mail from AGU JGR: the paper is published!
Well. What can I do. They, AGU JGR send to me a manuscript that is FAILED in every aspect but THEY publish it anyway.
So why send to me a fabricated and failed manuscript in the first place! Just take the credit card money from the "author" and publish the rubbish!
Yes. It is a sad state of affairs that AGU is just a spam monger and publisher of irreproducible research. Ha Ha.
This is the prize that AGU inherited from becoming an "Old Girl Network" instead of an "Old Boy Network'!
Ha ha AGU.
I see U !
And your databases! Lots of money there A.
Definition of profane
2: to debase by a wrong, unworthy, or vulgar use.
Clearly, this word has become synonymous with "vulgar." Maybe it didn't used to be, but it is now. Language changes based on popular use, so if something is popularly used incorrectly, it becomes correct. A lot of people think that isn't how English should work, but that doesn't change the fact that it does.
News for nerds, from nine years ago.
Don't forget "Nmap: The Internet Considered Harmful - DARPA Inference Cheking Kludge Scanning" (DICKS).
http://nmap.org/misc/hakin9-nmap-ebook-ch1.pdf
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/10/05/hakin9_silliness/
IJACT'ed from the community of honorable journals?
$x = ($x * 10) % 10 >= 5 ? 1 + int $x : int $x
While the scientific merits of their approach are indeed somewhat questionable, their article addresses a topic of widespread public interest and they make a valid point. I suppose it has entered the journal not under the category "original research" but rather under "discussion and critical commentaries".
http://pdos.csail.mit.edu/scig...
SCIgen, an automatic CS paper generator, which got several "authors" accepted to talk at conferences !
Sure, everyone uses profanity. Most have enough sense to reserve the worst of it for private remarks. But I find the use of it in journals representing noble endeavors to be tasteless. The world is full enough of big egos who like to flaunt their coarseness in the name of frankness. Besides frankness, there is a corner of their enlarged self-esteem that is saying, "Look at me. Look at me. Look at me."
Sadly, this paper make more sense than anything written by Bennet Hassleton.
You know how, after seeing/saying a work enough times, it looks like it's being spelled/said wrong? That happened to me here. Chicken