Don't believe the hype: When that DATA seems just too good

More journals, more problems

Jeffrey Beall, an associate professor at the University of Colorado Denver, researching the subject here shows an exponential growth in the number of such journals coming to market, and an increasing sophistication in their operations as critics get wise to them.

The Register contacted an email address given for the editor of International Journal of Advanced Computer Technology to talk about the Vamplew case and its business.

We put it to the IJACT that it was spamming people to solicit material, that its business was not operated in the interest of genuine research or science, and that it reproduces material that is not validated. The journal responded just once to claim it had not accepted the Vamplew paper. “My editor email ID hack and some one accept this paper,” was the IJACT’s only response.

So, the question: why is any of this remotely interesting to the non-scientist? Because, while scientists may be getting wise to these journals the general public is not.

A science journal is a science journal, what’s the big deal? The big deal comes when journals appear that seem to offer no peer review process and who seem ready to print absolutely anything. When it comes to medical research the dangers of this practice are most apparent – at this point it stops being funny and starts to become dangerous.

A couple of years ago science journalist John Bohannon set out to illustrate the dangers when he faked data to produce a set of near-identical papers with fictitious author names from equally fictitious institutions.

The papers claimed that a substance derived from lichens could kill cancer cells and make them more sensitive to radiotherapy – but the charts in the paper did not match the data, the experimental procedures were glaringly inadequate and the paper concluded that the lichen-derived substance was ready to be used in humans without going to clinical trial first.

All of these should have raised alarm bells. Of the 255 journals that responded to the submission, 157 accepted the paper and asked for payment.

While alarming, the Bohannon experiment was hypothetical – a clever way of exposing the problem and drawing attention to the problem that Beall has been warning us about for some time now – the big question is does this happen for real? Before looking at a recent case of predatory journal meeting snake-oil salesmen we should detour for a minute to look at these journals in a bit more detail.

On the face of it many of these journals sound real enough. They sport all of the things you’d expect from a scientific journal – a solid sounding title, a scientific review board packed with suitably credentialed scientists, offices in respectable addresses, clear policies on peer review and ethics and back-lists of published articles.

But often office addresses turn out to be mailing addresses or they are completely faked. The text describing their policies has been cut and pasted from the real thing. Many of the reviewers turn out to have nothing to do with journal and in some cases do not even know they are listed. In some cases even the titles of the journals are just one word variations of existing journal titles.