We thank Big Bird from Sesame Street for comments on the
manuscript. Several trained monkeys transcribed videos."
Also: "Published Date: April 01, 2020"
In short: meh. Doesn't even appear to be funny, especially especially when "covered" on April 15, 2020, for my understanding of what is actually funny:
> We suggest that planets in the Really Habitable Zone be early targets for the JWST, because by the time that thing finally launches we're all going to need a drink.
> 6 Yes, gins and tonic, not gin and tonics. You want multiple gins, not more tonic.
Or the note on Table 1:
> Note: all coefficients assume a pressure of 1 bar, as one simply cannot be in more than one bar at any given time. Once you find a good bar, you should stay in it.
It's mildly amusing, sure, but publishing a rehash of a joke made on April 1st two weeks later, on April 15th, feels like seeing someone lag in real life. The paper should have been just left alone to be discovered by someone later as a fun curio. Especially since The Week seems to be a completely serious website the rest of the time, what a weird choice to publish that article two weeks after April Fool's.
From the article
> it does seem to prove his point: That the Scientific Journal of Research & Reviews is among dozens of "predatory journals" that publish low-quality or unreviewed papers, often for an exorbitant fee.
The author submitted it specifically to expose the predatory nature of the journal, not as a joke. If the journal were "in on the joke", they were alone in there.
We arrive at a 2013 essay by University of Colorado librarian Jeffrey Beall:
> To boost the open-access movement, its leaders sacrifice the academic futures of young scholars and those from developing countries, pressuring them to publish in lower-quality open-access journals
> The movement relies on unnatural mandates that take free choice away from individual researchers,
mandates set and enforced by an onerous cadre of Soros-funded European autocrats.
The closed-access traditional publishing field fears the loss of their business model in favor of open access, in which researchers and the public can read articles without a paywall. To do this, they have tried to focus the attention of the public on low-end obscure open-access journals which they term "predatory journals" and hope that this discredits the idea of open access in general. The problem is that while bad open access journals certainly exist, so do bad closed-access journals.
I'm an English professor and I get email from predatory journals all the time. They often have weird, incredibly expansive titles (The International Journal of Business, Science, and Human Culture -- something like that).
I don't really understand how they manage to stay in business, though. We all know that there's a difference between Cell Biology and this kind of fly-by-night nonsense. In some disciplines, journals are quite explicitly ranked by "quality," acceptance rate, etc. Certainly, my colleagues would know immediately if I was publishing in some venue like this; it just wouldn't "count."
Perhaps this scam is intended for another group? Some quack scientist (say) wants to create a giant verifiable CV of their "publications?" Or someone needs some kind of scholarly credentials as a humanist or social scientist, but is unaffiliated?
The whole thing is a bit mystifying to me.
EDIT: I don't mean to imply, by the way, that "unaffiliated" scholars are somehow forced to do this. I know quite a few independent scholars who do excellent work and publish in high-quality, peer-reviewed journals.
19 comments
[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 18.0 ms ] threadhttps://irispublishers.com/sjrr/pdf/SJRR.MS.ID.000540.pdf
and, to warn anybody expecting more, ends with:
"Acknowledgements
We thank Big Bird from Sesame Street for comments on the manuscript. Several trained monkeys transcribed videos."
Also: "Published Date: April 01, 2020"
In short: meh. Doesn't even appear to be funny, especially especially when "covered" on April 15, 2020, for my understanding of what is actually funny:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yL_-1d9OSdk
.
LOL.
> 6 Yes, gins and tonic, not gin and tonics. You want multiple gins, not more tonic.
Or the note on Table 1:
> Note: all coefficients assume a pressure of 1 bar, as one simply cannot be in more than one bar at any given time. Once you find a good bar, you should stay in it.
From the article > it does seem to prove his point: That the Scientific Journal of Research & Reviews is among dozens of "predatory journals" that publish low-quality or unreviewed papers, often for an exorbitant fee.
https://predatoryjournals.com/about/
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2017/01/18/librarians-li...
We arrive at a 2013 essay by University of Colorado librarian Jeffrey Beall:
> To boost the open-access movement, its leaders sacrifice the academic futures of young scholars and those from developing countries, pressuring them to publish in lower-quality open-access journals
> The movement relies on unnatural mandates that take free choice away from individual researchers, mandates set and enforced by an onerous cadre of Soros-funded European autocrats.
http://triplec.at/index.php/tripleC/article/view/525/514
Still working on what to make of all this ...
https://www.google.com/search?q=cassowary&tbm=isch
Kiwis are pretty weird too.
I don't really understand how they manage to stay in business, though. We all know that there's a difference between Cell Biology and this kind of fly-by-night nonsense. In some disciplines, journals are quite explicitly ranked by "quality," acceptance rate, etc. Certainly, my colleagues would know immediately if I was publishing in some venue like this; it just wouldn't "count."
Perhaps this scam is intended for another group? Some quack scientist (say) wants to create a giant verifiable CV of their "publications?" Or someone needs some kind of scholarly credentials as a humanist or social scientist, but is unaffiliated?
The whole thing is a bit mystifying to me.
EDIT: I don't mean to imply, by the way, that "unaffiliated" scholars are somehow forced to do this. I know quite a few independent scholars who do excellent work and publish in high-quality, peer-reviewed journals.
I suspect they follow the vanity press model and charge authors publication fees.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vanity_press