John Ziman (1925-2005), an expert in two different positions (physics and sociology of science), published a little over twenty years ago a very interesting comment in Nature: “Is science losing its objectivity?” [I] The thin line announces that “Philosophy of science is not independent of the way research is organized.” The opening paragraph describes the metaphor translated below.
“Scientists know philosophy and sociology like fish know water. They instinctively understand how to live in it without realizing that they do so. That is, until the aquarium is shaken or (the horror!) is spilled. It seems like we are living exactly this way. Science is being shaken up and forced to abandon many of its previously cherished customs. We need to think seriously about what is happening and what we must do, not to merely survive, but to serve and delight humanity.”
Here I replace philosophy with the scientific publishing market in the paragraph above to start another game, leaving the reference to Ziman's text for interested readers. During my training as a researcher in the 1980s and early 1990s, it was part of knowing, becoming familiar with and, eventually, publishing in the group of journals that constituted the canon of the area of knowledge. Several were (and still are) published by non-profit associations. Many others were (and still are) run by editorial groups, these for profit. Regardless of this, the reputation of the editorial boards and the seriousness of the peer reviews of the articles were of interest. In the 1990s the aquarium became imperceptibly cloudy, one of these magazines began to be published by the Elsevier group, which bought the Pergamon group, which previously edited it. We didn't know then that Pergamon publisher Robert Maxwell would have been jealous of Citizen Kane by Orson Welles. Soon after, a traditional Physics magazine disappeared, which was merged with others, to give rise to a new one, a management movement within the Springer publishing house.
Currently, Springer (who also took over the magazine Nature), Elsevier and the Wiley-Blackwell group control half of an 80 billion reais per year market, with profit margins reaching 40%. Great business model, for which information and communication technologies have contributed to reducing costs, while profits are maintained by the very high subscription fees. Details and intricacies of this story are described in a beautiful article by Stephen Buranyi [II].
At the beginning of this century, the aquarium was shaken by the open access movement in science: authors pay for the publication of their article, which becomes freely accessible to anyone who wants it and trying to corner the business plan through subscriptions. The costs for authors would be covered by their research resources, specific university programs or foundations. The return of the idea of knowledge as a public good, which takes on interesting contours with the movement of universities and funding agencies to confront large publishing groups, as is happening in Germany and mentioned in this space a few weeks ago.
The aquariums are now cloudy, shaking and threatening to tip over into some living rooms. The beginning of the 21st century not only brought the idea of open science, but also the intensification of scientific production and its internationalization (which, almost always, means publishing in English, for researchers from non-English-speaking countries, and in journals published abroad, if researchers are in emerging territories). This is where the scenario for new business models emerges, open to new predators, from courses on how to publish in English and, mainly, the so-called predatory magazines. They are online magazines, based in countries with little scientific tradition, advertising obscure editors and editorial boards, which disguise supposed peer reviews, which present false indexing, but... they charge. Much cheaper, it's true, than non-predatory magazines, even because the cost of these predatory magazines is practically zero: maintaining a fake website and someone who posts the articles, which are neither reviewed nor edited. How do they do this? The phenomenon is remembered whenever an email appears inviting the recipient to publish in a magazine with a slightly strange but suggestive or seductive name, often with “international” at the beginning or similar to the name of an already established magazine. They are, in general, magazines with a short life cycle, they make a profit as long as awareness of the scam is not disseminated, as is the case with Business and Management Review (BMR), edited(?) by Business Journalz (??, that's right, with z at the end). It appeared in 2011, but has not yet published a single article in 2017. It advertises, among other things, peer review, but the articles do not show the date of submission and acceptance, as would be customary. The last article, from 2016, is there in Portuguese, even though no one from any Portuguese-speaking country appears on the supposed editorial committee. Ah, the magazine also doesn't have an address.
This is more or less the style shared by all so-called predatory magazines. If the BMR seems to have come to an end, others appear like the dozens of magazines, many without any published articles yet, nor editorial committee, but promising the same things, IOSRD portal. In it the magazine International Journal of Chemistry There are already 3 articles published, which appear to be well edited and include the date of submission, receipt of the revised version and publication. It seems in order, but then you notice that the dates of submission and receipt of the revised versions are the same in the three articles. The position of editor-in-chief is vacant, according to the same website.
Predatory journals have raised alarms in several parts of the academic world [III] and warning lists were created, which are also controversial [IV]. Initially seen as a threat to scientific communities in emerging countries, today it has also spread throughout the first world [IN]. In the midst of this turbidity, a new direct quote is worth mentioning, now from an editorial in Journal of Epidemiology.
“...I propose that efforts focus on transforming the academic research environment and the rewards system, raising standards and developing true intra- and inter-institutional collegiality. With that, the predatory market would disappear...” [YOU]
Yes, but we had this before in the 1980s. How did the ability to know and recognize good scientific literature disappear? Not only did philosophy and sociology turn to water, the scientific ethos too.
Time to feed the fish.
[I] Nature vol. 382, 751-754
[III] http://www.palavraimpressa.com.br/2016/08/05/as-revistas-open-access-predatorias/
[IV] http://revistapesquisa.fapesp.br/2017/06/20/nova-lista-de-periodicos-predatorios/
[IN] https://www.nature.com/news/stop-this-waste-of-people-animals-and-money-1.22554
[YOU] Why we should worry less about predatory publishers and more about the quality of research and training at our academic institutions. Elizabeth Wager Journal of Epidemiology 27 (2017) 87-88
