Interesting read on #PaperMills and a criminal world that pays editors to accept papers, people paying for papers and even downright bribing!
Worrying trends!
@RonaldVisser@academicchatter of course, the publishers will claim that most of the editors they work with are honest and professional, but pretty much anyone at all can be a “Guest Editor” of a “Special Issue”, for example at MDPI. The situation is out of hand, and it is becoming truly ridiculous!
@furqanshah@academicchatter I think that the majority of editors is taking their task/job responsible, but in the case of predatory publishers the majority might indeed be bad news. That's why we should not publish in predatory journals, but in good journals we know we can trust!
@RonaldVisser@academicchatter I fail to understand why people continue to submit papers to predatory publishers like MDPI. They say “oh because the process is fast”. Yes, it can be as short as 2 weeks from “first submission to acceptance/available online”. But why is there such a rush to have papers accepted? And if you want a “fast + no peer-review”, why not just upload manuscripts to #facebook ? 😀
@furqanshah@academicchatter I agree! I stay away from those publishers and we all should take responsibility. Stop the rat race and have fun with good research, open science with open and transparent peer-review :)
@RonaldVisser@academicchatter there’s little hope for open and transparent review, as long as reviewers continue to (want to) hide behind the cloak of anonymity, which allows them to be mean, bitter, angry, unreasonable, forcefully get their own works cited, cause delays, or even steal yet-published ideas. Unfortunately, all of that is very much human nature. If they (most of us!) wanted to be good, honest, kind people, we would be doing something else altogether. 😀
@furqanshah@academicchatter I am a bit more positive, but I do recognise what you are saying. However, I think that what for example @PCI_Archaeology is doing is a great step in the right way. And a journal like Archaeometry has been doing open peer-review for some years now, resulting in much more constructive feedback from reviewers.
@RonaldVisser@academicchatter@PCI_Archaeology Sorry if I sounded negative. I agree that some journals are able to have open peer-review, and that the reviews are much more constructive. Of course, there is skepticism, since no reviewer will actually point out if a paper is quite frankly sh*t! Yes, the editor is responsible for selecting papers for review (but the editor can't be an expert in every field). So, perhaps this works better in a niche/subject-specific journal like @PCI_Archaeology.
@furqanshah@RonaldVisser@academicchatter
Wouldn't call PCI Archaeology a niche/subject-specific since we accept alll archaeology, from all regions and periods of the world. Open peer-review encompass many organizations (see Ross-Hellauer 2017). We offer the possibility to remain anonymous because we know some people need that, and also to allow stronger critique wich can be hard to make with your name. We propose both, but the review is open, so that everyone can read.
The @EuroGeosciences journals combine open preprint and open review (and obviously open access once accepted). Such a model addresses most of your points, it seems?
For these journals I choose to sign my reviews, but to be honest the manuscripts I get to review are already high quality (possibly bc everything stays in the open, accepted or rejected).
@lavergnetho@RonaldVisser@academicchatter@EuroGeosciences You're absolutely right. There is no disagreement here. Some journals are able to do this, and they mostly seem to be niche/subject-specific journals where the editor REALLY REALLY knows the entire field!
It does feel that editors have a much harder time getting reviewers to commit. MANY reviewers tend to decline or not-want-to review. I had a frustrated outburst about this on the birdsite a while ago:
@furqanshah@lavergnetho@RonaldVisser@academicchatter@EuroGeosciences
In every PCI (17 exist) there are tens or hundreds of editors so that they are not overwhelmed, they know the field of the paper, and they know potential reviewers. Also, reviewers are more encline to accept because they don't give their time for free to commercial publishers.
@lavergnetho@furqanshah@academicchatter@EuroGeosciences
I agree, that is the way forward. I think that the term niche depends on your viewpoint, since @furqanshah seems to see @PCI_Archaeology or @EuroGeosciences as more specific, while I think that these can be seen as broad. We need more journals to adopt the open peer-review and at the same time publish less, but higher quality, because there are not enough reviewers....
@RonaldVisser@academicchatter the rat race you mention is difficult to discuss without some serious finger-pointing. Whatever happened to Nature/Science publications with 2-3 authors? I wonder if there are statistics on the average number of authors on high impact publications per year (e.g., 1960 onwards). This emerges from commoditization of the “PhD”, with of more competition and fewer opportunities. Then a good handful end up leaving academia because it is toxic.