tag:theconversation.com,2011:/ca/topics/predatory-journals-21960/articlesPredatory journals – The Conversation2023-09-19T12:19:00Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2131072023-09-19T12:19:00Z2023-09-19T12:19:00ZRising number of ‘predatory’ academic journals undermines research and public trust in scholarship<p>Taxpayers fund a lot of <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-us-has-ruled-all-taxpayer-funded-research-must-be-free-to-read-whats-the-benefit-of-open-access-189466">university research</a> in the U.S., and these findings published in scholarly journals often produce major breakthroughs in medicine, vehicle safety, food safety, criminal justice, human rights and other topics that benefit the public at large. </p>
<p>The bar for publishing in a scholarly journal is often high. Independent experts diligently review and comment on submitted research – without knowing the names of the authors or their affiliated universities. They recommend whether a journal should accept an article or revise or reject it. The piece is then carefully edited before it is published. </p>
<p>But in a <a href="https://mdanderson.libanswers.com/faq/206446">growing number of cases</a>, these standards are not being upheld. </p>
<p>Some journals charge academics to publish their research – without first editing or scrutinizing the work with any ethical or editorial standards. These for-profit publications are <a href="https://DOI.org/10.1038/d41586-019-03759-y">often known as predatory journals</a> because they are publications that claim to be legitimate scholarly journals but prey on unsuspecting academics to pay to publish and often misrepresent their publishing practices. </p>
<p>There were an <a href="https://mdanderson.libanswers.com/faq/206446">estimated 996 publishers</a> that published over 11,800 predatory journals in 2015. That is roughly the same number of <a href="https://oaspa.org/">legitimate, open-access academic journals</a> – available to readers without charge and archived in a library supported by a government or academic institution – published around the same time. In 2021, another estimate said there were 15,000 <a href="https://blog.cabells.com/2021/09/01/mountain-to-climb/">predatory journals</a>.</p>
<p>This trend could weaken public confidence in the validity of research on everything from health and agriculture to economics and journalism.</p>
<p>We are <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=xXJ-XxEAAAAJ&hl=en">scholars of journalism</a> and <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=LyEoOLQAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao">media ethics</a> who see the negative effects predatory publishing is having on our own fields of journalism and mass communication. We believe it is important for people to understand how this problem affects society more broadly. </p>
<p>In most cases, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-020-00031-6">the research published in these journals</a> is mundane and does not get cited by other academics. But in other cases, <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-00239-0">poorly executed research</a> – <a href="https://www.chemistryworld.com/news/report-calls-for-urgent-action-to-tackle-predatory-publishers/4015520.article">often on science</a> – could mislead scientists and produce untrue findings. </p>
<h2>Misleading practices</h2>
<p>Publishing in journals is considered an essential part of being an academic because professors’ responsibilities generally include contributing new knowledge and ways of solving problems in their research fields. Publishing research is often a key part of academics keeping their jobs, getting promoted or receiving tenure – in an old phrase from academia, you publish or perish. </p>
<p>Predatory publishers often use deception to get scholars to submit their work. That includes false <a href="https://www.elsevier.com/reviewers/what-is-peer-review">promises of peer review,</a> which is a process that involves independent experts scrutinizing research. Other tactics include lack of transparency about charging authors to publish their research. </p>
<p>While fees vary, one publisher told us during our research that its going rate is $60 per printed page. An author reported paying $250 to publish in that same outlet. In contrast, legitimate journals charge a very small amount, or no fee at all, to publish manuscripts after editors and other independent experts closely review the work.</p>
<p>These kinds of journals – about 82.3% of which are located in poor countries, including <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.joi.2018.10.008">India, Nigeria and Pakistan</a> – can prey on junior faculty who are under intense pressure from their universities to publish research. </p>
<p>Low-paid young faculty and doctoral students, who may have limited English language proficiency and poor research and writing skills, are also especially vulnerable to publishers’ aggressive marketing, mostly via email. </p>
<p>Authors who publish in fraudulent journals may add these articles to their resumes, but such articles are rarely read and cited by other scholars, as is the norm with articles in legitimate journals. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/1077695820947259">In some instances</a>, articles are never published, despite payment. </p>
<p>Predatory publishers may also have an unusually large breadth of topics they cover. For example, we examined one Singapore-based company called PiscoMed Publishing, which boasts 86 journals in fields spanning religious studies and Chinese medicine to pharmacy and biochemistry. Nonpredatory publishers tend to be more focused in the breadth of their topics. </p>
<p>The Conversation contacted all of the journals named in this article for comment and did not receive a response regarding their work standards and ethics. </p>
<p>Another journal, the <a href="http://www.ijhssnet.com/">International Journal of Humanities and Social Science</a>, says it publishes in about 40 fields, including criminology, business, international relations, linguistics, law, music, anthropology and ethics. We received an email from this journal, signed by its chief editor, who is listed as being affiliated with a U.S. university. </p>
<p>But when we called this university, we were told that the school does not employ anyone with that name. Another person at the school’s Art Department said that the editor in question no longer works there.</p>
<p>It is extremely difficult for people reading a study, or watching a news segment about a particular study, to recognize that it appeared in a predatory journal. </p>
<p>In some instances, these journals’ titles are almost identical to titles of authentic ones or have <a href="https://beallslist.net">generic names like</a> “Academic Sciences” and “BioMed Press.”</p>
<h2>Scholars deceived</h2>
<p>In <a href="https://doi.org/10.3138/jsp-2021-0023">a 2021 study</a>, we surveyed and interviewed scholars in North America, Africa, Asia, Australia and Europe listed as editorial board members or reviewers for two <a href="https://www.piscomed.com/">predatory journalism</a> and mass communication journals. </p>
<p>One company, <a href="https://www.davidpublisher.com">David Publishing</a>, gives a Delaware shipping and mailbox store as its address and uses a Southern California phone number. It says it publishes 52 journals in 36 disciplines, including philosophy, sports science and tourism. </p>
<p>Some scholars told us they were listed as authors in these journals without permission. One name still appeared as an author several years after the scholar’s death.</p>
<p>Our latest, forthcoming study conducted in 2023 surveyed and interviewed a sample of authors of 504 articles in one of those predatory journals focused on journalism and mass communication. </p>
<p>We wanted to learn why these authors – ranging from graduate students to tenured full professors – chose to submit their work to this journal and what their experience was like. </p>
<p>While most authors come from poor countries or other places such as Turkey and China, others listed affiliations with top American, Canadian and European universities. </p>
<p>Many people we contacted were unaware of the journal’s predatory character. One author told us of learning about the journal’s questionable practices only after reading an online posting that “warned people not to pay.” </p>
<h2>A lack of concern</h2>
<p>Some people we spoke with didn’t express concern about the ethical implications of publishing in a predatory journal, including dishonesty with authors’ peers and universities and potential deception of research funders. We have found that some authors invite colleagues to help pay the fees in exchange for putting their names on an article, even if they did none of the research or writing. </p>
<p>In fact, we heard many reasons for publishing in such journals. </p>
<p>These included long waits for peer review and <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?show=journalMetrics&journalCode=rjop20">high rejection rates</a> from <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?show=journalMetrics&journalCode=rjos20">reputable journals</a>. </p>
<p>In other cases, academics said that their universities were more concerned with how much they publish, rather than the quality of the publication that features their work. </p>
<p>“It was very important for me to have it at that time. I never paid again. But I got my promotion. It was recognized by my institution as a full publication. I profited … and it did the job,” one author from the Middle East told us in an interview. </p>
<h2>Why it matters</h2>
<p>Predatory publishing creates a major obstacle in the drive to ensure that new research on critical topics is well-founded and truthful. </p>
<p>This can have implications in health and medical research, among other areas. As one <a href="https://doi.org/10.2519/jospt.2017.0101">health care scholar explained</a>, there is a risk that scientists could incorporate erroneous findings into their clinical practices. </p>
<p>High standards are crucial across all areas of research. Policymakers, governments, educators, students, journalists and others should be able to rely on credible and accurate research findings in their decision making, without constantly double-checking the validity of a source that falsely purports to be reputable.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/213107/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>In some cases, it can be difficult for academics to know which journals are not credible – but other times, people feel pressure to publish in these publications.Eric Freedman, Professor of Journalism and Chair, Knight Center for Environmental Journalism, Michigan State UniversityBahtiyar Kurambayev, Associate Professor of Media, KIMEP UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1537082021-03-15T12:56:48Z2021-03-15T12:56:48Z6 tips to help you detect fake science news<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/389103/original/file-20210311-20-90hym5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=781%2C889%2C4508%2C3098&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">If what you're reading seems too good to be true, it just might be.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://unsplash.com/photos/dhCGbPx8wpk">Mark Hang Fung So/Unsplash</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>I’m a professor of chemistry, have a Ph.D. and <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=RpiSPiwAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao">conduct my own scientific research</a>, yet when consuming media, even I frequently need to ask myself: “Is this science or is it fiction?”</p>
<p>There are plenty of reasons a science story might not be sound. Quacks and charlatans take advantage of the complexity of science, some content providers can’t tell bad science from good and some politicians peddle fake science to support their positions.</p>
<p>If the science sounds too good to be true or too wacky to be real, or very conveniently supports a contentious cause, then you might want to check its veracity.</p>
<p>Here are six tips to help you detect fake science.</p>
<h2>Tip 1: Seek the peer review seal of approval</h2>
<p>Scientists rely on journal papers to share their scientific results. They let the world see what research has been done, and how.</p>
<p>Once researchers are confident of their results, they write up a manuscript and send it to a journal. Editors forward the submitted manuscripts to at least two external referees who have expertise in the topic. These reviewers can suggest the manuscript be rejected, published as is, or sent back to the scientists for more experiments. That process is called “peer review.”</p>
<p>Research published in <a href="https://undsci.berkeley.edu/article/howscienceworks_16">peer-reviewed journals</a> has undergone rigorous quality control by experts. Each year, about <a href="https://www.stm-assoc.org/2012_12_11_STM_Report_2012.pdf">2,800 peer-reviewed journals</a> publish roughly 1.8 million scientific papers. The body of scientific knowledge is constantly evolving and updating, but you can trust that the science these journals describe is sound. Retraction policies help correct the record if mistakes are discovered post-publication.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/389321/original/file-20210312-15-1iumcql.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="man in white coat in lab at laptop" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/389321/original/file-20210312-15-1iumcql.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/389321/original/file-20210312-15-1iumcql.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/389321/original/file-20210312-15-1iumcql.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/389321/original/file-20210312-15-1iumcql.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/389321/original/file-20210312-15-1iumcql.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/389321/original/file-20210312-15-1iumcql.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/389321/original/file-20210312-15-1iumcql.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">‘Peer-reviewed’ means other scientific experts have checked the study over for any problems before publication.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/scientist-using-computer-in-laboratory-royalty-free-image/1194829395">ljubaphoto/E+ via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Peer review takes months. To get the word out faster, scientists sometimes post research papers on what’s called a preprint server. These often have “RXiv” – pronounced “archive” – in their name: MedRXiv, BioRXiv and so on. These articles have not been peer-reviewed and so are <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/10410236.2020.1864892">not validated by other scientists</a>. Preprints provide an opportunity for other scientists to evaluate and use the research as building blocks in their own work sooner.</p>
<p>How long has this work been on the preprint server? If it’s been months and it hasn’t yet been published in the peer-reviewed literature, be very skeptical. Are the scientists who submitted the preprint from a reputable institution? During the COVID-19 crisis, with researchers scrambling to understand a dangerous new virus and rushing to develop lifesaving treatments, preprint servers have been littered with immature and unproven science. <a href="https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/05/a-lot-of-covid-19-papers-havent-been-peer-reviewed-reader-beware/">Fastidious research standards have been sacrificed for speed</a>.</p>
<p>A last warning: Be on the alert for research published in what are called <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-03759-y">predatory journals</a>. They don’t peer-review manuscripts, and they charge authors a fee to publish. Papers from any of the <a href="https://guides.library.yale.edu/c.php?g=296124&p=1973764">thousands of known predatory journals</a> should be treated with strong skepticism.</p>
<h2>Tip 2: Look for your own blind spots</h2>
<p>Beware of biases in your own thinking that might predispose you to fall for a particular piece of fake science news.</p>
<p>People give their own memories and experiences more credence than they deserve, making it hard to accept new ideas and theories. Psychologists call this quirk the availability bias. It’s a useful built-in shortcut when you need to make quick decisions and don’t have time to critically analyze lots of data, but it messes with your fact-checking skills.</p>
<p>In the fight for attention, sensational statements beat out unexciting, but more probable, facts. The tendency to overestimate the likelihood of vivid occurrences is called the salience bias. It leads people to mistakenly believe overhyped findings and trust confident politicians in place of cautious scientists.</p>
<p>A confirmation bias can be at work as well. People tend to give credence to news that fits their existing beliefs. This tendency helps climate change denialists and anti-vaccine advocates believe in their causes in spite of the scientific consensus against them.</p>
<p>Purveyors of fake news know the weaknesses of human minds and try to take advantage of these natural biases. <a href="https://www.huffpost.com/entry/how-to-overcome-cognitive-bias-and-use-it-to-your-advantage_b_5900fff3e4b00acb75f1844f">Training can help you</a> <a href="https://hbr.org/2015/05/outsmart-your-own-biases">recognize and overcome</a> your own cognitive biases.</p>
<h2>Tip 3: Correlation is not causation</h2>
<p>Just because you can see a relationship between two things doesn’t necessarily mean that one causes the other.</p>
<p>Even if surveys find that people who live longer drink more red wine, it doesn’t mean a daily glug will extend your life span. It could just be that red-wine drinkers are wealthier and have better health care, for instance. Look out for this error in nutrition news.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/389322/original/file-20210312-20-1s3fgpp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="gloved hand holds a mouse" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/389322/original/file-20210312-20-1s3fgpp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/389322/original/file-20210312-20-1s3fgpp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/389322/original/file-20210312-20-1s3fgpp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/389322/original/file-20210312-20-1s3fgpp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/389322/original/file-20210312-20-1s3fgpp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/389322/original/file-20210312-20-1s3fgpp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/389322/original/file-20210312-20-1s3fgpp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">What works well in rodents might not work at all in you.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/face-of-tiny-white-mouse-peeps-out-royalty-free-image/157440932">sidsnapper/E+ via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Tip 4: Who were the study’s subjects?</h2>
<p>If a study used human subjects, check to see whether it was placebo-controlled. That means some participants are randomly assigned to get the treatment – like a new vaccine – and others get a fake version that they believe is real, the placebo. That way researchers can tell whether any effect they see is from the drug being tested. </p>
<p>The best trials are also double blind: To remove any bias or preconceived ideas, neither the researchers nor the volunteers know who is getting the active medication or the placebo.</p>
<p>The size of the trial is important too. When more patients are enrolled, researchers can identify safety issues and beneficial effects sooner, and any differences between subgroups are more obvious. Clinical trials can have thousands of subjects, but some scientific studies involving people are much smaller; they should address how they’ve achieved the statistical confidence they claim to have.</p>
<p>Check that any health research was actually done on people. Just because a certain drug works <a href="https://twitter.com/justsaysinmice">in rats or mice</a> does not mean it will work for you.</p>
<h2>Tip 5: Science doesn’t need ‘sides’</h2>
<p>Although a political debate requires two opposing sides, a scientific consensus does not. When the media interpret objectivity to mean equal time, it undermines science. </p>
<h2>Tip 6: Clear, honest reporting might not be the goal</h2>
<p>To get their audience’s attention, morning shows and talk shows need something exciting and new; accuracy may be less of a priority. Many science journalists are doing their best to accurately cover new research and discoveries, but plenty of science media are better classified as entertaining rather than educational. <a href="https://www.bmj.com/content/349/bmj.g7346">Dr. Oz</a>, Dr. Phil and Dr. Drew should not be your go-to medical sources. </p>
<p>Beware of medical products and procedures that sound too good to be true. Be skeptical of testimonials. Think about the key players’ motivations and who stands to make a buck.</p>
<p>If you’re still suspicious of something in the media, make sure the news being reported reflects what the research actually found by <a href="https://www.sciencemag.org/careers/2016/03/how-seriously-read-scientific-paper">reading the journal article itself</a>.</p>
<p>[<em>Deep knowledge, daily.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/the-daily-3?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=deepknowledge">Sign up for The Conversation’s newsletter</a>.]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/153708/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Marc Zimmer does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Whenever you hear about a new bit of science news, these suggestions will help you assess whether it’s more fact or fiction.Marc Zimmer, Professor of Chemistry, Connecticut CollegeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1257742019-11-06T13:34:38Z2019-11-06T13:34:38ZSouth Africa takes steps to assure the quality of its doctorates<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/298898/original/file-20191028-113972-1qv0aob.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">If significant concerns surface after institutional audit, the Council on Higher Education may withdraw accreditation.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Around the world there has been a massive increase in demand for <a href="https://www.nature.com/news/2011/110420/full/472276a.html">doctoral education</a>. This mostly stems from the idea that the “knowledge economy” requires high-level skills. The claim that there’s a correlation between a country’s economic stability and the proportion of its <a href="https://www.universityworldnews.com/post.php?story=2017042113152878">population who have doctorates</a> has led to national targets being set for doctoral graduation. </p>
<p>In 2010, 1,420 doctoral candidates graduated in South Africa. Since then the number has more than <a href="https://www.che.ac.za/sites/default/files/publications/VitalStats%20-%20Public%20Higher%20Education%202017.pdf">doubled</a>. The high increase in both intake and graduation has led to concerns about quality. </p>
<p>A key question is: how did South Africa find the capacity to double its numbers given that the number of supervisors has grown at a markedly slower rate over this period? </p>
<p>A significant amount of money has been invested in <a href="https://www.nrf.ac.za/sites/default/files/Application%20and%20Funding%20Guide%20for%20FISS%20Postdoctoral%20Fellowships%20FINAL.pdf">doctoral education</a>. The national funding formula gives all universities a strong incentive to increase their doctoral intake. But there are questions to be asked about whether the quality of doctoral education justifies these investments of taxpayer money. The quality of doctoral graduates matters because, as the highest level of education, it sets the tone for quality throughout the university.</p>
<p>To answer some of the concerns, South Africa’s <a href="https://www.che.ac.za/about/overview_and_mandate/mandate">Council on Higher Education</a> is about to conduct a national review of higher education institutions that offer doctoral-level qualifications. This will be the first of its kind for the council, which, among other things, is responsible for developing and implementing systems of quality assurance for higher education. </p>
<h2>The review</h2>
<p>Every institution that offers doctoral qualifications has to develop a self-evaluation report indicating how it ensures it meets the doctoral standard. The report has to specify, with evidence, how the institution assures the quality of every step of the doctoral curriculum. This ranges from selecting students to allocating supervisors, providing institutional support, developing and reviewing proposals, ethical clearance and the examination process. It also needs to demonstrate how the institution ensures that its graduates embody specified doctoral attributes.</p>
<p>A review panel then verifies and interrogates the claims by the institution. This is followed by a report to the institution. Institutions that don’t meet all the requirements are required to submit an improved plan to the council. If there are serious concerns after this, the Council on Higher Education has the authority to withdraw accreditation from the academic institution.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.africanminds.co.za/dd-product/doctoral-education-in-south-africa/">Research</a> shows that funding is a key determinant of the rate at which doctoral candidates complete the degree. It’s also known that some universities are research intensive with numerous seminars, research design courses and research chairs. But in others, the supervisor and doctoral candidate may feel quite isolated. </p>
<p>Many South African universities were <a href="https://www.chet.org.za/download/file/fid/90">dissuaded or even forbidden</a> from offering postgraduate education during apartheid past and so have had to build a research culture over a relatively short space of time. </p>
<p>These institutions may lack research infrastructure and have challenges attracting researchers to their rural campuses. It’s not clear how the review process will strike a balance between such a context and the need to reassure the public that the South African doctorate meets international standards.</p>
<h2>Implications</h2>
<p>We do not know whether the rapid increase in number of doctorates has led to a weakening of quality. Perhaps the <a href="https://journals.co.za/content/journal/10520/EJC-96771d4c6">rise</a> in predatory publications, a problem faced across the continent, suggests there is cause for concern. What is known is that some institutional audits undertaken ten years ago uncovered problems with examination processes at doctoral level. This review is an opportunity to revisit the issue.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/why-developing-countries-are-particularly-vulnerable-to-predatory-journals-86704">Why developing countries are particularly vulnerable to predatory journals</a>
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<p>The quality of the doctorate has significant implications. Poor doctoral education can set the scene for the nature of knowledge creation and dissemination in the whole university. If quality processes don’t safeguard academic integrity at doctoral level, then they are unlikely to protect quality at lower levels. </p>
<p>Taxpayer money subsidises doctoral programmes, so the qualification should produce the kinds of knowledge and highly skilled graduates who can make a meaningful contribution to society. </p>
<p>Given that South Africa’s funding formula greatly rewards doctoral education, all universities are being pushed to offer it across all faculties, regardless of availability of supervision and resources. There have been some cases where large numbers of doctoral candidates were admitted without the necessary capacity. The only way to change this, in my view, is to have a funding formula that rewards institutions on their own strengths. </p>
<p>But the country’s <a href="https://www.chet.org.za/download/file/fid/90">history</a> makes any real move towards institutional differentiation a no-go area. So steps need to be taken to ensure that all doctoral programmes meet the threshold standard.</p>
<p>Is the review the appropriate tool to achieve this? </p>
<p>Quality assurance generally seems to encourage <a href="https://theconversation.com/uni-sector-regulation-beset-by-red-tape-report-16722">bureaucracy and compliance</a> and be part of a <a href="https://theconversation.com/here-are-five-signs-that-universities-are-turning-into-corporations-93100">rising managerialism</a> in <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/education/2010/mar/30/academic-bureaucracy-rise-managers-higher-education">institutions</a>. But it’s a good thing to start a conversation about what a doctorate is really for, and how to tell whether quality is being assured. </p>
<p>Perhaps the review will open the space for a national discussion on some of the conservative aspects of doctoral education in the country. For example, the funding formula suggests that the doctorate takes three years, even though most countries offer the doctorate over four. And those four years are on top of strong schooling and university foundations. </p>
<p>Many countries also offer structured coursework as part of the PhD accreditation process. South Africa’s policy precludes this. And the dominant approach to doctoral education in the humanities and social sciences remains the master-apprentice supervision of individual studies. This is despite the fact that the United Kingdom, from which South Africa inherited the model, is now offering an array of more <a href="https://www.euroeducation.net/prof/ukco.htm">flexible models</a>. Neither is there a strong tradition of vivas (oral exams) for the South African doctorate.</p>
<p>Far more innovative approaches are needed. The review might be the vehicle for the necessary institutional conversations.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/125774/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sioux McKenna receives funding from the National Research Foundation.</span></em></p>All institutions that offer doctoral-level qualifications are about to undergo a national review in response to the concerns about quality.Sioux McKenna, Director of Centre for Postgraduate Studies, Rhodes UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1160912019-04-30T07:55:06Z2019-04-30T07:55:06ZHow to approach the revolution in scholarly publishing<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/271444/original/file-20190429-194627-ue5mzl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">By opening up academic journals to a broader audience, everyone benefits.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>There is a digital revolution underway. It’s changing how many things are done – including scholarly publishing. The way that academic research is published, and its availability, has shifted over time. </p>
<p>Academic and scholarly journals used to be available only in hard copy. Then came fairly ubiquitous internet access. This ushered in increasingly expensive subscription access to digital copies of journals. And then open access publishing arrived. Today it’s becoming increasingly easy and free to access academic research that was once hidden behind pay walls in specialist journals.</p>
<p>This changing landscape prompted the <a href="http://www.assaf.org.za">Academy of Science of South Africa</a> to carefully study the potential impact of the digital revolution on scholarly publishing. <a href="http://research.assaf.org.za/handle/20.500.11911/49">The Academy’s first report on the topic</a> was published in 2006. Presciently, it advocated that the digital revolution would radically change both the nature of and access to scholarly published material. It recommended that journals published in southern Africa should embrace open access online publishing to improve the visibility and accessibility of research. </p>
<p>The Academy implemented many of the report’s recommendations. It established the <a href="http://www.scielo.org.za/">SciELO SA</a> journal platform and peer review of South African journals. </p>
<p>The <a href="http://research.assaf.org.za/handle/20.500.11911/73">second report</a> was published three years later. It dealt with scholarly book publishing. Its recommendations included a call for books to attract higher numbers of publication units in the Department of Higher Education and Training’s evaluation of publication outputs from universities. This meant that books generated increased funding for universities. </p>
<p>Now the Academy has produced its <a href="http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11911/114">third study</a> of scholarly publishing. It contains recommendations we hope will equip academics, scholars and publishers in South Africa and elsewhere in the region with the tools to navigate the next five to ten years. </p>
<p>Among other things, the report calls for quality over quantity when it comes to locally produced scholarly journals. It also recommends that these should all be open access. Discussions are needed at a national level about affordable, sustainable article processing charges. These are the fees that journals charge to accept, edit and publish articles.</p>
<h2>Recommendations</h2>
<p>The report presents a bibliometric analysis of all forms of peer-reviewed scholarly publishing in South Africa between 2004 and 2014 – books, journal articles and conference proceedings. The analysis was carried out by the <a href="http://www0.sun.ac.za/crest/">Centre for Research on Evaluation, Science and Technology</a> at Stellenbosch University.</p>
<p>This yielded many positive findings. Among them are the effectiveness of the Department of Higher Education and Training’s <a href="http://www.dhet.gov.za/Policy%20and%20Development%20Support/Research%20Outputs%20policy_2015.pdf">publication incentive funding</a>. </p>
<p>But there are concerns, too. The analysis found evidence of academics publishing in predatory journals and conference proceedings. In these instances, academics paid for their research to be published without it going through peer review or any proper assessment process. There were also examples of questionable editorial practices; for instance, editors or members of editorial boards publishing in their own journals. </p>
<p>Academics and institutions must be more vigilant when it comes to identifying and avoiding predatory publishers and conferences. Editors of scholarly journals should be required to adhere to the National Scholarly Editors Forum <a href="https://www.assaf.org.za/index.php/programmes/scholarly-publishing-programme/national-scholarly-editors-forum">code of conduct</a>.</p>
<h2>The ASSAf report</h2>
<p>This historical view of the South African system’s performance was complemented by a set of recommendations for its future. The main finding was that open access publishing should be mandatory and publicly funded data generated by universities, should be freely available.</p>
<p>These are some further key recommendations outlined in the report.</p>
<p>First, South Africa needs a smaller set of sustainable high-quality local scholarly journals. These must all be online and open access. They must be indexed on <a href="http://www.scielo.org.za/">SciELO SA</a> or international indexes that screen out predatory journal publishers.</p>
<p>Second, the National Scholarly Editors’ Forum needs to reach an agreement with non-commercial journal publishers about affordable article processing charges. These could replace subscriptions. </p>
<p>Alongside this process, the Departments of Higher Education and Training and of Science and Technology, universities and their libraries, and the country’s National Research Foundation need to discuss how article processing charges could be funded from current expenditure on journal subscriptions.</p>
<p>There also need to be urgent discussions among these role players and multi-national mega publishers of commercial journals. These publishers often charge high article processing charges, offer subscription models that aren’t affordable for South African and other developing country institutions, or both. More affordable deals need to be negotiated.</p>
<p>Finally, a national, regional and continental debate is needed to develop a system of high-quality journals for Africa. These journals would provide visibility for scholarship on the continent while at the same time minimising the deleterious effects of predatory publishing and dubious editorial practices.</p>
<h2>Moving forward</h2>
<p>These recommendations are based on the assumption that the research community and the institutions that support it can ensure a credible, affordable, and reputable scholarly publication system in South Africa. This can happen if all these stakeholders are proactive.</p>
<p><em>Susan Veldsman, Director: Scholarly Publication Unit at the Academy of Sciences in South Africa, co-authored this article.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/116091/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Robin Crewe received funding from the National Research Foundation and the Oppenheimer Memorial Trust. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Wieland Gevers does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>In South Africa, open access publishing should be mandatory and publicly funded data generated by universities, should be freely available.Robin Crewe, Professor of Zoology and Senior Research Fellow, Centre for the Advancement of Scholarship, University of PretoriaWieland Gevers, Emeritus Professor of Medical Biochemistry, University of Cape TownLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/994172018-07-20T13:23:28Z2018-07-20T13:23:28ZI got a hoax academic paper about how UK politicians wipe their bums published<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/227986/original/file-20180717-44073-16cmhfn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Surely a socialist.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/hand-businessman-reaching-toilet-paper-760564720?src=SVHAsG5uq5cGmUEDBmyNcg-1-0">Kapustin Igor/Shutterstock.com</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>I had what seemed like rather a good idea a few weeks back. Building on some prominent findings in social psychology, I hypothesised that politicians on the right would wipe their bum with their left hand; and that politicians on the left would wipe with their right hand.</p>
<p>Ludicrous? Yes – absolutely. But for once my goal wasn’t to run a bona fide scientific study. Instead, I wanted to see if any “journal” would publish my ass-wiping “findings”.</p>
<p>For those who haven’t yet come across the term, “<a href="https://theconversation.com/why-you-should-care-about-the-rise-of-fake-journals-and-the-bad-science-they-publish-72130">predatory journals</a>” are becoming a bit of a nuisance in science. They actively masquerade as legitimate mainstream journals, often with similar layouts and names – although they very likely have essentially zero threshold for publication, despite typically claiming to operate with rigorous peer review processes. Most academics will know the irritation of receiving multiple spam emails per day soliciting manuscripts or inviting one to join editorial boards of unfamiliar journals. Much more importantly, though, these predatory journals are undermining the credibility of scientific publishing because the research they publish appears to be largely unvetted. </p>
<p>So partly out of frustration with this situation, but also out of curiosity, I wanted to see just how low the bar for publication might be. This is the story of my “study”.</p>
<h2>Which hand do you use?</h2>
<p>There is a well-known theory in social psychology – so-called unconscious social priming. The basic idea is that words or concepts can prime our behaviours. The best-known <a href="http://psycnet.apa.org/fulltext/1996-06400-003.html">finding</a> in this field is the report that presenting participants with words to do with old age (“bingo”, “knits”) made them walk more slowly afterwards compared to a control condition (although also see this <a href="http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0029081">paper</a> for a more rounded perspective as several findings in this field of research have been controversial in their own right). </p>
<p>So it seemed to me that there was an obvious prediction for political science – specifically, that politicians from the right should wipe their ass with their right hand (and vice versa). </p>
<p>But there was a snag to my theory. We know that the right side of the brain controls the left side of the body, and vice versa. And in a stunning feat of logic, I realised that the theory had things the wrong way around. Politicians from the right would surely wipe with their left hand, and those from the political left with their right hand. And as we shall see, this careful reasoning paid off handsomely.</p>
<p>My (fictional) research assistant camped outside the Houses of Parliament and essentially stalked “MPs”. She used a large folder of pictures to identify these politicians’ left vs right leaning tendencies. And when a potential participant was seen on the street, the research assistant walked up alongside the politician, indicated that she was a psychological scientist doing a study, provided a brief consent form, and then asked which hand they wiped their bottom with.</p>
<p>This yielded nine (fictional) participants in total, including “Boris Johnski” and “Teresa Maybe”, although one data point had to be discarded – that of “Nigel F. ‘Arage”. He, rather meanly, told my research assistant to “bog off” when asked the hand-wiping question. And so his data was necessarily excluded from the analysis. </p>
<p>But that didn’t matter – because the data from our sample of eight fully confirmed the theory. Politicians do indeed wipe their asses with the contralateral hand. I could scarcely believe my eyes – but of course the statistics never lie.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/228176/original/file-20180718-142426-oa6yf5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/228176/original/file-20180718-142426-oa6yf5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=381&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/228176/original/file-20180718-142426-oa6yf5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=381&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/228176/original/file-20180718-142426-oa6yf5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=381&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/228176/original/file-20180718-142426-oa6yf5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=479&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/228176/original/file-20180718-142426-oa6yf5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=479&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/228176/original/file-20180718-142426-oa6yf5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=479&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Fertile ground for faecal research.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/big-ben-houses-parliament-london-dusk-604697972?src=UEyf85dqTlcNXkTFLzXAFQ-1-0">ExFlow/Shutterstock.com</a></span>
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</figure>
<h2>Time to publish</h2>
<p>So I had everything I needed to write a manuscript. And I decided to submit my ass wiping findings to the first possibly predatory journal that emailed me. Hardly any time had passed and a publisher came over the horizon – <a href="http://crimsonpublishers.com/index.php">Crimson Publishers</a>. Soon after that, the manuscript was completed and submitted – I even added in an “anonymous” peer reviewer of my own, “Dr I.P. Daly”, who was none other than my dear and extremely witty colleague and friend, Professor Ryan McKay – and then things started to get really interesting.</p>
<p>Having submitted the bogus manuscript, I soon got an email informing me that the manuscript was safely received and under review. Just a few days later, I was informed that it was accepted for publication. With a request for US$581.</p>
<p>I told the journal I couldn’t afford any publication fees. So they dropped it to US$99 (for “web hosting charges”). I was tempted – but I’ve learned that you should never accept the first counter offer. So I went for broke. And it turns out that the paper was so groundbreaking that they agreed to publish it for free: “We do understand from you [sic] end. As per your previous conversation, I had a session with financial manager and have decided to provide complete waiver.” It must have been a truly magnificent session with the financial manager. On contacting the journal for comment in relation to this story, my editor was told: “Coming to publication fee the authors who are insufficient with funds, we do provide waivers according to their request [sic].”</p>
<p>And so the article, “<a href="https://static1.squarespace.com/static/56c77251f8baf3ae17ce0a75/t/5b51a047352f5399d14e2088/1532076108626/Gerry+Jay+Louis+hoax+paper.pdf">Testing inter-hemispheric social priming theory in a sample of professional politicians – a brief report</a>”, by one Gerry Jay Louis from the “Institute of Interdisciplinary Political and Fecal Science”, was published. (Note: the paper is no longer available on Crimson’s website. They swiftly removed it when The Conversation got in touch with them for comment on this story, saying: “As per our Editorial Board Member’s suggestion we have retracted the article which you have mentioned from our journal, as you can glance our website for your convenience [sic].”)</p>
<p>Nevertheless, it seems by initially publishing my study, this publisher didn’t live up to its own peer review policies. On their website, <a href="http://crimsonpublishers.com/peer-review-process.php">they say</a>: “The Peer Review Policy is the most essential tool in assessing the quality of publication process that analyzes, validates, and integrates new research findings [sic].” I received not a single peer review comment from the journal, far less a request to revise my manuscript. (The journal told The Conversation: “We do strictly follow double blinded peer review process for all the articles that we receive.”)</p>
<p>Some people have asked why they agreed to publish it for free given their business model is presumably built on extracting publication fees. I don’t have a strong answer to that question, but my hunch is that the waiver is just a cheap way to bulk out the journal in order to make it more attractive to other prospective authors.</p>
<h2>Cleaning up the mess</h2>
<p>Why is this sort of thing a problem? In a nutshell, predatory journals are contaminating the scientific literature by providing ostensibly rigorous reports of studies that in reality are often far from acceptable. Work published in such journals is occasionally used in serious public debates, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/planet-oz/2018/jan/24/murky-world-of-science-journals-a-new-frontier-for-climate-deniers">such as on climate change</a>. They present a serious credibility problem for science.</p>
<p>Of additional concern, it turns out that many academics actually struggle to identify the rogue journals from the bona fide. A <a href="https://www.nature.com/news/illegitimate-journals-scam-even-senior-scientists-1.22556">recent piece</a> in Nature makes this point only too clearly – many senior scientists have published their work in these outlets, and paid thousands of dollars for publishing fees. Indeed, the journal in which I published my hoax paper has authors based at well-regarded institutions like Rutgers, Princeton, and Florida State University. (I am not implying that their papers are necessarily bogus in any way: in fact, they often seem to be regular articles that might well have been accepted in more mainstream outlets.)</p>
<p>I am not the first to publish such a hoax paper. There are <a href="http://deevybee.blogspot.com/2017/07/breaking-ice-with-buxom-grapefruits.html">several</a> <a href="http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/neuroskeptic/2017/07/22/predatory-journals-star-wars-sting/#.WcKT8YxSyUk">lovely</a> <a href="https://www.vox.com/2014/11/21/7259207/scientific-paper-scam">examples</a> already out there. My contribution may only be the unusual blending of political science and faecal hygiene (which is probably the main reason that this story ended up <a href="https://www.facebook.com/1452615238293602/posts/2214659138755871/">going viral on social media</a>). </p>
<p>But it’s clearly a message that can’t hurt to be heard <a href="http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0147913">by more academics</a>, who might otherwise prop up these scamsters with their meagre research funds. And everyone else take heed, too: sometimes you don’t need a PhD (or even any expertise at all) to get yourself a first-author “publication”.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/99417/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Gary Lewis does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Politicians on the right surely wipe with their left hand; and vice versa?Gary Lewis, Senior Lecturer in Psychology, Royal Holloway University of LondonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/951392018-04-17T05:22:09Z2018-04-17T05:22:09ZScience isn’t broken, but we can do better: here’s how<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/215127/original/file-20180417-101509-12bcoay.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The Golden Age of science is in the future.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Joker/Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Every time a scandal breaks in one of the thousands of places where research is conducted across the world, we see headlines to the effect that “<a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2017/05/science_is_broken_how_much_should_we_fix_it.html">science is broken</a>”.</p>
<p>But if it’s “broken” today, then when do we suggest it was better?</p>
<p>Point me to the period in human history where we had more brilliant people or better technologies for doing science than we do today. Explain to me how something “broken” so spectacularly delivers the goods. Convince me I ought to downplay the stunning achievement of – say – the detection of <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/gravitational-waves-9473">gravitational waves</a>.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/no-science-minister-and-its-unclear-where-science-fits-in-australia-91739">No science minister, and it's unclear where science fits in Australia</a>
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<p>I agree, practising science has its frustrations, like every other human endeavour; and scientists can and do go wrong.</p>
<p>But the only place to find the Golden Age of Science is in the future – by making it ourselves.</p>
<p>So let’s not tell ourselves that “science is broken”. Let’s agree that we all share in the responsibility to improve it, by keeping open the mental bandwidth to ask and explore hard questions.</p>
<p>Here, in no particular order, are some of the things that I’ve been thinking about.</p>
<h2>The future of the scientific paper</h2>
<p>Earlier this month The Atlantic magazine published a <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/04/the-scientific-paper-is-obsolete/556676/">provocative essay</a> headlined “The scientific paper is obsolete”.</p>
<p>The scientific paper has done great things since it was <a href="https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/information-culture/the-mostly-true-origins-of-the-scientific-journal/">developed in the 1600s</a>. Today we could certainly say that production is booming.</p>
<p>But the peer-review system is critically overloaded. The irony is, we’re working so hard to generate papers, we don’t have time to read anybody else’s.</p>
<p>One has to ask, have we hit Peak Paper?</p>
<p>My tentative response is “no”. The scientific paper has endured for a reason, and it still holds. It’s an efficient way to structure and communicate information.</p>
<p>But what do you think? Will we still be publishing papers in 2050? And how else could we do it?</p>
<h2>The pressure to publish</h2>
<p>I was lucky to train under a great scientist, <a href="http://www.chiefscientist.gov.au/2016/10/article-steve-redman-australian-neuroscience-society/">Steve Redman</a>. These days we would describe him as unproductive: he published, at most, two or three papers each year. But every one of those papers was deeply considered, meticulously crafted and, as a result, deeply influential.</p>
<p>I think we would all agree that commitment to quality over quantity is the ideal. Authors could invest more time in their papers, and peer reviewers could invest more time in their critique.</p>
<p>In the real world, we know that the incentives often skew the other way. But where do you intervene to break the cycle?</p>
<p>I recently <a href="https://www.nature.com/news/give-researchers-a-lifetime-word-limit-1.22835">came across a radical suggestion</a>: a lifetime word limit for researchers. I suspect it would be very difficult to enforce but what about a variation: change the focus from publications to CVs.</p>
<p>For starters, let’s contemplate a rule that you can only list a maximum of five papers for any given year when applying for grants or promotions. Your CV would have to list retractions, with an explanation. </p>
<p>On the <a href="https://www.nature.com/news/faculty-promotion-must-assess-reproducibility-1.22596">recommendation of Jeffrey Flier</a>, the former Dean of the Harvard Medical School, candidates for promotion would have to critically assess their own work, including unanswered questions, controversies and uncertainties.</p>
<h2>Predatory journals</h2>
<p>If journals are the gatekeepers, then <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/predatory-journals-21960">predatory journals</a> are the termites that eat the gates and make the community question the integrity of the structure.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/who-will-keep-predatory-science-journals-at-bay-now-that-jeffrey-bealls-blog-is-gone-71613">Who will keep predatory science journals at bay now that Jeffrey Beall's blog is gone?</a>
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<p>A predatory journal is one that typically charges high fees for publication with little or no credible peer-review process. As such they have no credibility.</p>
<p>How do we fight back?</p>
<p>How do we arm people in the community who aren’t scientists, and don’t know anything about impact factors and journal rankings and editorial standards, to recognise quality?</p>
<p>Is there an analogy to fair-trade coffee: a stamp that consumers can look for on the product that demonstrates it complies with a certain standard?</p>
<p>Could we have an “ethical journal” stamp, building on the excellent work of the <a href="https://publicationethics.org/">Committee On Publication Ethics</a>?</p>
<h2>Artificial intelligence</h2>
<p>Bloomberg <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-02-13/in-the-war-for-ai-talent-sky-high-salaries-are-the-weapons">reports</a> that there are now five ways to command a multi-year, seven-figure salary.</p>
<p>It used to be four: chief executive officer, banker, celebrity entertainer, professional athlete.</p>
<p>Now add on a person with a PhD in artificial intelligence (AI).</p>
<p>This is the AI century. Like all great waves in technology, it breaks on researchers first.</p>
<p>Time and time again, we get the future – we make the future – before it sweeps over everyone else. </p>
<p>But what does it mean for research training? What roles that scientists do today, will robots do tomorrow? What roles that no one can do today will become possible, with the power of humans and robots combined?</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/finkels-law-robots-wont-replace-us-because-we-still-need-that-human-touch-82814">Finkel's Law: robots won't replace us because we still need that human touch</a>
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<h2>A better future</h2>
<p>To these, I could add more questions.</p>
<p>Let me simply conclude with the two things I know for certain. One, that these questions are crucial, because the future of science is the fate of the world. And two, that as long as we are scientists, we will never cease to ask them.</p>
<p>We will know that science is truly “broken” if we ever give up the quest to make it better.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>This article is based on a keynote speech Alan Finkel delivered at the 2018 <a href="http://www.qpr.edu.au/">Quality in Postgraduate Research Conference</a> in Adelaide, April 17.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/95139/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Alan Finkel does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The only place to find the Golden Age of Science is in the future, but we need some help in getting there.Alan Finkel, Australia’s Chief Scientist, Office of the Chief ScientistLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/867042017-11-07T15:34:23Z2017-11-07T15:34:23ZWhy developing countries are particularly vulnerable to predatory journals<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/193173/original/file-20171103-26472-fm5zvv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Predatory publishers are vultures feeding on academics' worries about output and incentives.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Ondacaracola/Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Every day academics wade through emails riddled with spelling errors promising almost immediate publication of their research. These publications assure the reader that they can skip the tough realities of rejections and revisions. Just a simple click of the submission button, they promise, and within a month – or even just a few days – the article will be published. </p>
<p>No need to worry about rigorous peer review (or indeed any form of review): these journals are willing to publish <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2014/nov/25/journal-accepts-paper-requesting-removal-from-mailing-list">absolutely anything</a> in exchange for handsome sums of money.</p>
<p>These are predatory publications, and they’re <a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0141076814548526">rife</a>. They’re different from mainstream journals because they charge exorbitant fees to publish the articles they solicit, and they don’t follow any of the <a href="https://www.nature.com/news/investigating-journals-the-dark-side-of-publishing-1.12666">quality assurance processes</a> expected in academic publication.</p>
<p>Academics in the developing world have become a <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4589914/">favourite target</a> for these journals, and many seem to be falling into the trap. We need to ask why. </p>
<p>The main reason for this is that there’s a systemic problem – academic publication is too often linked to performance targets or the accrual of incentive funding. For as long as this is the case, academics will take short cuts.</p>
<p>This is certainly the case in South Africa, where academics are often encouraged to publish because this will increase the subsidy the institution receives from the state rather than because it is a university’s task to contribute to knowledge creation.</p>
<h2>Pressure to publish</h2>
<p>There’s every reason for African countries to focus on increasing academics’ publishing outputs to ensure dissemination of their research. Africa contributes <a href="http://akademiai.com/doi/pdf/10.1007/s11192-007-1658-3">very little</a> to international knowledge creation. This is because the most common means of disseminating such knowledge is through academic publication and countries in Africa have not focused on developing this capacity. Developing such capacity will need to move beyond initiatives designed to support individual academics to take on the requisite research and academic writing practices. </p>
<p>It will also require consideration of the extent to which the institutional culture is focused on knowledge dissemination as part of a university’s public good responsibility.</p>
<p>African academics also continue to face multiple obstacles, such as the <a href="http://blogs.plos.org/thestudentblog/2016/06/14/publishing/">biases</a> inherent in the publishing industry. </p>
<p>To overcome these problems South Africa has adopted an approach that involves the department of higher education and training encouraging publication output through a national funding formula. It follows <a href="https://academyofsciencesa.wikispaces.com/DHET+Accreditation">various approaches</a> to ensure that only quality contributions are funded in this way. But the process is not <a href="https://theconversation.com/african-academics-are-being-caught-in-the-predatory-journal-trap-48473">failsafe</a>.</p>
<p>Universities need the money generated by publication output. They use three mechanisms to ensure that all academics publish. First, they reward academic publication explicitly in probation and promotion requirements. Secondly, some universities have imported the notion of key performance indicators from industry: research productivity is measured and the regular generation of research publications is required.</p>
<p>And thirdly, many universities provide <a href="https://theconversation.com/incentives-for-academics-can-have-unintended-negative-consequences-78408">financial incentives</a> to the individual author in the form of funding into a research account. In a few cases, this funding even takes the form of bonuses in the academic’s salary. </p>
<p>The department of higher education and training has repeatedly cautioned against the use of incentives and the “<a href="https://search.opengazettes.org.za/text/9788?dq=38552&page=1">perverse consequences</a>” they bring. But they continue to be widely used. These institutional mechanisms have created a problematic culture in some universities where “getting published” becomes the end goal. Quantity edges out quality. From here it is practically inevitable that some academics will fall for the promises of predatory publications.</p>
<p>Not all universities fall into predatory traps. <a href="http://www.sun.ac.za/crest/%5D">Research indicates</a> that over a ten-year period, research intensive universities had less than 1% of their publications in journals that showed strong evidence of <a href="http://www.sajs.co.za/sites/default/files/publications/pdf/SAJS-113-7-8_Mouton_ResearchArticle.pdf">being predatory</a>. In the same period, five other universities – which are less research-intensive in focus – had more than 10% of their publications in such journals. </p>
<p>This suggests that having a strong research culture is key. If there is a general sense that academic publication is about knowledge dissemination rather than meeting performance targets or accruing incentive funding, academics and universities become less vulnerable to these vultures.</p>
<h2>Making meaningful contributions</h2>
<p>Institutional cultures are difficult to shift. But the South African higher education sector needs to consider how it speaks about – and rewards – publications. Universities should be very wary of introducing systems that focus on counts rather than contributions. </p>
<p>More intensive measures are also needed to support academics in making meaningful contributions. Many novice academics and postgraduate scholars ask me for suggestions about where they can “get published”. They either want to know what journals are most likely to accept their contributions or which will ‘count’ when it comes to promotion. In both cases I ask them <a href="http://postgradenvironments.com/2017/10/16/selecting-journal-publication/">one simple question</a>: “Where is the conversation happening?” </p>
<p>When an academic publishes their work they are making a contribution to the boundaries of a field. So there needs to be a sense of where the boundaries of a field are. Whose work are we drawing from? Whose positions are we challenging? Academics should be publishing wherever the conversation to which they are contributing is happening. Selecting a journal on the basis of where our knowledge contribution is most likely to be read provides us as academics with a strong immunisation against predatory publications.</p>
<p>The good news is that a great many journals take the stewarding of an academic article to publication very seriously. Among them are a growing number of high quality <a href="https://doaj.org">open access journals</a> which ensure that contributions are widely available to all – and not only to the universities which have access to expensive databases. </p>
<p>And more quality open access journals are being published in the Global South – <a href="http://www.scielo.org.za/">Africa</a>, <a href="https://sparcopen.org/news/2015/open-access-in-latin-america-a-paragon-for-the-rest-of-the-world/">South America</a>, and elsewhere – than ever before. Academics can make sure their contributions are disseminated through legitimate publications that follow the kinds of quality measures necessary for credible academic contributions.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/86704/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sioux McKenna does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>If there’s a general sense that academic publication is about knowledge dissemination rather than meeting performance targets, academics and universities become less vulnerable to predatory journals.Sioux McKenna, Director of PG Studies & Higher Education Studies PhD Co-ordinator, Rhodes UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/842232017-09-20T14:17:37Z2017-09-20T14:17:37ZThe peer review system has flaws. But it’s still a barrier to bad science<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/186593/original/file-20170919-22701-1l6j0rq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Research must be carefully scrutinised by peer reviewers to ensure its veracity.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Nattapat Jitrungruengnij/Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Democracy and scientific peer review have something in common: it’s a “system full of problems but the least worst we have”. That’s the view of <a href="http://blogs.bmj.com/bmj/category/columnists/richard-smith/">Richard Smith</a>, a medical doctor and former editor of the illustrious <a href="http://www.bmj.com/">British Medical Journal</a>. </p>
<p>Wiley, a large academic publishing house, <a href="https://authorservices.wiley.com/Reviewers/journal-reviewers/what-is-peer-review/index.html">says that</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Peer review is designed to assess the validity, quality and often the originality of articles for publication. Its ultimate purpose is to maintain the integrity of science by filtering out invalid or poor quality articles.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Another publishing house, Springer, <a href="https://www.springer.com/gp/authors-editors/editors/peer-review/32888">describes</a> peer reviewers as being “almost like intellectual gatekeepers to the journal as they provide an objective assessment of a paper and determine if it is useful enough to be published”. </p>
<p>The peer review system has received a fair amount of <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1420798/">negative press</a> in recent years. It has been criticised largely because it is not particularly transparent and depends on a small number of peer reviews, an approach that can lend itself to cronyism. In addition it depends on trust: trust that reviewers will be fair and are willing to put sufficient time into a critical review. In this era of overworked academics being asked to do ever more, “sufficient time” is in short supply.</p>
<p>Despite these concerns, I agree with Smith: peer review is the “least worst” system available for assessing academic research and maintaining science’s integrity. Having worked in academia for the past 30 years and currently serving as Vice President of the <a href="https://www.assaf.org.za/">Academy of Science of South Africa</a>, I believe peer review and the publication process is perhaps more important than ever in this era of “fake news” – and not just for scientists and academics. Thorough review and robust pre and post publication engagement by a scientist’s peers are crucial if the average person in the street is to navigate a world full of pseudo-science.</p>
<h2>Scientific truth is built on replication</h2>
<p>One classic case of scientific fraud was the “<a href="http://www2.clarku.edu/%7EPiltdown/map_report_finds/pilt_man_discover.html">Piltdown man</a>” in 1912. Bone fragments supposed to be from an archaeological site in England were presented as a human ancestor. The alleged discovery of an early hominid in England was comfortable for British and European scientists at the time as it suggested that humans evolved in Europe. But this report was the source of controversy for many years. </p>
<p>While the Piltdown man has been recognised as a hoax since 1953, <a href="http://rsos.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/3/8/160328">DNA evidence</a> of the fact that the bones come from both an orangutan and probably two human specimens was only recently published. </p>
<p>This case illustrates both the strengths and weakness of the scientific publishing system. The hoax was possibly published because it fitted with the theories of the time. The report was, however, hugely controversial; was re-examined and with time was shown by scientists to be fraudulent. </p>
<p>This is a good starting point for understanding how real science works; how research is peer reviewed and critically examined before what is reported can be considered scientific fact.</p>
<p>Perfect science is never based on a single publication. Each publication is essentially a hypothesis: it will be read by other researchers, who will try to repeat or adapt what was done and then publish their own findings.</p>
<p>The peer review system is more complex than a reviewer just rejecting or accepting a manuscript. Quite often a reviewer suggests other experiments that authors have overlooked or different interpretations for some of the data. This means reviewers add significantly to improving the research and analysis that is performed. </p>
<p>There is no question that the reviews that I receive from higher impact factor journals are, on average, more critical and more useful. The impact factor is <a href="https://www.une.edu.au/library/support/eskills-plus/mastering-the-academic-literature/journal-quality">calculated</a> “by dividing the number of current citations to articles published [in the journal] in the two previous years by the total number of articles published in the two previous years”.</p>
<p>In fact in some cases a strong review will send me and my collaborators back to the laboratory and in so doing significantly strengthen our research. The amazing thing about this is that no fee is asked for these reviews. Yet scientists across the world do them willingly.</p>
<p>So scientific truth is based on a body of research which has been tried and tested by many researchers over time. You might ask, then, what value peer review offers – since, over time, an article that was found suitable for publication and further debate by peer reviewers may be debunked.</p>
<h2>Why do we need peer review?</h2>
<p>Peer review provides a filtering system. Studies that are not well conceived or performed will <a href="https://www.editage.com/insights/most-common-reasons-for-journal-rejection">not be published</a>. They will be filtered out either by a journal’s editor or the reviewers. This means that what appears in the scientific literature is more likely to be of a higher quality. Readers of the peer reviewed literature know that it has been subjected to some level of critique. It is not merely the authors’ opinion that what’s being proposed in a particular article is the truth.</p>
<p>Editors and reviewers of peer review journals demand a particular style and level of experimental rigour. Results are substantiated with graphs, diagrams and in some cases photographs. Experiments are always repeated at least once and sometimes more often. Data is subjected to analysis and in some cases statistical methods are used to prove significance. </p>
<p>But how can the quality of a journal be measured in the first place?</p>
<p>A quick Google search throws up many hundreds of scientific journals. Many of these are likely to be <a href="http://beallslist.weebly.com">predatory</a>, charging authors publication fees without providing the sorts of publishing and editing services offered by legitimate journals.</p>
<p>An ordinary reader should find out which association, society or organisation publishes the journal. Alternatively, take a look at the editorial board.</p>
<p>Respected scientists do not link their names to journals they do not respect. Any respected scientist in a discipline knows which are the “good” journals – a decision they make by looking at the quality of the science in such publications.</p>
<p>Next time you read some interesting report or scientific news it’s worth using the internet to check to see if the report is in fact supported by peer reviewed literature that meets these standards. At the very least do this before you share it on Facebook and add to the pseudo-science that already exists.</p>
<h2>The best system for now</h2>
<p>Until such time as there is a better system, peer review and the subsequent publication process with experimental repetition is the only source of substantiated evidence available. Similar to democracy we all need to understand its strengths and weaknesses.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/84223/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Brenda Wingfield receives funding from National Research Foundation, Tree Protection Co-operative Programme and is vice president of ASSAf.</span></em></p>Scientific truth is based on a body of research which has been tried and tested by many researchers over time. Peer review filters the good science from the bad.Brenda Wingfield, Vice President of the Academy of Science of South Africa and DST-NRF SARChI chair in Fungal Genomics, Professor of Genetics, University of PretoriaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/721302017-02-08T09:50:53Z2017-02-08T09:50:53ZWhy you should care about the rise of fake journals and the bad science they publish<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/155838/original/image-20170207-30928-4lj1sk.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Many academics are falling prey to predatory journals.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Pexels.</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>There are more academic publishers out there than ever before. In 2014 there was an <a href="http://www.cdnsciencepub.com/blog/21st-century-science-overload.aspx">estimated 28,100 active scientific journals</a>, but while the large majority of these journals are highly respected, there has also been a sharp rise in the number of predatory journals. </p>
<p>These are journals without a readership, that cannot really be thought of as being part of the scientific archive as they have done away with the “peer review” process. This is a process where scientists <a href="https://theconversation.com/explainer-what-is-peer-review-27797">evaluate the quality of other scientists’</a> work. By doing this, they aim to ensure the work is rigorous, coherent, uses past research and adds to what we already know.</p>
<p>Predatory journals often don’t even bother to read the submitted paper, but just accept it. It might be an extreme example but <a href="http://www.iflscience.com/editors-blog/journal-accepts-paper-reading-get-me-your-fucking-mailing-list/">one paper was accepted</a> that repeated the phrase “Get me off your f**king mailing list” 863 times. </p>
<p>Fake journals make their money by charging a publication fee to the authors – anything from £100 to £1,000 a paper. They separate researchers from their money with little, or nothing, in return. And exist to make a profit without having any commitment to the scientific process – even plagiarising papers that have already been published. </p>
<p>Publishing in these journals, can not only have a negative effect on an academic’s career, but it can also mean that the academic community, as well as the general public, could be duped – with any old results being printed. And if this work is then cited elsewhere, then the non-reviewed research could propagate even further, and might be accepted as fact.</p>
<h2>Seemingly legitimate</h2>
<p>As somebody experienced in scientific publishing – with over 200 published peer reviewed articles, as well as being an editor-in-chief of one journal and an associate editor of nine others, I have seen first hand many of the techniques predatory journals use to make themselves look credible. <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s12024-016-9771-3">This includes using logos</a> that are similar to more established journals, using recognised academics on the advisory or editorial board (often without their knowledge) and claiming high impact factors. </p>
<p><a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jsxm.2016.10.008">They also tend to actively promote themselves</a> through email campaigns, have nonexistent peer review which speeds up time to publication and also have affordable publication fees when compared to legitimate open access journals.</p>
<p><a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s12024-016-9771-3">Roger Byard</a> from the University of Adelaide in Australia has investigated the subject and found that:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>There were 18 [predatory journals] in 2011, 477 at the end of 2014, and 923 in 2016 with the majority of those charging article publishing charges. The journals were found to be located in India, along with Nigeria, Iran, Turkey, Malaysia, and Pakistan.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In fact, it has been suggested that there are more “British Journal of …” based in Pakistan than there are in the United Kingdom. </p>
<figure>
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</figure>
<p>And things could be about to get even worse because up until recently, the scientific community used to have a gatekeeper that maintained a list of predatory journals – but it has now <a href="https://theconversation.com/who-will-keep-predatory-science-journals-at-bay-now-that-jeffrey-bealls-blog-is-gone-71613">disappeared</a>. </p>
<h2>The blacklist</h2>
<p>Academic Jeffrey Beall ran <a href="https://scholarlyoa.com/">a website</a>, which was a “critical analysis of scholarly open-access publishing”. But if you go to this site now, you will see that it is empty. He also stopped <a href="https://twitter.com/Jeffrey_Beall">tweeting</a> earlier this year. As yet, he has not said why he stopped. </p>
<figure>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Jeffrey Beall in conversation about predatory journals.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The website that was maintained by Beall listed more than 900 predatory journals. And while an <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20170112125427/https://scholarlyoa.com/publishers/">archive of Beall’s website</a> is available, it will no longer be updated. </p>
<p>There are many people in the scientific community that will mourn the passing of this resource and many would argue that there is a need for a service such as this in order to to monitor scientific integrity. </p>
<p>Until then, the scientific community needs to be vigilant against predatory journals. They add no value to the scientific record, and do not add anything to the CV of a scientist – it may even harm it. They are also taking money which could be used for more productive research.</p>
<p>Scientists should be encouraged to check before submitting to a journal that it is legitimate, and if a paper gets accepted very quickly and the journal asks for money the alarm bells should start ringing.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/72130/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Graham Kendall does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Everything you need to know about predatory publishers.Graham Kendall, Professor of Computer Science and Provost/CEO/PVC, University of NottinghamLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/716132017-01-20T03:34:59Z2017-01-20T03:34:59ZWho will keep predatory science journals at bay now that Jeffrey Beall’s blog is gone?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/153532/original/image-20170119-26563-1bw4put.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The number of predatory scientific journals has exploded in recent years.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>For aficionados of bad science, the <a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20161130225402/https://scholarlyoa.com/">blog</a> of University of Colorado librarian <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeffrey_Beall">Jeffrey Beall</a> was essential reading. Beall’s blog charted the murky world of predatory and vanity academic publishers, many of which charge excessive fees for publishing papers or have dysfunctional peer review processes.</p>
<p>I’ve seen rubbish on <a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20161220104931/https://scholarlyoa.com/2016/07/14/more-fringe-science-from-borderline-publisher-frontiers/">chemtrails</a>, <a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20161220062215/https://scholarlyoa.com/2016/02/04/fringe-scientist-named-editor-in-chief-of-omics-astrobiology-journal/">alien life</a>, <a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20161207062935/https://scholarlyoa.com/2013/07/16/recognizing-a-pattern-of-problems-in-pattern-recognition-in-physics/">climate</a>, <a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20161108155658/https://scholarlyoa.com/2014/12/16/the-chinese-publisher-scirp-scientific-research-publishing-a-publishing-empire-built-on-junk-science/">HIV-AIDS</a> and <a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20150905084939/http://scholarlyoa.com/2013/07/20/omics-journal-publishes-pseudo-science-vaccine-paper/">vaccines</a> appear in these (unintended) parodies of academic publications. Although, to be honest, they can be a guilty pleasure of sorts. Perhaps I’m like a film buff getting a kick out of Ed Wood’s “<a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0052077/">Plan 9 from Outer space</a>”.</p>
<p>But recently all of the content on Beall’s blog was <a href="http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/01/mystery-controversial-list-predatory-publishers-disappears">wiped without any warning</a>. While much of Beall’s blog is <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20170112125427/https://scholarlyoa.com/publishers/">archived</a>, it had been charting the evolution of predatory academic publishing, including conferences and the purchasing of existing journals. With Beall’s blog gone, it will become harder to keep track of the underbelly of academic publishing.</p>
<h2>Changing face of scientific publishing</h2>
<p>Traditionally, academic journals have been sustained via subscriptions, particularly those charged to academic libraries. Libraries would pick and choose which journals to subscribe to, in large part based on the requests of academics. </p>
<p>Subscriptions provided some incentive to maintain quality but also limited the readership of academic papers, effectively excluding the broader pubic (whose taxes often funded the research).</p>
<p>As the internet enabled the easy sharing of information, this is now extending to academic publications too. The “<a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/open-access-1060">open access</a>” model is increasingly popular, where authors are charged publication fees and the resulting papers are freely available online.</p>
<p>In principle, I like open access, as I believe science should be disseminated to the broadest audience possible. But there are perverse incentives. Will a publisher reject a manuscript that is manifestly rubbish, and forego the fees it would charge the author? In some cases the answer is “no”.</p>
<p>Furthermore, the shift from printed journals to online publications has facilitated predatory and vanity academic publishers. Computers and websites have replaced printing presses and bound volumes. One publisher on Beall’s list, Zant World Press, is run from a <a href="https://zantworldpress.com/about-us/">Melbourne suburban house</a>.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/153530/original/image-20170119-26585-1a18f10.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/153530/original/image-20170119-26585-1a18f10.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/153530/original/image-20170119-26585-1a18f10.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=498&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/153530/original/image-20170119-26585-1a18f10.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=498&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/153530/original/image-20170119-26585-1a18f10.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=498&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/153530/original/image-20170119-26585-1a18f10.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=625&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/153530/original/image-20170119-26585-1a18f10.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=625&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/153530/original/image-20170119-26585-1a18f10.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=625&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">An archive of Beall’s site maintains the most recent list of suspect journals.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Beall’s blog charted the explosion of predatory publishers exploiting the open access model. His list grew from just 18 publishers in 2011 to <a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20170111172023/https://scholarlyoa.com/2017/01/03/bealls-list-of-predatory-publishers-2017/">1,155 publishers in 2017</a>!</p>
<p>I, along with many others, found Beall’s list an incredibly useful resource. Suspicious scientific claims could often be traced back to journals associated with publishers on the list.</p>
<p>For example, in 2015 many newspapers printed claims that chocolate helped weight loss, but it <a href="https://theconversation.com/trolling-our-confirmation-bias-one-bite-and-were-easily-sucked-in-42621">was all a hoax</a>, which included publishing a paper in the <a href="http://www.intarchmed.com/">International Archives of Medicine</a>, which was on <a href="https://archive.fo/9MAAD">Beall’s list</a>.</p>
<p>I recently became aware of another prank, played at the expense of a predatory publisher. Astronomer <a href="http://www.isdc.unige.ch/%7Edeckert/newsite/Dominique_Eckerts_Homepage.html">Dominique Eckert</a> submitted the joke paper “Get me off Your Fucking Mailing List” to <a href="http://www.iosrjournals.org/">IOSR journals</a>. The paper consists of “<a href="http://www.scs.stanford.edu/%7Edm/home/papers/remove.pdf">get me off your fucking mailing list</a>” repeated hundreds of times.</p>
<p>While one cannot fault the paper for clarity of expression, it isn’t suitable for an academic journal. But less than a week after Eckert submitted the paper, it was accepted for publication. The “reviewers comments” were “quality of manuscript is good”. Manuscript handling charges were US$75 (A$100).</p>
<p>Remarkably, this isn’t the first time a predatory publisher has accepted “Get me off Your Fucking Mailing List”. <a href="http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2014/11/24/bogus_academic_journal_accepts_paper_that_reads_get_me_off_your_fucking.html">Peter Vamplew</a> played the same prank in 2014.</p>
<p>Beall planned a post on Eckert’s prank for Thursday January 12, 2017, but it never happened. By then, all the content was wiped from the blog.</p>
<p>Why this happened isn’t yet clear. The University of Colorado says it was Beall’s <a href="http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/01/mystery-controversial-list-predatory-publishers-disappears">personal decision</a>. However, <a href="https://www.sspnet.org/careers/professional-profiles/lacey-earle/">Lacey Earle</a>, who has been working with Beall, tweeted that Beall “was forced to shut down blog due to threats and politics”.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"821387788960591872"}"></div></p>
<p>Certainly there are many publishers and individuals who are no fans of Beall, and legal threats have been made in the past. Without a doubt, the blog has hurt some publishers’ reputations and bottom lines. </p>
<p>Indeed, Beall’s work certainly facilitated the US Federal Trade Commission charging <a href="https://www.omicsonline.org/">OMICS Group</a> with <a href="https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/press-releases/2016/08/ftc-charges-academic-journal-publisher-omics-group-deceived">deceptive acts or practices</a> in August 2016. <a href="https://www.wired.com/2016/09/ftc-cracking-predatory-science-journals/">OMICS has responded</a> and described the allegations as “baseless”.</p>
<h2>Changing times</h2>
<p>A few years ago, predatory publishing often consisted of websites with stock images and poor grammar. Sometimes journal “editors” were revealed to be <a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20170113050537/https://scholarlyoa.com/2015/07/07/predatory-journal-lists-murdered-doctor-as-its-editor-in-chief/">identities stolen off the web</a>. </p>
<p>But, increasingly, predatory publishers are running academic conferences in countries around the globe, including the <a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20161127023353/http://www.conferenceseries.com/usa-meetings/">US</a> and <a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20170115115454/http://www.conferenceseries.com/australia-meetings">Australia</a>. Often the conferences do not live up to their hype, as Radio National’s Hagar Cohen found when <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/backgroundbriefing/2015-08-02/6656116">she attended</a> an OMICS conference in Brisbane in 2015.</p>
<p>Predatory publishers are also <a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20170110160651/https://scholarlyoa.com/2016/09/29/scam-publisher-omics-international-buying-legitimate-journals/">buying existing journals</a> in developed countries. Recently the <a href="http://www.amj.net.au/index.php?journal=AMJ">Australasian Medical Journal</a>’s contact details shifted from Melbourne to London, and it now shares the postal address of <a href="https://www.imedpub.com/">iMedPub</a>, an affiliate of OMICS.</p>
<p>Beall had been reporting this changing landscape of predatory publishing, and I suspect this is where the loss of his blog will have the greatest impact. That said, Beall’s archived list will long remain a valuable resource. And perhaps most importantly, he made the community aware of the threat of predatory academic publishing.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/71613/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Michael J. I. Brown receives research funding from the Australian Research Council and Monash University, and has developed space-related titles for Monash University's MWorld educational app.
</span></em></p>A leading website that monitored predatory open access journals has closed. This will make it harder to keep tabs on this corrosive force within science.Michael J. I. Brown, Associate professor, Monash UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/590102016-05-11T14:11:44Z2016-05-11T14:11:44ZAcademics need to embrace new ways of writing and sharing research<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/121929/original/image-20160510-20749-1i5kgf8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The old ways aren't necessarily the best when it comes to academic writing.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Universities are a “thousand-year-old industry on the cusp of profound change”. That’s according to <a href="http://www.ey.com/Publication/vwLUAssets/University_of_the_future/$FILE/University_of_the_future_2012.pdf">a study</a> that explored Australia’s higher education landscape four years ago. One warning from the report rings true far beyond Australia and all the way around the world:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Over the next ten-15 years, the current public university model … will prove unviable in all but a few cases.</p>
</blockquote>
<p><a href="http://stan.md/1N83AhO">Warning shots</a> are ringing out across the world. But how many academics are actually paying attention? In my experience as a lecturer at a South African university, we continue to placate the two denizens of academia – teaching and research – in the same way we always have. Teaching remains focused on <a href="https://theconversation.com/schools-must-get-the-basics-right-before-splashing-out-on-technology-52994">instruction</a> and content reproduction, while most research never makes it beyond journals.</p>
<p>If we continue to teach in outdated ways, we will increasingly lose touch with our students. Equally, if we continue to closet our findings in traditional journals, we may find our hard work increasingly eclipsed by research organisations that use new media to effectively share their findings.</p>
<p>Lots of attention is being given to <a href="https://theconversation.com/outdated-teaching-methods-will-blunt-technologys-power-40503">new ways</a> of teaching. The great news is that there are also exciting new publishing opportunities springing up. </p>
<h2>The right to write</h2>
<p>On May 12 2015 I published my <a href="https://theconversation.com/outdated-teaching-methods-will-blunt-technologys-power-40503">first article</a> with The Conversation Africa. One year and ten articles later, I’ve started to view my “right to write” in a totally different way. For more than 20 years as an academic, writing has been more of a duty than a need – let alone a right. Productivity units must be met. Papers must be written and published in approved journals. Even the joy of writing for conferences, which can generate spirited discussion, has been removed. Conference presentations don’t contribute much to one’s chance of promotion.</p>
<p>Of course there is great merit in writing for journals. These have been one of the primary stores of human knowledge, and their peer review process foregrounds credible research – <a href="https://scholarlyoa.com/2016/03/08/the-increasing-use-of-predatory-journals-for-advocacy-research/">most of the time</a>. They teach academics how to write carefully argued pieces, and the best ones hold us to high standards of quality. </p>
<p>Pragmatically, they also pay. Individual academics and their institutions earn money for each article that’s published in certain accredited journals.</p>
<p>However, the money associated with such journals has created an entire industry that flies counter to a world where sharing knowledge is seen as the right thing to do. Journals are being <a href="http://fortune.com/2016/04/02/academic-publishing-piracy/">accused</a> of using the free services of academics to write and the free services of reviewers to edit. They then charge exorbitant prices so that the very same academics can’t even access their own content. </p>
<p>But traditional journals are no longer the be-all and end-all. At least, they shouldn’t be. Open-access journals, blogs, wikis, professional Facebook pages and YouTube channels offer academics a range of exciting, different ways to share their research. These spaces come with a range of benefits.</p>
<h2>New media means new benefits</h2>
<p>The first of these is the far quicker turnaround time. One of academics’ abiding frustrations with the current publishing process is how long it takes for articles to see the light of day. <a href="http://openaccesspublishing.org/oa11/article.pdf">Research</a> shows that it takes, on average, between nine and 18 months (and sometimes longer) from submission to publication. Writing for new media spaces means that research can be shared within hours or days, opening up the opportunity for discussion, debate and dissent far more quickly.</p>
<p>Your reach is far greater in new media spaces. Some studies estimate that the average journal article is read entirely by <a href="http://www.straitstimes.com/opinion/prof-no-one-is-reading-you">only ten people</a>. Tools like <a href="https://www.google.com/analytics/#?modal_active=none">Google Analytics</a> can help academics to track their readership in new media spaces. Some sites, like The Conversation, have their own metrics systems – from this, I know that each of my articles is read on average 4,000 times.</p>
<p>Greater reach leads to far greater exposure. This can take the form of comments from academics around the world, invitations to collaborate, and TV and radio interviews. This takes academic research far beyond conferences and journals. I’ve discussed my work on different platforms, including international newspapers, and have been drawn into several local and international research collaborations. Isn’t that sort of work the point of publishing? </p>
<p>New media spaces can also be less intimidating for young, inexperienced academics than established journals are. Getting used to writing, finding your own voice and presenting your work on a public platform is all good practice for journal writing. Universities often offer <a href="http://utlo.ukzn.ac.za/Files/Come%20Write%20With%20Me%20Sept2014.pdf">programmes</a> designed to help young academics develop and strengthen their writing, and these are useful tools as well.</p>
<p>Finally, new media spaces offer a valuable opportunity for feedback, conversation and even correction. They’re not about getting it <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-its-time-the-world-embraced-wikipedia-41461">perfect upfront </a> – they’re about learning, arguing and altering. This encourages the kind of dialogue and idea sharing that any academic should value.</p>
<h2>Stepping out of our academic closet</h2>
<p>Change isn’t coming to academia – it’s here. And the one thing you don’t do in the path of <a href="http://stan.md/1N83AhO">an avalanche</a> is stand still. The privilege of just talking about new teaching approaches and new publishing opportunities has passed. If academics don’t make bold moves to change how we use new platforms and technologies, we ourselves are at risk of becoming irrelevant.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/59010/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Craig Blewett does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>There are many exciting new publishing opportunities opening up for academics who want to take their work beyond traditional spaces like journals.Craig Blewett, Senior Lecturer in Education & Technology, University of KwaZulu-NatalLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/484732015-10-29T04:30:41Z2015-10-29T04:30:41ZAfrican academics are being caught in the predatory journal trap<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/99944/original/image-20151028-21119-10u0l71.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">There are sharks in the research water – predatory journals are becoming more common in Africa.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Academic journal articles are the lifeblood of many researchers. These articles bring exposure, prestige, and money for individual academics and their institutions.</p>
<p>In South Africa, the Department of Higher Education and Training paid almost R3 billion in remittances to universities in the 2014/15 financial year. This was for conference proceedings, books and book chapters, as well as for students who graduated with masters and doctoral degrees. The <a href="http://www.dhet.gov.za/_layouts/15/xlviewer.aspx?id=/Financial%20and%20Physical%20Planning/University%20State%20budgets%20March%202015.xlsx&Source=http%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Edhet%2Egov%2Eza%2FSitePages%2FOrgUniversities%2Easpx.">lion’s share</a> of the money was for academic journal articles.</p>
<p>Where there is a great deal of money involved, there’s a risk of opportunists trying to muscle in on the market. That’s what has happened in the journal industry with the appearance of <a href="https://theconversation.com/vanity-and-predatory-academic-publishers-are-corrupting-the-pursuit-of-knowledge-45490">predatory</a> journals and publishers.</p>
<p>African academics and universities have been caught in the predatory journal web. It is imperative that the continent’s universities start taking this threat to their integrity seriously.</p>
<h2>Accreditation and rewards</h2>
<p>South Africa’s Department of Higher Education and Training issues a list each year of local journals <a href="http://www.dhet.gov.za/Policy%20and%20Development%20Support/Report%20of%202013%20Research%20Outputs.pdf">accredited</a> for subsidy purposes. Such journals are deemed to support the department’s policy of rewarding original, quality research output that promotes the dissemination of new knowledge in all academic fields.</p>
<p>Journals that appear on the Thomson Reuters <a href="http://thomsonreuters.com/en/products-services/scholarly-scientific-research/scholarly-search-and-discovery/web-of-science.html">Web of Science</a> and on the <a href="http://www.proquest.com/libraries/academic/databases/ibss-set-c.html">International Bibliography of the Social Sciences</a> also qualify for subsidy purposes.</p>
<p>Universities are keen to increase this source of revenue. They reward academics for publishing in accredited journals, often by sharing the resulting subsidy between the institution and the individual academic. Often, social rewards accompany the financial ones. Recognition, “top researcher” awards and promotions are usually predicated on the quantity of research output. Research quality, unfortunately, often takes <a href="https://theconversation.com/academics-must-still-publish-or-perish-under-revamped-research-funding-policy-48437">a back seat</a>.</p>
<h2>The predators have pounced</h2>
<p>It did not take long for opportunists to see the market gap. In the past few years there has been an insidious rise in predatory journals and publishers. Jeff Beall, an academic librarian at the University of Denver in Colorado, <a href="http://scholarlyoa.com/2014/01/02/list-of-predatory-publishers-2014/">describes</a> predatory journals as ones that exploit the page fee model for self-gain. </p>
<p>The paying of page fees is an historically acceptable academic practice: when an article is accepted, an author or their institution pays the publisher a fee for the work involved in producing that article. Now, though, it’s been transformed into a money-making business.</p>
<p>Predatory journals transgress all the rules of research integrity. They typically have no clear focus area. They produce huge volumes of articles – sometimes up to 200 each month while the average number for a sound, accredited journal would be ten to 15 over a two-month period.</p>
<p>There are other clues: the method of scientific processes followed is badly written or non-existent, meaning no other researcher can replicate these studies. Authors cite themselves almost exclusively, rather than drawing on other researchers’ work. These journals’ editorial boards comprise mainly of people from unknown universities. They promise short review periods and, upon acceptance of manuscripts, an equally short time period for publication.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, these journals often appear on the International Bibliography of Social Sciences or Web of Science lists. This means they attract government subsidies. It usually takes time before these predators are discovered and struck off the lists.</p>
<h2>African examples</h2>
<p>Africa is not immune to these journals. In 2012 the African Journal of Business Management, headquartered in Nairobi, Kenya, had about 100 journal titles in its stable. In 2011 alone, this journal published more than 1200 articles. Individual authors or their institutions paid page fees of around R5000 per article to a New York bank account. That’s an estimated income of R6 million per year.</p>
<p>It took a <a href="http://www.harzing.com/jql.htm">professor</a> from the University of Melbourne and other academics to sound the alarm with Thomson Reuters, which runs the Web of Science. It was deregistered as a Web of Science journal – and many of its previous contributors switched their allegiance to the Mediterranean Journal of Social Sciences.</p>
<p>In the 18 months between January 2013 and the end of June 2014, 1731 articles appeared in this journal, garnering an estimated income of almost R4 million for its publisher. It was at the centre of <a href="http://www.timeslive.co.za/thetimes/2014/10/13/journal-fails-the-test">a scandal</a> involving several academics from the University of South Africa. Beall added it to his <a href="http://scholarlyoa.com/2015/01/02/bealls-list-of-predatory-publishers-2015/">list</a> of predatory journals in 2015.</p>
<h2>So what can be done?</h2>
<p>These predatory journals are often only exposed when they’re been operating for a long time. It’s imperative that, when university authorities find a journal they fear may be predatory, they report it immediately to the Department of Higher Education and Training. The journal should then be reviewed for subsidy qualification and, if it fails, the department must contact the Web of Science and the International Bibliography of Social Sciences.</p>
<p>There’s an ethical dilemma here. From a “legal” point of view, if a predatory journal appears on the department’s list and so qualifies for subsidy, why shouldn’t that subsidy be claimed? Universities can lose out on a great deal of money by being honest.</p>
<p>For example, I studied the contributions by one specific academic in the Mediterranean Journal of Social Science over an 18-month period. There were 46 articles, which generated R120,000 each in subsidy for his university. That’s more than R5.5 million.</p>
<p>The bigger question to ask is whether it is ethical to claim subsidy for articles that appear in such academically dubious sources. It is here that universities must apply moral conscience in line with academic and research ethics.</p>
<p>If there is cause for concern, universities should audit journals in which academics publish. Some would argue that interfering with an academic’s choice of journal in which to publish transgresses academic freedom. This doesn’t hold water: the page fees are almost always paid or subsidised by the university or an academic’s faculty or department. They have a right to ensure this money, some of which comes from the tax purse, is properly spent.</p>
<p>Universities also need to consider their scholarly reputations. Publishing in junk or predatory journals makes both academics and their employers look bad.</p>
<h2>Long-term costs</h2>
<p>There are long term, less visible costs to ignoring predatory journals. Brands and reputations can be destroyed, costing universities the chance to collaborate internationally with well regarded institutions.</p>
<p>If the fundamental values of academic research are constantly transgressed in the scramble to publish, Africa’s academy will suffer in the long run. Young academics will learn bad habits from their established colleagues who write for such journals. And, by default, those academics who strive to publish in journals known for their high impact and rigorous quality are being placed at a disadvantage. </p>
<p>As long as quantity trumps quality, these academics will miss out on promotional opportunities and financial rewards.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/48473/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Adele Thomas does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>African academics and universities have been caught in the predatory journal web. It’s time for the continent’s universities to start taking this threat to their integrity seriously.Adele Thomas, Professor of Management, University of JohannesburgLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/492842015-10-23T03:09:48Z2015-10-23T03:09:48ZYour Questions Answered on open access<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/99417/original/image-20151023-27601-1hfn52j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Open access allows users to download, copy, print and distribute works, without the need to ask for permission or to pay.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/merke/6264864848/">Meredith Kahn/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">CC BY-NC</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Open access means making peer reviewed works freely available in digital form, so that anyone with internet access can use them, without financial, legal or technical barriers. It allows users to download, copy, print and distribute works, without the need to ask for permission or to pay.</em></p>
<p><em>To the mark the eighth annual Open Access Week, we asked what readers wanted to know about the initiative.</em></p>
<hr>
<p><strong>Why do we need open access? How can I use it? Is it better for the sciences or the humanities?</strong></p>
<p><strong>Lucy Montgomery:</strong> Open access is a powerful mechanism for widening access to knowledge and for increasing the impact of research beyond universities. Because it makes peer-reviewed scholarship free at the point of use, open access helps ensure people who need knowledge can access it, even if they can’t afford to pay for it. </p>
<p>Patients scouring the internet for the latest information about rare medical conditions, scholars in the developing world, and practitioners who want to apply evidence-based research to challenges they face every day, are just a few examples of groups who benefit from open access.</p>
<p>The global shift to open access is being driven by a consensus that the public has a right to access publicly funded research outputs. Closed publishing models rely on recovering the costs of publishing research by selling access to it. This made sense in a print-dominated world, when the marginal costs associated with making and distributing physical copies of books and journals was high; it makes much less sense in digital landscapes where the costs of making additional copies of a work once it’s been published are very low. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/99422/original/image-20151023-27607-x5jh6l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/99422/original/image-20151023-27607-x5jh6l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/99422/original/image-20151023-27607-x5jh6l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/99422/original/image-20151023-27607-x5jh6l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/99422/original/image-20151023-27607-x5jh6l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/99422/original/image-20151023-27607-x5jh6l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/99422/original/image-20151023-27607-x5jh6l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The global shift to open access is being driven by a consensus that the public has a right to access publicly funded research outputs.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/wakingtiger/3156792397/">Gideon Burton/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Once a work has been made open access, it’s free for anyone in the world to read or download. This is a boon for anyone who has ever been frustrated by a pay wall, for teachers looking for resources that can be shared easily with students, and for scholars who hope their work will contribute to a wider body of knowledge. </p>
<p>Although open access has been faster to take off in the sciences, it also has important benefits for scholars working in the humanities: helping authors to share their work with the communities that they write both for and about, and making knowledge and ideas available to new audiences. </p>
<hr>
<p><strong>How can journals meet the costs of editing, typesetting, proofreading, website construction and management if they move from subscriptions to open access?</strong> </p>
<p><strong>Keyan Tomaselli:</strong> One of the key blind spots in open access discussions is the cost it poses to publishers. Journals that are not funded by foundations or universities are financially vulnerable in an open access environment unless they start charging for publishing articles. This is because their “permissions income stream”, which are paid to journals through national copyright agencies when their articles are reproduced in student course packs, will dry up. </p>
<p>In this model, the burden of payment will shift from reader or library payment for downloads or subscriptions, to author or institution for articles to be published. The assumption that open access is free – after data charges are paid – is wrong because though readers can access articles for free, authors and their institutions will end up paying so journals can recoup their costs. Data charges relate to the cost of internet access and downloading. </p>
<p>Too often one forgets that such accessing of the internet has cost implications too. And then there are journal post-production costs, including online platform hosting, marketing, discoverability, and archiving, among other things.</p>
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<p><strong>Open scholarship includes open notebook, open data and open review as well as open access. What are more systematic and rigorous treatments of open scholarship?</strong> </p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/99420/original/image-20151023-27612-1wu4pxe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/99420/original/image-20151023-27612-1wu4pxe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/99420/original/image-20151023-27612-1wu4pxe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/99420/original/image-20151023-27612-1wu4pxe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/99420/original/image-20151023-27612-1wu4pxe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/99420/original/image-20151023-27612-1wu4pxe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/99420/original/image-20151023-27612-1wu4pxe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">It’s now possible to put a digital ‘stamp’ on different scholarly outputs.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/wakingtiger/3157622308/">Gideon Burton/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
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<p><strong>Danny Kingsley:</strong> There’s an increasing amount of research and discussion about <a href="http://www.leru.org/index.php/public/calendar/leru-seminar-on-open-scholarship/">open scholarship</a> about <a href="https://unlockingresearch.blog.lib.cam.ac.uk/?p=307">integrity and researcher support</a>; <a href="http://insights.uksg.org/10/volume/27/issue/3/">research management</a>; <a href="http://www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/article/view/1313/2304">assumptions and challenges</a>; and about how we capture what’s being produced in <a href="http://www.gla.ac.uk/services/library/openscholarship/">repositories</a>.</p>
<p>But although the nature of research is changing profoundly, the current system still only rewards and recognises traditional publication. Opening up scholarship has multiple benefits: research claims can be verified, work doesn’t have to be repeated to recreate the data, and data can be analysed from other perspectives. </p>
<p>It’s now possible to put a digital “stamp” on different scholarly outputs, called digital object identifiers (or DOIs). This means a researcher can be cited when another uses their work, and receive recognition.</p>
<p>By having an “open process” in research, we can put digital stamps on all aspects of research, such as progress in thinking through an online discussion paper, for instance; new techniques; and approaches and experiments. These can themselves be cited and therefore rewarded, rather than only recognising traditional published outputs. </p>
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<p><strong>How do we ensure research published under open access continues to have a system of rigorous quality checks, such as peer review, that can cope with the enormous load of research looking for publication?</strong> </p>
<p><strong>James Bradley:</strong> We can’t ensure rigorous peer review of research will be undertaken under open access. Not only that, we know for sure that the explosion of open access journals has allowed for the publication of not just bogus work, but also work that’s irrelevant or useless for scientific or the whole academic enterprise.</p>
<p>How do we know this? For starters, there was an <a href="http://www.sciencemag.org/content/342/6154/60.full">infamous sting in late 2013</a> that revealed a nonsensical piece of research was accepted for publication by a large number of open access journals. Then, there’s the research showing the huge numbers of <a href="http://qcc.libguides.com/open/predatorypublishing">“predatory” journals</a>, which are basically in it for the money. The academic or the academic’s institution pays for publication and the piece gets in, regardless of quality. That’s why so many researchers often get emails from start-up journals soliciting our work — for a fee. It’s all about profit.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/99418/original/image-20151023-27607-tjisvl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/99418/original/image-20151023-27607-tjisvl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/99418/original/image-20151023-27607-tjisvl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/99418/original/image-20151023-27607-tjisvl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/99418/original/image-20151023-27607-tjisvl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/99418/original/image-20151023-27607-tjisvl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/99418/original/image-20151023-27607-tjisvl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">There’s another form of quality control that transcends peer review and lies in the after-life of a publication.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/wakingtiger/3157622458/">Gideon Burton/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
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<p>To mitigate this situation, there’s the <a href="https://doaj.org/">Directory of Open Access Journals</a>, which is supposed to act as quality control. If you make it on to the list, then you are supposed to be reputable. But some of the journals that have <a href="http://scholarlyoa.com/publishers/">made it to the list</a> are, in fact, “predatory”. </p>
<p>But it’s false to assume that all research that makes it into a front-rank publication is great or that all work in pay-for-publication journals is junk. The peer review system has always had flaws. Ultimately, there’s another form of quality control that transcends peer review and lies in the after-life of a publication — the opinion of your peers. </p>
<p>And this can, to some extent, be measured by metrics through citation databases. But it’s also reflected in the status and reputation accorded by your peers. It was ever thus, and most definitely remains the best form of quality control.</p>
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<p><strong>To what extent does this issue go beyond the machinations of open access versus the nuances of what’s free and not free, to the problem of the role of the university in a world where capitalism and the internet frame much of what we do?</strong> </p>
<p><strong>Tom Cochrane:</strong> Open access has three points of origin. These, in no particular order, are the interests of the researcher in greater exposure and readership; the distorted economics of the price of scholarly communication (as distinct from the true cost of academic publishing); and the fact that the internet has made open access possible in the first place. </p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/99423/original/image-20151023-27628-1njxnl3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/99423/original/image-20151023-27628-1njxnl3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/99423/original/image-20151023-27628-1njxnl3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/99423/original/image-20151023-27628-1njxnl3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/99423/original/image-20151023-27628-1njxnl3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/99423/original/image-20151023-27628-1njxnl3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/99423/original/image-20151023-27628-1njxnl3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Openness in access to research outputs, research data and research processes, enhances replication capability, and allows review.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/wakingtiger/3157621994/">Gideon Burton/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>As the debate about open access has matured, it has also become clear that greater openness can also provide protection against research fraud or dishonesty. Openness in access to research outputs, research data and research processes, enhances replication capability, and allows review.</p>
<p>Open access has no particular correlation or causal relationship with the broader role of universities, other than to improve the efficiency and integrity of research and to increase the likelihood of greater integration with their various communities. It’s certainly true that we wouldn’t have seen it develop without the internet and, as such, the movement is another case of innovation and disruption of legacy models. </p>
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<p><strong>Where are we getting with the movement, year to year? How much concrete progress has there been as opposed to awareness raising?</strong> </p>
<p><strong>Virginia Babour:</strong> There’s no doubt that the open access has come a long way. There are now mandates for open access in many countries and institutions globally. </p>
<p>These mandates vary in what they require. Some, like the one in the United Kingdom, are primarily supported through publication in open access journals. Others, like Australia’s funding councils’ mandates, are via deposition of an author’s research in university repositories.</p>
<p>There’s also been an explosion of different technologies around open access, including new ideas on what can be published - just parts of articles, such as figures, fir instance – and new models for publishing open access books.</p>
<p>Finally, the infrastructure to support open access is developing with licenses for publishing, which lay out clearly how articles can be used. And identifiers for people and documents (even parts of documents), so there can be better linking of scholarly literature.</p>
<p>Open access is an evolving ecosystem. There will be different models to fit different specialities and probably different countries. But that’s fine if it works.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/49284/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Virginia Barbour for the Australasian Open Access Support Group, an open access advocacy group. I used to work for PLOS,an open-access journal.
</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Danny Kingsley used to work for the Australasian Open Access Support Group.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Keyan Tomaselli serves on the board of the Academic and Non-Fiction Association for South Africa and I am chair of the Publication Committee of the South African Communication Association. He edits the journal Critical Arts and is co-editor of Journal of African Cinemas.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Lucy Montgomery is a deputy director (a voluntary position) in the not-for-profit Opem Access monograph initiative Knowledge Unlatched.
</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Tom Cochrane is affiliated with the Australasian Open Access Support Group. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>James Bradley does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>To the mark the eighth annual Open Access Week, we asked our readers what they wanted to know about the initiative. Here are their questions with answers from our experts.Virginia Barbour, Executive Officer, Australasian Open Access Support Group, Australian National UniversityDanny Kingsley, Executive Officer for the Australian Open Access Support Group, University of CambridgeJames Bradley, Lecturer in History of Medicine/Life Science, The University of MelbourneKeyan Tomaselli, Distinguished Professor, University of JohannesburgLucy Montgomery, Director, Centre for Culture and Technology, Curtin UniversityTom Cochrane, Adjunct Professor Faculty of Law, Queensland University of TechnologyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.