NY Times: Predatory Journals - Sting

[diogenesNY]

New York Times article on open access journals, good and bad, and an academic sting operation with interesting results.
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A Scholarly Sting Operation Shines a Light on ‘Predatory’ Journals
By GINA KOLATA MARCH 22, 2017

The applicant’s nom de plume was not exactly subtle, if you know Polish. The middle initial and surname of the author, Anna O. Szust, mean “fraudster.” Her publications were fake and her degrees were fake. The book chapters she listed among her publications could not be found, but perhaps that should not have been a surprise because the book publishers were fake, too.

...article continues...

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/22/science/open-access-journals.html?_r=0

Of interest.

diogenesNY

 

[Ygggdrasil]

Here's the original news piece from Nature that the NY Times piece is summarizing: http://www.nature.com/news/predatory-journals-recruit-fake-editor-1.21662

The piece was inspired by a previous sting operation in which a journalist for Science sent a clearly flawed scientific study to various journals to see which ones would accept it: http://science.sciencemag.org/content/342/6154/60
(popular press summary in case you cannot access the science piece: https://www.theguardian.com/higher-education-network/2013/oct/04/open-access-journals-fake-paper)

 

[Borek]

Interesting that it got international fame, in my my circles in Poland it got some attention - sadly, many people misunderstood it as proving the peer reviewed science is wrong.