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Who's affraind of Peer Review?

kanabco

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"On 4 July, good news arrived in the inbox of Ocorrafoo Cobange, a biologist at the Wassee Institute of Medicine in Asmara. It was the official letter of acceptance for a paper he had submitted 2 months earlier to the Journal of Natural Pharmaceuticals, describing the anticancer properties of a chemical that Cobange had extracted from a lichen.

In fact, it should have been promptly rejected. Any reviewer with more than a high-school knowledge of chemistry and the ability to understand a basic data plot should have spotted the paper's short-comings immediately. Its experiments are so hopelessly flawed that the results are meaningless.

I know because I wrote the paper. Ocorrafoo Cobange does not exist, nor does the Wassee Institute of Medicine. Over the past 10 months, I have submitted 304 versions of the wonder drug paper to open-access journals. More than half of the journals accepted the paper, failing to notice its fatal flaws. Beyond that headline result, the data from this sting operation reveal the contours of an emerging Wild West in academic publishing.

From humble and idealistic beginnings a decade ago, open-access scientific journals have mushroomed into a global industry, driven by author publication fees rather than traditional subscriptions. Most of the players are murky. The identity and location of the journals' editors, as well as the financial workings of their publishers, are often purposefully obscured. But Science's investigation casts a powerful light. Internet Protocol (IP) address traces within the raw headers of e-mails sent by journal editors betray their locations. Invoices for publication fees reveal a network of bank accounts based mostly in the developing world. And the acceptances and rejections of the paper provide the first global snapshot of peer review across the open-access scientific enterprise."

---Science 04 Oct 2013
---link Who's Afraid of Peer Review? | Science

The sad thing is the article is more than two years old and the number of open access journals has quadrupled today. Anyone can start one and anything can be published in one and all will believe as actual research because it is peer reviews which is is not.
https://scholarlyoa.com/2015/01/02/bealls-list-of-predatory-publishers-2015/ which does not mean they are all predatory journals OR that they are set up to fool the small minded. But fooling is what they do. Especially if the subject has a political end. I find it much harder to do research today even with so much more info out there because I have to study more deeply trying to unearth spoofs.

I have been fooled more than once.
 
"On 4 July, good news arrived in the inbox of Ocorrafoo Cobange, a biologist at the Wassee Institute of Medicine in Asmara. It was the official letter of acceptance for a paper he had submitted 2 months earlier to the Journal of Natural Pharmaceuticals, describing the anticancer properties of a chemical that Cobange had extracted from a lichen.

In fact, it should have been promptly rejected. Any reviewer with more than a high-school knowledge of chemistry and the ability to understand a basic data plot should have spotted the paper's short-comings immediately. Its experiments are so hopelessly flawed that the results are meaningless.

I know because I wrote the paper. Ocorrafoo Cobange does not exist, nor does the Wassee Institute of Medicine. Over the past 10 months, I have submitted 304 versions of the wonder drug paper to open-access journals. More than half of the journals accepted the paper, failing to notice its fatal flaws. Beyond that headline result, the data from this sting operation reveal the contours of an emerging Wild West in academic publishing.

From humble and idealistic beginnings a decade ago, open-access scientific journals have mushroomed into a global industry, driven by author publication fees rather than traditional subscriptions. Most of the players are murky. The identity and location of the journals' editors, as well as the financial workings of their publishers, are often purposefully obscured. But Science's investigation casts a powerful light. Internet Protocol (IP) address traces within the raw headers of e-mails sent by journal editors betray their locations. Invoices for publication fees reveal a network of bank accounts based mostly in the developing world. And the acceptances and rejections of the paper provide the first global snapshot of peer review across the open-access scientific enterprise."

---Science 04 Oct 2013
---link Who's Afraid of Peer Review? | Science

The sad thing is the article is more than two years old and the number of open access journals has quadrupled today. Anyone can start one and anything can be published in one and all will believe as actual research because it is peer reviews which is is not.
https://scholarlyoa.com/2015/01/02/bealls-list-of-predatory-publishers-2015/ which does not mean they are all predatory journals OR that they are set up to fool the small minded. But fooling is what they do. Especially if the subject has a political end. I find it much harder to do research today even with so much more info out there because I have to study more deeply trying to unearth spoofs.

I have been fooled more than once.

The corruption in academia marches on. The bill gets paid with rising tuition charges.
 
One of the reasons a person gets an advanced degree is to learn how to critique research. There have always, and I mean always, been faked studies and faked science. The reason to get a masters is to learn what research to pay attention to. The reasons to get a PhD is to learn to conduct research correctly.
 
"On 4 July, good news arrived in the inbox of Ocorrafoo Cobange, a biologist at the Wassee Institute of Medicine in Asmara. It was the official letter of acceptance for a paper he had submitted 2 months earlier to the Journal of Natural Pharmaceuticals, describing the anticancer properties of a chemical that Cobange had extracted from a lichen.

In fact, it should have been promptly rejected. Any reviewer with more than a high-school knowledge of chemistry and the ability to understand a basic data plot should have spotted the paper's short-comings immediately. Its experiments are so hopelessly flawed that the results are meaningless.

I know because I wrote the paper. Ocorrafoo Cobange does not exist, nor does the Wassee Institute of Medicine. Over the past 10 months, I have submitted 304 versions of the wonder drug paper to open-access journals. More than half of the journals accepted the paper, failing to notice its fatal flaws. Beyond that headline result, the data from this sting operation reveal the contours of an emerging Wild West in academic publishing.

From humble and idealistic beginnings a decade ago, open-access scientific journals have mushroomed into a global industry, driven by author publication fees rather than traditional subscriptions. Most of the players are murky. The identity and location of the journals' editors, as well as the financial workings of their publishers, are often purposefully obscured. But Science's investigation casts a powerful light. Internet Protocol (IP) address traces within the raw headers of e-mails sent by journal editors betray their locations. Invoices for publication fees reveal a network of bank accounts based mostly in the developing world. And the acceptances and rejections of the paper provide the first global snapshot of peer review across the open-access scientific enterprise."

---Science 04 Oct 2013
---link Who's Afraid of Peer Review? | Science

The sad thing is the article is more than two years old and the number of open access journals has quadrupled today. Anyone can start one and anything can be published in one and all will believe as actual research because it is peer reviews which is is not.
https://scholarlyoa.com/2015/01/02/bealls-list-of-predatory-publishers-2015/ which does not mean they are all predatory journals OR that they are set up to fool the small minded. But fooling is what they do. Especially if the subject has a political end. I find it much harder to do research today even with so much more info out there because I have to study more deeply trying to unearth spoofs.

I have been fooled more than once.

This is not to say that open-access can't be great (especially if you want to "enhance" the publication section of your CV), but "peer-reviewed" matters. You can depend on national and international professional organizations' publications--e.g. any of the many publications of IEEE.

Pro-tip: Read the abstract, of course, but then go to the bibliography. The bib always tells the story, so scholars go there first. One motive, you know, for keeping up with your field or a related field is the opportunity to publish, and when you see that seminal names don't appear in the bib, that article is worth the read because you never know--you may be provided with an "Aha!"--ummm, I mean with an opportunity to offer a scholarly rebuttal. :mrgreen:
 
I think there's only a handful of legitimate accredited scientific journals and I don't think the editors peer review the accepted submissions themselves....instead, they send the paper to academic peers in the same field as the submitted paper to repeat the methods. Hence, the name "peer review". The science journals don't usually publish a paper until it has been reviewed by at least three or four peers....and sometimes it takes awhile because the peer reviewers do it voluntarily on their own time.

So the OP wasn't quite clear as to whether or not his paper on anti-cancer lichen enzymes was actually published...or just accepted pending peer review. But he's probably right that anyone can publish almost anything on the internet with no peer review. There's a lot faux science websites on the internet. So when in doubt, I prefer to go with the peer reviewed papers published in accredited science journals because really, that's about all we really have in this day and age to go by.
 
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I think there's only a handful of legitimate accredited scientific journals and I don't think the editors peer review the accepted submissions themselves....instead, they send the paper to academic peers in the same field as the submitted paper to repeat the methods. Hence, the name "peer review". The science journals don't usually publish a paper until it has been reviewed by at least three or four peers....and sometimes it takes awhile because the peer reviewers do it voluntarily on their own time.

So the OP wasn't quite clear as to whether or not his paper on anti-cancer lichen enzymes was actually published...or just accepted pending peer review. But he's probably right that anyone can publish almost anything on the internet with no peer review. There's a lot faux science websites on the internet. So when in doubt, I prefer to go with the peer reviewed papers published in accredited science journals because really, that's about all we really have in this day and age to go by.

What do you mean by "only a handful of legitimate accredited scientific journals"? In his field or generally?
 
"On 4 July, good news arrived in the inbox of Ocorrafoo Cobange, a biologist at the Wassee Institute of Medicine in Asmara. It was the official letter of acceptance for a paper he had submitted 2 months earlier to the Journal of Natural Pharmaceuticals, describing the anticancer properties of a chemical that Cobange had extracted from a lichen.

In fact, it should have been promptly rejected. Any reviewer with more than a high-school knowledge of chemistry and the ability to understand a basic data plot should have spotted the paper's short-comings immediately. Its experiments are so hopelessly flawed that the results are meaningless.

I know because I wrote the paper. Ocorrafoo Cobange does not exist, nor does the Wassee Institute of Medicine. Over the past 10 months, I have submitted 304 versions of the wonder drug paper to open-access journals. More than half of the journals accepted the paper, failing to notice its fatal flaws. Beyond that headline result, the data from this sting operation reveal the contours of an emerging Wild West in academic publishing.

From humble and idealistic beginnings a decade ago, open-access scientific journals have mushroomed into a global industry, driven by author publication fees rather than traditional subscriptions. Most of the players are murky. The identity and location of the journals' editors, as well as the financial workings of their publishers, are often purposefully obscured. But Science's investigation casts a powerful light. Internet Protocol (IP) address traces within the raw headers of e-mails sent by journal editors betray their locations. Invoices for publication fees reveal a network of bank accounts based mostly in the developing world. And the acceptances and rejections of the paper provide the first global snapshot of peer review across the open-access scientific enterprise."

---Science 04 Oct 2013
---link Who's Afraid of Peer Review? | Science

The sad thing is the article is more than two years old and the number of open access journals has quadrupled today. Anyone can start one and anything can be published in one and all will believe as actual research because it is peer reviews which is is not.
https://scholarlyoa.com/2015/01/02/bealls-list-of-predatory-publishers-2015/ which does not mean they are all predatory journals OR that they are set up to fool the small minded. But fooling is what they do. Especially if the subject has a political end. I find it much harder to do research today even with so much more info out there because I have to study more deeply trying to unearth spoofs.

I have been fooled more than once.

There are 300 open-access pharm journals? Show me.
 
Who's affraind of Peer Review?

not me. it's a pretty good system. however, i've definitely spent my share of time doing extra experiments due to revision requests that took weeks / months. it wasn't too bad, though. it just meant more tissue culture and the opportunity to learn how to get good images on a pretty cool confocal microscope. in the end, the paper was published, and then the sequester cuts to the NIH killed the job. i have a new gig now, though, and it is an opportunity to learn even more.
 
What do you mean by "only a handful of legitimate accredited scientific journals"? In his field or generally?

I meant in his field. I'm not that familiar with open source....but I see how it might help advance science beyond the patent controlled science and research.
 
I meant in his field. I'm not that familiar with open source....but I see how it might help advance science beyond the patent controlled science and research.

Oh, I can do. And I am not trying to "delegitimize" open-access, only observing that if there are two tiers, they're the lower one. And now that I understand what you meant, I can affirm that there are generally only "handfuls." Beyond competition is redundancy.
 
There have always, and I mean always, been faked studies and faked science. The reason to get a masters is to learn what research to pay attention to.

Cannot disagree although I was attempting to point out that the sharp rise in questionable journals over the last decade has probably lead to a non linear rise in fraud

The reasons to get a PhD is to learn to conduct research correctly.

I did not know that.
 
Pro-tip: Read the abstract, of course, but then go to the bibliography.

Thanks for the tip but I do not always wish to pay to see it sometimes
 
One of the reasons a person gets an advanced degree is to learn how to critique research. There have always, and I mean always, been faked studies and faked science. The reason to get a masters is to learn what research to pay attention to. The reasons to get a PhD is to learn to conduct research correctly.
Now, I've always heard it as:

Bull Shit, More Shit, and Piled higher and Deeper!
 
This is not to say that open-access can't be great (especially if you want to "enhance" the publication section of your CV), but "peer-reviewed" matters. You can depend on national and international professional organizations' publications--e.g. any of the many publications of IEEE.

Pro-tip: Read the abstract, of course, but then go to the bibliography. The bib always tells the story, so scholars go there first. One motive, you know, for keeping up with your field or a related field is the opportunity to publish, and when you see that seminal names don't appear in the bib, that article is worth the read because you never know--you may be provided with an "Aha!"--ummm, I mean with an opportunity to offer a scholarly rebuttal. :mrgreen:
This is also an excellent way to screen not just scholarly papers, but books as well.

And even when I'm perusing books in areas I know little about, when I see what appears to be well done cites and bibliography I can't help but feel the work is potentially more credible.

I do very much agree with you in IEEE.

I also found ACM credible, but I've since moved on to other pastures.
 
Scholarship can be very competitive, and bibs really do tell the story. For example, if an article is on TQM (all the rage in the '80's) and W. Edwards Deming isn't referenced, you know right there to pay attention and look for opportunity.

I love IEEE. It's one of the five bib platforms (the others are MLA, Chicago, APA, and CBE/its spin-offs), and its style guidelines are fantastic.
 
The funny thing is I posted this to bring attention to the somewhat questionable certitude of peer review yet so many think the bibliography should be totally separated from it. How can you trust a bibliography as being forthright if you cannot prove the author of the quote in the biblio was not him/her self a suspect author in a journal? Face the fact that modern online scholarship is suspect if not dead. Do you wonder why global warming deniers cannot accept scholarship simply because we quote suspect journals with bibliographies referencing suspect journals?
 
The funny thing is I posted this to bring attention to the somewhat questionable certitude of peer review yet so many think the bibliography should be totally separated from it. How can you trust a bibliography as being forthright if you cannot prove the author of the quote in the biblio was not him/her self a suspect author in a journal? Face the fact that modern online scholarship is suspect if not dead. Do you wonder why global warming deniers cannot accept scholarship simply because we quote suspect journals with bibliographies referencing suspect journals?

Except the deniers (or won't) can't differentiate between Nature and PNAS and marginal/poor journals like 'Energy and Environment'.

That's one reason you really need to be in the profession to know it well, because a deep understanding allows you to accurately differentiate sources.
 
The funny thing is I posted this to bring attention to the somewhat questionable certitude of peer review yet so many think the bibliography should be totally separated from it. How can you trust a bibliography as being forthright if you cannot prove the author of the quote in the biblio was not him/her self a suspect author in a journal? Face the fact that modern online scholarship is suspect if not dead. Do you wonder why global warming deniers cannot accept scholarship simply because we quote suspect journals with bibliographies referencing suspect journals?

For bibliographical purposes, all that matters is that the citations are completely and correctly referenced, that there is a match between every in-text and ref.
 
peer-review is overrated!

A psychologist once did an experiment and send in an experiment with the name of two writers. The paper was rejected.
The ONLY thing they changed then were the names into the names of two well-known writers. The paper was accepted.

Ah well, let's just face it. The whole of academia a enormous stupid and retarded, including peer review.

It's even a kind of religion. Then peer-review can be seen as the blessing given by some stupid priests

It is really all a sham.
 
The corruption in academia marches on. The bill gets paid with rising tuition charges.

To what extent, if any, are the open-access journals described in OP associated with accredited, peer-reviewed academia? I suspect there is zero association.

I might go along with you to a large degree if you leave engineering and the true hard sciences off your list of targets.

And research must be replicated before it is considered reliable. Apparently this is a big and ongoing omission problem in psychology, if not elsewhere:

Is that a psychological condition, or just faulty research?

(from link):
Last summer, a group called the Open Science Collaboration said that its attempts to replicate 100 social and cognitive psychology studies found that only 36 percent produced significant results.Although the crisis began with critics claiming they couldn’t replicate long-trusted studies, it has moved on to challenging the methodology of the critics themselves. Professionals in the field worry that the ongoing arguments could undermine psychology’s public image.
 
academia is a business just like any other, subject to the same corruption and pit falls

very very very true!
 
"On 4 July, good news arrived in the inbox of Ocorrafoo Cobange, a biologist at the Wassee Institute of Medicine in Asmara. It was the official letter of acceptance for a paper he had submitted 2 months earlier to the Journal of Natural Pharmaceuticals, describing the anticancer properties of a chemical that Cobange had extracted from a lichen.

In fact, it should have been promptly rejected. Any reviewer with more than a high-school knowledge of chemistry and the ability to understand a basic data plot should have spotted the paper's short-comings immediately. Its experiments are so hopelessly flawed that the results are meaningless.

I know because I wrote the paper. Ocorrafoo Cobange does not exist, nor does the Wassee Institute of Medicine. Over the past 10 months, I have submitted 304 versions of the wonder drug paper to open-access journals. More than half of the journals accepted the paper, failing to notice its fatal flaws. Beyond that headline result, the data from this sting operation reveal the contours of an emerging Wild West in academic publishing.

From humble and idealistic beginnings a decade ago, open-access scientific journals have mushroomed into a global industry, driven by author publication fees rather than traditional subscriptions. Most of the players are murky. The identity and location of the journals' editors, as well as the financial workings of their publishers, are often purposefully obscured. But Science's investigation casts a powerful light. Internet Protocol (IP) address traces within the raw headers of e-mails sent by journal editors betray their locations. Invoices for publication fees reveal a network of bank accounts based mostly in the developing world. And the acceptances and rejections of the paper provide the first global snapshot of peer review across the open-access scientific enterprise."

---Science 04 Oct 2013
---link Who's Afraid of Peer Review? | Science

The sad thing is the article is more than two years old and the number of open access journals has quadrupled today. Anyone can start one and anything can be published in one and all will believe as actual research because it is peer reviews which is is not.
https://scholarlyoa.com/2015/01/02/bealls-list-of-predatory-publishers-2015/ which does not mean they are all predatory journals OR that they are set up to fool the small minded. But fooling is what they do. Especially if the subject has a political end. I find it much harder to do research today even with so much more info out there because I have to study more deeply trying to unearth spoofs.

I have been fooled more than once.
Peer review isnt limited to just journals. Peer review applies to science in general. Other scientists will review the work and try it out just to make sure. Which has little to do with publications.
 
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