An organized rogue editor network!
January 19, 2021 8:36 AM Subscribe
One way to hack a scientific journal. A group of researchers convinced a scientific journal to organize a special issue about the “Role of Nanotechnology and Internet of Things in Healthcare.” The content turned out to be bad and the organizers disappeared.
All of the evidence points to an organized network that tries—in this case successfully—to infiltrate scientific journals with the objective of easily publishing manuscripts from pseudo-scientists or less productive researchers who want to appear in respectable journals.
All of the evidence points to an organized network that tries—in this case successfully—to infiltrate scientific journals with the objective of easily publishing manuscripts from pseudo-scientists or less productive researchers who want to appear in respectable journals.
If it wasn't just a prank (fake authors, fake papers), wouldn't the submitted papers and their references, and papers that reference those papers point to the culprits?
posted by th3ph17 at 9:05 AM on January 19, 2021
posted by th3ph17 at 9:05 AM on January 19, 2021
doctornemo: "and the organizers disappeared."
maybe they're just so small they can't be seen with the naked eye?
posted by chavenet at 9:08 AM on January 19, 2021 [19 favorites]
maybe they're just so small they can't be seen with the naked eye?
posted by chavenet at 9:08 AM on January 19, 2021 [19 favorites]
The proliferation of special issues now means there is nothing really "special" about them at all. I now get frequent requests to be a guest editor of such issues, but as mr_roboto points out this just means I have to do all the Journals work - for free! Needless to say, I've been declining these requests.
posted by piyushnz at 9:22 AM on January 19, 2021
posted by piyushnz at 9:22 AM on January 19, 2021
So, rather than getting a bunch of people to do a bunch of free labour for them, these journal editors did a bunch of free labour for somebody else? This has a real man-bites-dog quality to it.
posted by mhoye at 9:28 AM on January 19, 2021
posted by mhoye at 9:28 AM on January 19, 2021
... these journal editors did a bunch of free labour for somebody else?
No; presumably they used their positions as special issue editors to accept otherwise unpublishable papers written by themselves, their friends, or people who were paying them for the service.
posted by mr_roboto at 9:49 AM on January 19, 2021 [4 favorites]
No; presumably they used their positions as special issue editors to accept otherwise unpublishable papers written by themselves, their friends, or people who were paying them for the service.
posted by mr_roboto at 9:49 AM on January 19, 2021 [4 favorites]
I would be banned from mefi if I wrote what I'd like to do to these scum as an example.
The world is too complex for anyone to comprehend and make decisions in. Existing as a human means submitting to a vast fiduciary system, and humanity has ZERO chance if we can't rely on verifiable info.
Science is a flawed millennia-long project to construct a verifiable culture.
These clowns are destroying it.
posted by lalochezia at 10:20 AM on January 19, 2021 [7 favorites]
The world is too complex for anyone to comprehend and make decisions in. Existing as a human means submitting to a vast fiduciary system, and humanity has ZERO chance if we can't rely on verifiable info.
Science is a flawed millennia-long project to construct a verifiable culture.
These clowns are destroying it.
posted by lalochezia at 10:20 AM on January 19, 2021 [7 favorites]
We found the proposal very timely and exactly what we were looking for.I'm in a different subfield, but I use the words "nano" and "microwave" rather a lot in papers and proposals. Is there anyone who doesn't see the title as obvious satire? "Nanotechnology and Internet of Things?" Are we talking about networked DVD drives in hospitals? Science fiction smartmatter that somehow is able to couple to weak 10-cm wavelength radio waves? Computer chips in imaging hardware? AR coatings on. . . wifi antennas? Not noticing the fake domain names seems like the least of Springer's problems.
Special issues are such nonsense. Journals already get authorship and reviewing for free; special issues let them offload the cost of editors as well.I don't entirely disagree. But my experience as a special issue editor for journal acquired years ago by a huge, horrible, for-profit publishing company was surprisingly good. The editor and admins were thoughtful and I learned a lot from the experience. The authors didn't pay (libraries did) so there were lots of submissions from students and researchers with limited resources. While I look forward to seeing the publisher dissolved or turned into a non-profit, the actual content of the journal is usually really good. The special editions are usually better than average. In the one I worked on, several reviewers put a lot more effort into their work than I've ever managed as a referee. While I didn't get any extra pay for it, it's part of my job and I get paid well. That my institution both paid me to do the work and then also paid the publisher to let them have access to papers that everyone already read on the arXiv is unfortunate. But, the papers themselves and the review process were a lot better than I expected.
posted by eotvos at 10:28 AM on January 19, 2021 [1 favorite]
Apparently this is not a new problem.
posted by zenzenobia at 10:47 AM on January 19, 2021 [3 favorites]
Who would have thought of such a thing? bemoaned the editors. As it turns out, the editor of another Springer Nature journal, Australasian Physical & Engineering Sciences in Medicine, wrote last year about being the victim of an identical scam. Pinna tells Retraction Watch the Journal of Nanoparticle Research team wasn’t aware of the Australasian journal’s editorial, nor of our post about it. To be fair, that probably wouldn’t have helped them prevent the scam, given the timing, but it might have saved them from calling it a “new way.”I love Retraction Watch. They do good work cleaning up the messes.
posted by zenzenobia at 10:47 AM on January 19, 2021 [3 favorites]
I always feel a little tingle of schadenfreude whenever I read about scientific journals publishing garbage articles because I think about how Alan Sokal published one fake article in a non-peer-reviewed journal and said that one data point proved the intellectual bankruptcy of "postmodernism."
posted by Saxon Kane at 1:40 PM on January 19, 2021 [5 favorites]
posted by Saxon Kane at 1:40 PM on January 19, 2021 [5 favorites]
More than that, Saxon Kane, the Sokal hoax is still being used -almost 30 years later - to justify ongoing attacks on the integrity of critical theory, philosophy, and the humanities in general. It's been the basis of efforts to defund and cancel courses and departments, and is the ur-text for conservative pundits declaring the danger of 'postmodernism' to 'Western values'.
Meanwhile science and engineering journals have repeatedly been scammed, hoaxed, and otherwise manipulated without consequence. They're responsible for the growth in publication charges, which not only limits publication to authors and institutions who can afford it, but also arguably encourages journals to accept any paying content at all.
So while I feel for these editors who failed to do their due diligence, I'm furious at a system that doubts my field's intellectual rigour in favour of those whose practices cast doubt on the whole mechanism of scholarship.
posted by prismatic7 at 2:07 PM on January 19, 2021 [7 favorites]
Meanwhile science and engineering journals have repeatedly been scammed, hoaxed, and otherwise manipulated without consequence. They're responsible for the growth in publication charges, which not only limits publication to authors and institutions who can afford it, but also arguably encourages journals to accept any paying content at all.
So while I feel for these editors who failed to do their due diligence, I'm furious at a system that doubts my field's intellectual rigour in favour of those whose practices cast doubt on the whole mechanism of scholarship.
posted by prismatic7 at 2:07 PM on January 19, 2021 [7 favorites]
Like th3ph17 said, what exactly is the endgame here? Let’s say you get a paper published in this issue and come out if the affair with “technically, we can’t prove this specific person was in on it” status. Doesn’t that still leave you with a paper that everyone knows was printed in that one issue that was totally fraudulent? Wouldn’t even the most quantity-driven tenure or grant process have some part where that would come up?
Or was the idea that the scam would never be discovered?
posted by No-sword at 2:58 PM on January 19, 2021
Or was the idea that the scam would never be discovered?
posted by No-sword at 2:58 PM on January 19, 2021
prismatic7: Preach!
posted by Saxon Kane at 3:26 PM on January 19, 2021
posted by Saxon Kane at 3:26 PM on January 19, 2021
Science is a flawed millennia-long project to construct a verifiable culture.
These clowns are destroying it.
From my experience I'm comfortable saying that it's the perverse incentives of academic employment and the publishing system that are destroying it. I don't condone journal-grubbing, knowing-the-editor-wink-wink, or fraud (needless to say). I would never do it myself, and have made professional sacrifices to avoid the pressure that leads to it. It's just that stuff like this is such an obvious consequence of how tenure and promotion work at research institutions that I have a hard time getting too het up about it.
posted by dbx at 3:31 PM on January 19, 2021 [5 favorites]
These clowns are destroying it.
From my experience I'm comfortable saying that it's the perverse incentives of academic employment and the publishing system that are destroying it. I don't condone journal-grubbing, knowing-the-editor-wink-wink, or fraud (needless to say). I would never do it myself, and have made professional sacrifices to avoid the pressure that leads to it. It's just that stuff like this is such an obvious consequence of how tenure and promotion work at research institutions that I have a hard time getting too het up about it.
posted by dbx at 3:31 PM on January 19, 2021 [5 favorites]
Special issues are such nonsense. Journals already get authorship and reviewing for free; special issues let them offload the cost of editors as well.
It's a huge shame, because a good special issue can really both stimulate a conversation as authors come together to submit pieces for the special issue, and then go on to become a great resource for future work. My dissertation happened to consider heavily a topic which turned out to have a special issue in a society journal dedicated to it about five years ago, and the pieces in that special issue turned out to really deepen and inform the work I was trying to contextualize.
I really like special issues in my favorite journals. Am I the only person here who does, or something? I think it's refreshing to see a lot of people get to publish on a niche topic together and show off a lot of angles approaching that topic at once.
posted by sciatrix at 3:37 PM on January 19, 2021 [6 favorites]
It's a huge shame, because a good special issue can really both stimulate a conversation as authors come together to submit pieces for the special issue, and then go on to become a great resource for future work. My dissertation happened to consider heavily a topic which turned out to have a special issue in a society journal dedicated to it about five years ago, and the pieces in that special issue turned out to really deepen and inform the work I was trying to contextualize.
I really like special issues in my favorite journals. Am I the only person here who does, or something? I think it's refreshing to see a lot of people get to publish on a niche topic together and show off a lot of angles approaching that topic at once.
posted by sciatrix at 3:37 PM on January 19, 2021 [6 favorites]
the perverse incentives of academic employment and the publishing system that are destroying it
"When a measure is used as a target, it will cease to be useful as a measure"
Or possibly, "Money ruins everything".
posted by clew at 4:10 PM on January 19, 2021 [1 favorite]
"When a measure is used as a target, it will cease to be useful as a measure"
Or possibly, "Money ruins everything".
posted by clew at 4:10 PM on January 19, 2021 [1 favorite]
...as an email expert, he even checked the headers of the emails we received...
As the Sherlock Holmes of mail fraud, I closely examined the postage stamp and identified it as a genuine USPS First Class Mail sticker, so I certified the entire contents of the envelope as authentic...
Is it possible these guys haven't even examined each other's credentials very closely?
posted by XMLicious at 4:28 PM on January 19, 2021 [1 favorite]
What has happened to the peer review journal system is what always happens when bad faith actors figure out how to game a system.
posted by Pouteria at 7:45 PM on January 19, 2021
posted by Pouteria at 7:45 PM on January 19, 2021
You have to be pretty new to science not to know of groups of scientists who circle jerk each others bad research into journals. It's pretty much how most race measurement science gets past peer review.
The weird part of this story is the group's disappearance rather than the publish-poor-work scam itself.
posted by srboisvert at 1:46 AM on January 20, 2021 [2 favorites]
The weird part of this story is the group's disappearance rather than the publish-poor-work scam itself.
posted by srboisvert at 1:46 AM on January 20, 2021 [2 favorites]
Let’s say you get a paper published in this issue and come out if the affair with “technically, we can’t prove this specific person was in on it” status. Doesn’t that still leave you with a paper that everyone knows was printed in that one issue that was totally fraudulent? Wouldn’t even the most quantity-driven tenure or grant process have some part where that would come up?
That relies on the problem being not just discovered but achieving very significant notoriety. Say that your paper is published in Totally Fake Journal, Special Issue: Soap Herrings. That's not what you write on your CV. Depending on how you format it, it will be something like: "Article Name, Totally Fake Journal 2021 Sep;7(1):123-47". They might look the paper up and that would be you busted; but otherwise, they either have to remember that your article was in the dodgy special issue, or remember which month/issue the dodgy special issue was. The greater liklihood is that they go "oh hey, they got an article into Totally Fake Journal". The expectation now is that applicants for tenure or grants have multiple papers. If every applicant has ten papers to their name, you're not going to have time to look up all of them. The bullshit obsession with publication quantity absolutely makes this strategy worthwhile.
posted by Vortisaur at 1:51 AM on January 20, 2021 [4 favorites]
That relies on the problem being not just discovered but achieving very significant notoriety. Say that your paper is published in Totally Fake Journal, Special Issue: Soap Herrings. That's not what you write on your CV. Depending on how you format it, it will be something like: "Article Name, Totally Fake Journal 2021 Sep;7(1):123-47". They might look the paper up and that would be you busted; but otherwise, they either have to remember that your article was in the dodgy special issue, or remember which month/issue the dodgy special issue was. The greater liklihood is that they go "oh hey, they got an article into Totally Fake Journal". The expectation now is that applicants for tenure or grants have multiple papers. If every applicant has ten papers to their name, you're not going to have time to look up all of them. The bullshit obsession with publication quantity absolutely makes this strategy worthwhile.
posted by Vortisaur at 1:51 AM on January 20, 2021 [4 favorites]
I see, so the idea is that even if everyone will be like “Totally Fake Journal? That one that got hijacked and published a fraudulent themed issue?” for 3 months, it won’t be scandalous enough for anyone to notice that entry on your CV after that. And I guess the more times you can flood the zone with shit like this, the less memorable each individual case becomes.
posted by No-sword at 3:24 PM on January 20, 2021 [1 favorite]
posted by No-sword at 3:24 PM on January 20, 2021 [1 favorite]
Existing as a human means submitting to a vast fiduciary system
Very first eyeball misreading as "vast fuckery system" kind of checks out I have to say.
posted by away for regrooving at 11:40 PM on January 20, 2021 [1 favorite]
Very first eyeball misreading as "vast fuckery system" kind of checks out I have to say.
posted by away for regrooving at 11:40 PM on January 20, 2021 [1 favorite]
p: The organizational and labour structure of academia is based on those of the drug ring
q: An organization creates products that resemble its own structure
----------------
Conclusion: If you think you're on drugs while reading the crap special issue, it is because the craziness is the point.
posted by runcifex at 2:08 AM on January 21, 2021 [3 favorites]
q: An organization creates products that resemble its own structure
----------------
Conclusion: If you think you're on drugs while reading the crap special issue, it is because the craziness is the point.
posted by runcifex at 2:08 AM on January 21, 2021 [3 favorites]
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posted by mr_roboto at 8:43 AM on January 19, 2021 [7 favorites]