- Case
Author of rejected letter blames global bias against his message and undisclosed conflicts of interest
…then went on to contradict himself and, in my view, invalidate his only claim which may have had some merit: “I would like to clarify that [the group] is absolutely not an ‘advocacy/regulatory group’. To take a modern example, it is something like Facebook where authors [...] advertise and publish the kind of publication that I have criticised in details for their flaws. In that case I don’t… - Forum discussion topics
Predatory publishing: next steps and where do we go from here?
…establish this criteria at the protocol stage. My advice would be to check all open access journal of included articles to see if they are in the DOAJ or not (if claiming to be open access); or in COPE’s membership or not. A caveat of this approach is that new journals will not yet be members. Question: Will the tool also take enough consideration for the fact that there are also… - News
In the news: February Digest
…integrity! Dr. Frances Arnold, winner of half of the 2018 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, tweeted that her research team had retracted a 2019 paper because "the work has not been reproducible". She wrote, "It is painful to admit, but important to do so. I apologize to all. I was a bit busy when this was submitted and did not do my job well". This type of transparency and commitment to the integrity of the… - News
In the news: April Digest
…particularly from the global south, and to distinguish between low quality and “dodgy, fraudulent, pseudo, questionable, sham, illegitmate”, parodical and, my favorite, spoofy, journals. https://jkms.org/DOIx.php?id=10.3346/jkms.2019.34.e99 The US Federal Trade Commission fined OMICS Group, iMedPub LLC and Srinubabu… - News
In the news: June Digest
…href="https://www.wcri2019.org/uploads/files/2019/Hong_Kong_Manifesto_v9.pdf" target="_blank">https://www.wcri2019.org/uploads/files/2019/Hong_Kong_Manifesto_v9.pdf Oh My-hyphens included in titles impedes citation counts --as studied in Scopus and Web of Science! In papers studied there was a strong--and significant negative--correlation between the Journal Impact Factor and percentage of hyphenated paper titles published in the IEEE Transactions on Software… - News
In the news: October 2018 Digest
…Journal Management This month’s topic is “journal management” and on first blush, it isn’t obvious how the concept of “ethics” applies to this topic. I thought of things like selection and implementation of a manuscript manager, paying bills, identifying reviewers, etc. But when I got past my concrete thinking it’s clear journals must be managed based on fundamental ethical…