[Merged]Peer-reviewed technical paper to appear in mainstream journal

[T.A.M.]

Originally Posted by enrique

Hello, I am new here. I have been trying to debate a friend of mine who saw LC and became convinced of the CT position. I can only debate with him some light issues, but when it comes to more complex stuff, I don't know what to say. I need to learn from you guys here.

I came across this link (which I can't post because the system is not allowing me to post a link) and wanted to get some comments about it. If ok with you guys.

Let me try this way: opednews.com / maxwrite / diarypage.php?did=7305

Apparently this article, which may be relevant was published on May 8.

I am overwhelmed by the amount of info out there and am stuck trying to explain to this CT friend of mine about peer reviews and all the scientific papers out there.

Enrique:

Welcome to the forum.

All you need can be found here...

http://wtc7lies.googlepages.com/home
http://www.911myths.com/

TAM

[CptColumbo]

Originally Posted by boloboffin

Your link: http://www.opednews.com/maxwrite/diarypage.php?did=7305

Nothing new there that I could see skimming through it except for this great takeaway:

Quote:

It is said "the pen is mightier than the sword"; it may also be said that a 6 page letter with 5 civilian authors published April 18, 2008 in the peer-reviewed Open Civil Engineering Journal at bentham.org is more compelling than a 10,000 page report from a government agency that had hundreds of people working on it.

The problem is that CTs are almost always more compelling, interesting and dramatic than the truth. I used to be interested in them (and still collect them) for exactly those reasons.

[CHF]

Originally Posted by R.Mackey

For what it's worth, I've had no further response from Dr. Jeng. So it stands where it was -- the publisher is operating without oversight, the publisher has no idea what he's doing, and the publisher has yet to provide the reviewers' comments (or even their names) to their own editor-in-chief.

I suppose I could turn up the heat and let their respective universities' steering committees know about this little tale of academic fraud, but I'm not sure we need to. We know what we wanted to know -- Dr. Jones got published because he found a disreputable journal, and his paper was never properly reviewed. Game, set, match, and he's still out a few hundred bucks.

If this happens again, though, the responsible parties have been duly reminded of their responsibility.

I wonder how many "journals" Jones looked into before settling on the one that he did. It must have taken some serious work and long hours to find one that would give him such a pass.

Speaking of which, didn't Jones say he would have TWO pieces reviewed?

[SpitfireIX]

Originally Posted by boloboffin

Your link: http://www.opednews.com/maxwrite/diarypage.php?did=7305

Nothing new there that I could see skimming through it except for this great takeaway:

Quote:

It is said "the pen is mightier than the sword"; it may also be said that a 6 page letter with 5 civilian authors published April 18, 2008 in the peer-reviewed Open Civil Engineering Journal at bentham.org is more compelling than a 10,000 page report from a government agency that had hundreds of people working on it.

[Panoply_Prefect]

Anything new from the correspondence with the Bentham editors?

[T.A.M.]

bump

[Orphia Nay]

Link to the latest instalment of the continuing saga of the nano/super/magic therm*te:

http://www.internationalskeptics.com...d.php?t=139293

[T.A.M.]

For those interested

I bumped this because it has a lot of detail concerning the less than stellar record of Bentham OA publishing, including their viral email scam to get editors for their boards.

TAM

[BenBurch]

You know, I bet that there is some real money in this "Vanity Science" thing.

If only I had no ethics!

[T.A.M.]

yes, apparently they have over 300 journals and IIRC they started them all at the same time. Some of the emails unqualified people recieved asking them to be editorial board members are just priceless.

TAM

[Panoply_Prefect]

Danish TV apparently reports on the latest paper by Jones et al (and the main reason is that a danish professor is among the co-writers):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BpwcfgUSl0Y

Earlier, a danish newspaper wrote about it as well. Links are here somewhere.

[ozeco41]

Just an old farts suggestion - maintain calm and keep it in perspective.

Even if Jones had personally salted the whole area with Thermate residues AND every scientist proved/supported/agreed it was thermate there is still NO WAY that thermate was used to assist by demolition to assist the forces naturally at play in the collapse that actually happened.

(Oops pause for breath do I rewrite that or simply apologise - sorry for that sentence folks - blame the Sauvignon Blanc I am testing )

Support for bold assertions available if required in more appropriate threads.

[Obviousman]

On another thread, this was said:

Originally Posted by T.A.M.

As for why people here haven't published their own rebuttal in the sham mag, well who has $600 to throw around on a rebuttal to a useless article, in a useless mag.

It is Jones' obsession, let him pay all he wants.

TAM

Although I quite understand, perhaps it's an option worth exploring. Surely we have someone / people here who can write a rebuttal paper? If so, I would certainly chip in to a fund meant to cover the publishing fee. I mean, we'd only need 30 people to put in US$20 each. Could we canvass members?

[T.A.M.]

Originally Posted by Obviousman

On another thread, this was said:



Although I quite understand, perhaps it's an option worth exploring. Surely we have someone / people here who can write a rebuttal paper? If so, I would certainly chip in to a fund meant to cover the publishing fee. I mean, we'd only need 30 people to put in US$20 each. Could we canvass members?

It certainly is an interesting idea. I believe something similar was done with one of the hardfire debates in order to get guests on.

I suspect Mackey & Sunstealer could, with Dr. Greening (a banned member, but a very good chemist I believe) must a decent rebuttal paper.

TAM

[Spud1k]

If people run with this, I'd suggest sending it to a more reputable journal as well.

[beachnut]

Random notes while moving computers and surfing for a steam bath shower, on a Tuesday afternoon, I'm just...

I found it funny that BYU ( http://www.physics.byu.edu/research/energy/ ) has Jones vanity papers listed in his retired section at the school. Advertising their chief nut on 911 issues. (or do they know someone did this???)

Now we can all be published and fool BYU. Does BYU know his papers are noted in his personal summary?

hardevidence@gmail.com The university posted Jones' email for comments. Can any one pick out his best papers?

The University has been spammed or they ignore Jones crazy ideas. Would you want the insane works of a retired prof posted on a university web site?

So tell the truth; who has published a vanity paper and reference it as a published work?

[Obviousman]

So, would someone like to run with this? I don't know what we'd have to do to set up an appropriate fund, how we arrange donations, etc.

The names suggested for the paper sound great.

Additionally, I would strongly agree that the paper be simultaneously submitted to a reputable journal.

[Lenbrazil]

More on Bentham

The following was adapted from a post on another forum. Unfortunately since I’m a newbie I can’t post links so I trucked them.

Truthers often cite this page from the publisher in response to questions raised about how serious Bentham is. They make comments like “The Internet Journal…is 'so' bad it even gets praise from Nobel Laureates...”

Quote:

Welcome to Bentham Open Access
BENTHAM OPEN are launching up to 200 peer-reviewed open access journals. These free-to-view online journals cover all major disciplines of science, technology, and medicine.


"Free open access to information is vital to scientific and socio-economic progress."
H. W. Kroto
(Nobel Laureate)

"Bentham's open access journals offer a creative avenue towards the goal of rapid publication and dissemination of relevant science results."
Richard R. Ernst
(Nobel Laureate)

"The advantage of the Open Journal series is that it is just that: open, and accessible to anyone with a PC at no charge I appeal to scholars across the disciplines to consider the Open Journal series as a forum for their work."
J.C. Jones
(University of Aberdeen, Scotland)

However since Kroto was speaking about open journals in general and not Bentham in particular they have the endorsement of "only" ONE Nobel laureate, Ernst. There is no citatition for the Ernst quote (nor the one for Kroto) and Google searches only turn up hits from Bentham's site or pages quoting it thus we no idea of the context and more importantly the date. These aren't trifling points as I will show several of Bentham open's critics are supporters of the open access (OA) movement and others have said it is a one reputable outfit that has gone into decline.


J.C. Jones' endorsement is a bit suspect because he is the editor-in-chief of one of their journals. I've seen no indication he particularly eminent. Besides being able to out the nifty title in his CV/bio he gets a cut of all fees paid for publication in "his" journal.

bentham.org/open/totherj/EBM.htm

Others' assessments of Bentham and especially Bentham Open are quite different. In contrast to the single unsourced endorsement, I was able to find 19 academics, university librarians and journalists from various countries and areas of expertise quite critical or at least suspicious of the publisher. Some question the validity of the peer review process. It seems that they are so 'committed to quality' they invite people to be editors or even editors-in-chief in areas they have no relevant expertise. Only Mackey's comment is from after the paper was published. [NOTE - If there is no link to quote it comes from the same page as the quote below.]



1] Gunther Eysenbach, MD MPH – Editor-in-Chief and publisher of the Journal of Medical Internet Research, Associate Professor at the Department of Health Policy, Management and Evaluation at the University of Toronto, a Senior Scientist at the Centre for Global eHealth Innovation in Toronto - March 2008


As a publisher and editor of the Journal of Medical Internet Research, a leading open access journal (and the #2 cited health informatics journal), I am (as many of my colleagues) usually very sympathetic to any new open access journal start-ups, and I know that some sort of marketing is necessary to attract submissions from top authors.


[…]


I fear that these practices of some black sheep among OA publishers will damage the reputation of OA journals at-large, so I decided - from now on - to publicly denounce any publishers (and others) engaging in this practice - in form of handing out a virtual spam award.

My first spam award goes to Bentham Publishers, a "publisher" of "over 200" author-pays open access journals. In the past couple of months I have received no less than 11 emails from Bentham, all mostly identical in text … "Open Bioinformatics Journal", "Open Ethics Journal", "Open Analytical Chemistry Journal" and so on - all of them sent to me "because of your eminence in the field" (wow, I didn't know I was so eminent in so many fields! …The bulk email "invites" me to submit articles and to pay for publication - "modest open access publication costs are usually covered by the author's institution or research funds.".

Buyers beware! There is a (limited) number of "serious" OA journals out there (such as PloS, JMIR, and others), where authors (or authors' institution) pay for the publication costs, but there are also throw-away journals out there from shady publishers trying to cash in on the current surge of interest in open access publishing.


Researchers who are in doubt about the reputation and scientific standing of a journal should check if the journal is Medline-indexed (none of the Bentham journals is actually Medline-indexed, although the spam emails suggest otherwise), and whether the journal receives any significant citations (check Web of Science or the Journal Citation Reports) before submitting to any Open Access journal.


gunther-eysenbach.blogspot.com/2008...s-journals.html



2] Ted Bergstrom (Chair Economics Department, UC Santa Barbara) April 2008


…I, too, have been curious about them. I looked at journalprices.com to check on whether Bentham has ISI-listed journals and how they are priced. Journalprices.com lists 14 Bentham journals, 12 are classified as "bad values" in terms of price per article and price per citation, and 2 as "medium values". It appears to me that they are an established publisher that has fallen into "bad hands".

Not only does Bentham spam for authors. They are also spamming for editors.

I have received unsolicited messages from Bentham inviting me to be an editor of the Open Journal of Education as well as the Open Journal of Economics. They also sent me an email inviting me to contribute an article to the Open Journal of Sleep.

I was particularly pleased with the following:

Based on your record of contributions in the field of Education, I would like to invite you to submit to me your CV with current list of publications so that we may consider you as a possible *Editorial Board Member* for the journal.

Since my record in the field of Education is nil, I feel particularly well-qualified. I have never written a thing in an Education journal. I don't know whether or not to be honored to be invited to contribute to the Open Journal of Sleep.

If you look at the web page of the "Open Journal Advisory Board" bentham.org/open/toeconsj/EBM.htm you will find something remarkable. There is a list of about 40 economists who are "members of the advisory board," all but one of whose last names start with the letters A-C and only one of whom I have ever heard of. I suppose these are the top of the list of people who responded to the spam letters. What an embarrassing list to have one's name on.


library.yale.edu/~llicense/ListArchives/0804/msg00027.html


3] Rose Orcutt, Senior Assistant Librarian, Science & Engineering Library State U. of NY, Buffalo Jan 2009


As an example of a model that requires close scrutiny, Bentham Science Publishers has recently inaugurated over 200 new "open access" journals. See the list of "Bentham Open" journals and view the very large editorial boards for each of the journals. Note that no institutional or professional affiliations are provided for the numerous members of each journal's editorial board. Peer review is promised but the process is vaguely articulated, including the ability of an author to suggest up to four peer reviewers.

The Ub Libraries embraces the Open Access concept and promise. We are dismayed by some emerging models and the harm they may present to Open Access initiatives. Of especial concern is the legitimacy of a publisher's peer review process. We urge faculty to closely examine the Open Access models of publishers you consider for publication of your work or service on an editorial board. If you have concerns about invitations from commercial publishers, their advertised costs and payments, or their purported "peer review" process, please contact your Subject Specialist Librarian.


libweb.lib.buffalo.edu/blog/faculty/?p=116


4] Chris Reed Distinguished Professor of Chemistry - University of California, Riverside, April 2006


I saw no mention of an ongoing parallel onslaught by Bentham. In the past month, I have received no less that three invitations to join the editorial boards of new Bentham journals -- "Current this", "Frontiers of that" -- none in areas of my real expertise.

The same old tactics are being used: exploiting a faculty weakness for seeing one's name in print, offering a career advance by having Editorial Board appointments on one's CV at promotion time, flattering authors with invitations to contribute papers in special issues, etc. All this effectively silences faculty from speaking out, or even caring about, the issues librarians understand so well. It is one of the reasons I am advocating that promotion policies at the University of California specify that appointments to the editorial boards of low quality, overpriced journals should count against promotion. The idea may not be so outrageous in five or ten years time… PS. In case you are wondering, yes, I did hit the delete key on those Bentham invitations.


listserv.indiana.edu/cgi-bin/wa-iub.exe?A2=ind0604&L=CHMINF-L&P=R10547&I=-3


5] Dr. David Goodman, Associate Professor, Library and Information Science, Long Island University and formerly Princeton University Library - April 2006


"Sometimes some faculty do not really care where they publish, as long as it counts as a referred publication. This is the reason for the existence of such journals [i.e. Bentham's]"


listserv.indiana.edu/cgi-bin/wa-iub.exe?A2=ind0604&L=CHMINF-L&D=0&I=-3&P=17269


6] Judith Currano. Head, Chemistry Library, University of Pennsylvania (U. Penn) April 2006


"One of my faculty members becomes apoplectic every time she sees the NAME Bentham. She thinks that they are a bunch of crooks, out for whatever they can get, and she has indicated that the quality of work in the journals leaves much to be desired. Of course, she is biased. However, the phrase, "We don't NEED any new journals!" did come up."


listserv.indiana.edu/cgi-bin/wa-iub.exe?A2=ind0604&L=CHMINF-L&D=0&I=-3&P=16402


7] Ken Friedman, Professor, Ph.D., Dr.Sci. (hc), FDRS, Dean, Swinburne Design, Swinburne University of Technology – Sept. 2008


Bentham's flavor of open access publishing is a for-profit venture, and it seems to me organized for profit rather than for scientific or scholarly contribution. The submission fees are too high as far as I am concerned, and I just don't see that Bentham has serious experience in scholarly or scientific publishing.

Few of these journals can have serious impact. Several Bentham journals appear be indexed only in Directory of Open Access Journals as well as Google and Google Scholar. DOAJ is a reference valuable tool, but it is not an index based on any factor other than the fact that a journal is available free on the web. And who on earth would claim articles are "indexed" in Google and Google Scholar? These are search engines, not indexes.

[…]

Elsevier, MIT Press, Berg, Oxford University Press, Intellect, and others publish serious journals in design, design research, and cognate fields, along with the independent publishers of specialized journals and journal hybrids. No need to waste time on journals that primarily exist to bring money into the companies that own them. My experience is that all journals need serious reviewers. It's also my experience that good reviewers are often invited to editorial boards.

8] Jeremy Hunsinger, Political Science, Center for Digital Discourse and Culture, Virginia Tech - Information Ethics Fellow, Center for Information Policy Research Sept. 2008


I agree with Ken, we should be wary of Bentham and similar efforts, like cgp and such.


nabble.com/Be-careful-with-Bentham-Open----it-an-odd-publishing-venture-td19446213.html


9] Lisa L. Wynn, Lecturer, Department of Anthropology, Macquarie University, Sydney –July 2008

Yesterday I got an e-mail from a company that seems to specialize in coming up with new open-access journals:

Dear Dr. Wynn,

In recognition of your outstanding reputation and contribution in the field of Demography ,we are pleased to propose your name as the Editor-in-Chief of 'The Open Demography Journal'.

[…]

… we will pay you annual royalty of 5% of all fees received on these manuscripts.

[…]

Perhaps I would be more inclined to take the funding model seriously if it weren't obviously spam. Not only am I not a demographer, I've only ever published one article in a demography journal (which I assume is where they got my name). I'm about the furthest thing from "eminence in the field." What's uncanny is that just last month I also got invited to be the editor-in-chief of a new medical journal devoted to women's health. (Ditto as with the demography business: I'm not a physician, though I do publish in medical journals and write about reproductive health policy.)

[…]

What I want to know is why I get invited to be the editor in chief of obscure medical and demography journals, and not of obscure anthropology journals!!

10] Maximilian Forte, Associate Professor, Anthropology at Concordia University, Montreal July 2008


"There is also an "Open Anthropology" journal, which I only discovered after I named my blog Open Anthropology as well. It's pretty embarrassing actually."


11] Bruria Funkenstein, Senior Scientist, National Institute of Oceanography, Israel – July 2008


"I am also receiving from time to time similar invitations from Bentham.
The last one I received today is from the open journal of Anatomy.
I am a fish Endocrinologist and certainly do not have any "eminent contributions in the field of Anatomy""

culturematters.wordpress.com/2008/07/04/a-new-model-for-open-access-the-pyramid-scheme/


12] Ben Wagner, Associate Librarian, Science & Engineering Library State U. of NY, Buffalo

"A search of Worldcat for Bentham serials publications is revealing, 92 serials ranging from 41 libraries for Current Medicinal Chemistry (if one does not count an annual index held by 131 libraries) down to 1 library for Current Alheimer Research. 68 of the Bentham serials are held by less than 10 libraries. Scary isn't it.

I have no ill will towards Bentham, but one wonders why anyone would publish in a journal held by less than 10 Worldcat libraries."

listserv.indiana.edu/cgi-bin/wa-iub...=-3&P=16890


13] Charles Oppenheim, professor of information science Loughborough University, March or April 2008


"Bentham once enjoyed a reputation as a high-priced reputable scholarly publisher. In my view, it has damaged that reputation by the flood of emails it has sent inviting people to join the editorial board of, or contribute to, new OA journals it has launched. Not merely are the emails sometimes misaddressed, but when the publisher has been emailed by the recipient with queries, the publisher rarely replies. Bentham has made a mistake by launching so many OA journals and by bombarding scholars with email invitations."

14] Richard Poynder – Freelance journalist and blogger covering the OA movement – April 2008

After the first flush of enthusiasm, however, researchers began to question Bentham's activities, not least because many of the invitations they were receiving seemed decidedly badly targeted. For instance, psychologists were being invited to contribute papers on ornithology, health policy researchers were being invited to submit papers on analytical chemistry and economists were being invited to submit papers on sleep research or, even more oddly, invited to join the editorial board of educational journals. This inevitably raised concerns about the likely quality of the new journals, particularly as researchers were being asked to pay from $600 to $900 a time for the privilege of being published in them.

poynder.blogspot.com/2008/04/open-access-interviews-matthew-honan.html

15] Petr Karlovsky, PhD, Karlovsky Lab, Department of Molecular Phytopathology, University of Goettingen, Germany.

To me, the number of OA journals launched by Bentham and their spam advertisement do no leave a good impression. Listing in Google and Google scholar is not of much relevance, one would need to check ISI (needed to get an impact factor) and Pubmed (MEDLINE). I have not bothered to check their 200+ journals but the few I checked are not listed anywhere. OA publishing is a way of earning money, too.


daniel-lemire.com/blog/archives/2008/03/05/spam-journals-or-open-journals/


16] Kieran Healy - Associate Prof. Of Sociology, Duke; Fellow, Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, Stanford

This sort of scam is in the same family tree as entries in random prestigious (hem hem) Who’s Who databases/books, and those conferences in Hawaii and Florida designed to allow you to have a personal holiday using your research budget.

17] Jeremy Freese - Professor, Department of Sociology and Institute for Policy Research, Northwestern University

I’ve wondered about these e-mails I’ve gotten asking me to submit to or serve on the editorial board of “Open Access” journals, including for fields to which I have only very indirect connection.

18] “Anomie” blogger and PhD CANDIDATE [LOL –It seems they were so desperate they even spammed people who don’t have their doctorates yet. -Len]

I’ve been getting those emails, too! Each paragraph was in a different font. I dismissed them as spam.

//scatter.wordpress.com/2008/07/15/just-get-us-ten-papers-and-their-fees-well-do-the-rest/

I also included Ryan’s comments which don’t need to be repeated here. I didn’t include a part of Dr. Wynn’s post [#9 above] where she included the following excerpt from the e-mail they sent her.

“…your role as the Editor-in-Chief will not be an onerous one. You will not be expected to process any submitted manuscripts to the journal nor referee them (unless you choose to do so). What we would expect from you is that you would arrange to solicit and submit a minimum of ten manuscripts to the journal each year.”

That corresponds with Ryan’s discovery that Mr. Alam from the company’s Pakistan office rather than Dr. Jeng, the Editor-in Chief of the Open Civil Engineering Journal, was handling the journal’s peer review process. It seems to be a company wide practice.

Speaking of which last Saturday I e-mailed the E-in-C of the Open Chemical Physics Journal, Marie-Paule Pileni, who seems to be a big deal and a nanochemist. I asked her if she chose the refrees or even knew who they were, I’ve yet to get a reply. Perhaps if one of you science types tried she would feel more compelled to respond.

This part of Bentham’s letter to Dr. Wynn was also quite revealing “You would also be free to invite new editorial board members to the journal who wish to take an active editorial role.”

In other words most or at least many of the board members were chosen before the editor-in-chief. I have no experience with new publications but I imagine the standard practice would be for the E-in-C to been chosen first and them for him or her to choose the other members.

[Spud1k]

Originally Posted by Lenbrazil

I also included Ryan’s comments which don’t need to be repeated here. I didn’t include a part of Dr. Wynn’s post [#9 above] where she included the following excerpt from the e-mail they sent her.

“…your role as the Editor-in-Chief will not be an onerous one. You will not be expected to process any submitted manuscripts to the journal nor referee them (unless you choose to do so). What we would expect from you is that you would arrange to solicit and submit a minimum of ten manuscripts to the journal each year.”

That corresponds with Ryan’s discovery that Mr. Alam from the company’s Pakistan office rather than Dr. Jeng, the Editor-in Chief of the Open Civil Engineering Journal, was handling the journal’s peer review process. It seems to be a company wide practice.

Speaking of which last Saturday I e-mailed the E-in-C of the Open Chemical Physics Journal, Marie-Paule Pileni, who seems to be a big deal and a nanochemist. I asked her if she chose the refrees or even knew who they were, I’ve yet to get a reply. Perhaps if one of you science types tried she would feel more compelled to respond.

This part of Bentham’s letter to Dr. Wynn was also quite revealing “You would also be free to invite new editorial board members to the journal who wish to take an active editorial role.”

In other words most or at least many of the board members were chosen before the editor-in-chief. I have no experience with new publications but I imagine the standard practice would be for the E-in-C to been chosen first and them for him or her to choose the other members.

Most definitely. My OA journal of choice (ACP) had its executive editors in place from day one who oversaw its formative period. Also, rather crucially, it was produced by a very influential learned society (the EGU) and they took a very keen interest in maintaining quality right from the start. As a result, its impact rating shot up very quickly over only a few short years. Benthem, on the other hand, has apparently drawn up a list of subjects that might make for good OA journal topics and proceed to try to start each one up from nothing, resorting to spam to recruit editorial staff. I guess they're hoping that one or two might strike it lucky and gain a reputation and they can subsequently cash in.

But as was mentioned in one of the things you cited, the reason they are unlikely to be taken seriously in academic circles is the lack of indexing by the likes of Thompson ISI or Medline; when calculating metrics of academic performance, papers in non-indexed journals typically count for nothing and get avoided. The big indexers will only include journals that meet their editorial quality standards, so while Benthem are resorting to such lax practices to push out papers, they're only going to attract the ones that aren't good enough to go elsewhere.

[T.A.M.]

Great post Lenbrazil.

TAM

[ElMondoHummus]

Thank you, Lenbrazil! Excellent information to have! It's good to know what librarians - the very people responsible for maintaining awareness of such journals - and researchers themselves think about Bentham.

[FactCheck]

Lenbrazil, so basically you're saying that journal is like a wiki journal. Is that a fair description?

[ElMondoHummus]

Originally Posted by FactCheck

Lenbrazil, so basically you're saying that journal is like a wiki journal. Is that a fare description?

"Fare" description? Given that people have to pay to publish, is that a joke?



ETA: Ah, boo! You typo-corrected! Booooo!

[GodisEnergy]

what peer reviewed paper do you not have to pay for lol

[GodisEnergy]

here ill pay 800 dollars if you send in your debunking paper to bentham and get in peer reviewed.

but bet you wont because for a start you cannot debunk nanothermite.You have no argument against it whatsoever, your stupid paint theory is the stupidest thing ive ever heard of in my life.The stuff is more energetic than rdx, and its nanoscaled!
lollolololololololollololol
Secondly some of you are definately working for the government on the payroll because noone with a concious could continue lieing about the events of 911.

[dtugg]

Originally Posted by GodisEnergy

Secondly some of you are definately working for the government on the payroll because noone with a concious could continue lieing about the events of 911.

The pay is extremely good, what can I say. We also get to be guards at the FEMA camps where we are going to keep all the twoofers (that means you GiE) when they are put into operation (about a year from now). It will be fun!

I might be joking. I could also be bluffing. Or double bluffing. You never know!

[GodisEnergy]

lol at least your the only honest one here dtugg

[jhunter1163]

GiE, post 527 contains a link to all the debunking of thermite that you could ask for. You don't even have to read the whole thread. Just read Sunstealer's posts.

[T.A.M.]

Originally Posted by GodisEnergy

what peer reviewed paper do you not have to pay for lol

you are not really this stupid right? That is an honest question? They are referring to "pay to publish" of which most are Open Access. Most reputable Journals are not "Pay to Publish" The author does not PAY to have his article published, but rather it is accepted based on its merits alone.

If your comment was meant as some form of humor...it failed.

TAM

[T.A.M.]

Originally Posted by GodisEnergy

Secondly some of you are definately working for the government on the payroll because noone with a concious could continue lieing about the events of 911.

Ah between you and Kreel (you guys should do lunch at the local "wellness" center) the paranoia is rich.

I love how much ir rots the socks of truthers that ordinary people would have issues and argue against their nonsense. So much so it makes truthers either (A) so paranoid as to think that, or (B) so annoyed as to falsely accuse, others here of working for the govt, and being on the "Payroll".

TAM

[twinstead]

Oh for crying out loud, anybody who dares disagree is a paid disinfo agent. I always LOVE that. They can't call us stupid, because most if not all of the arguments against the truthers make sense and are rational. Their only recourse is to claim that we are professional debunkers, to claim that we have some kind of coaching and training--that's why we are able to make it 'appear' that we are debunking the conspiracy theory.

The best thing is that many truthers would consider spittle-spewing irrationals like Godisenergy and others are themselves paid disinfo agents sent to discredit the truth movement and make them look like fools.

It's funny. it's pathetic. It's sad. It ROCKS!

[timhau]

Originally Posted by T.A.M.

They are referring to "pay to publish" of which most are Open Access. Most reputable Journals are not "Pay to Publish" The author does not PAY to have his article published, but rather it is accepted based on its merits alone.

Let's make a difference between 'pay to publish' journals and journals that assess (usually voluntary) 'page charges' to partly cover the costs of printing. The former are vanity presses. As for the latter, I'll just do some sciencey-looking stuff and quote:

Originally Posted by Kligfield 2005, 296

Page charges? Many current medical journals do not
assess page charges, but some do, including the Journal of
Electrocardiology. The uninitiated might be excused for
confusing "page charges" with "vanity publishing", but
these charges have played an important role in supporting
the scientific and medical literature. Publication charges to
authors are rooted in the 1960s, in a government-sponsored
initiative to increase the ability of not-for-profit scientific
publishing to keep up with the explosion of funded
research productivity.

Reference:
Kligfield, P., 2005. Rethinking page charges. J. of Electrocardiology 38, 296-8.

The entire editorial is available through ScienceDirect; it is followed by a response from the publisher, from which the following is an excerpt:

Quote:

We also understand that
page charges are a deterrent to authors in developing countries who utilize electrocardiologic
techniques in the absence of other, more expensive technologies. Please be assured that
inability to pay page charges in no way affects the editorial decision to accept or reject a
paper for publication. As publishers we find page charges to be the least desirable source of
funding; however, given the economics of this subspecialty journal, page charges are
essential in order to get this important content to readers.

In other words, they're not trying to make money with page charges; they're just trying to keep a small-circulation journal running. I wonder if Bentham can say the same.

Disclaimer: I know nothing about the Journal of Electrocardiology; it's not even remotely connected to anything in which I could claim some level of expertise. Kligfield's editorial is just something that came up in a quick google search on 'page charges'. I do not know whether it is a high-quality journal or not; it is published by Elsevier, so there is a pretty darn big name behind it.

[Spud1k]

Some journals levy page charges, some don't, and this applies to journals of all shapes and sizes. OA journals in general have to, because they can't pay for publishing through subscriptions. The thing that decides their credibility in academic circles is the editorial standards, which is Benthem's problem.

[Lenbrazil]

Originally Posted by Spud1k

Some journals levy page charges, some don't, and this applies to journals of all shapes and sizes. OA journals in general have to, because they can't pay for publishing through subscriptions. The thing that decides their credibility in academic circles is the editorial standards, which is Benthem's problem.

I noticed a few other differences between ACP which you linked to earlier and Bentham. The former:

- makes referee comments public

- some of the referees are named

It makes sense that serious open journals which charge for publication would adopt open peer review to (among other reasons) remove any hint of vanity publishing, that would go especially for for profit ventures like Bentham.

It is interesting to note that charges are roughly compatible but ACP

- actually prints copies, which isn't cheap especially if done in Europe

- pays the referees which I imagine isn't cheap. Their charges are about 3x what I would charge to review the English of such a paper (if the author had decent English) and the papers have 3 - 4 referees who are PhD's living in Europe (I only have a BA and live in the 3rd world

Bentham is actually based in the United Arab Emirates but most the work is done in Pakistan to cut expenses. So what justifies their fee other than the vanity (or agenda) of the authors?

The UAE is of course a country with just about zero academic tradition. The first post secondary school there (a university) didn't open till 1977.

education.stateuniversity.com/pages/1610/United-Arab-Emirates-HIGHER-EDUCATION.html

[volatile]

Originally Posted by GodisEnergy

what peer reviewed paper do you not have to pay for lol

LOL? Really?

[timhau]

Yes, LOL, although the difference between laughing with someone and at someone is of some importance here.

[Spud1k]

Originally Posted by Lenbrazil

I noticed a few other differences between ACP which you linked to earlier and Bentham. The former:

- makes referee comments public

- some of the referees are named

It makes sense that serious open journals which charge for publication would adopt open peer review to (among other reasons) remove any hint of vanity publishing, that would go especially for for profit ventures like Bentham.

It is interesting to note that charges are roughly compatible but ACP

- actually prints copies, which isn't cheap especially if done in Europe

- pays the referees which I imagine isn't cheap. Their charges are about 3x what I would charge to review the English of such a paper (if the author had decent English) and the papers have 3 - 4 referees who are PhD's living in Europe (I only have a BA and live in the 3rd world

Bentham is actually based in the United Arab Emirates but most the work is done in Pakistan to cut expenses. So what justifies their fee other than the vanity (or agenda) of the authors?

The UAE is of course a country with just about zero academic tradition. The first post secondary school there (a university) didn't open till 1977.

education.stateuniversity.com/pages/1610/United-Arab-Emirates-HIGHER-EDUCATION.html

The open peer review system is something fairly unique, even among OA journals, but it does work very well, helping to make it all a lot more transparent and accountable. They don't actually pay the referees (at least, they've never paid me anything to review stuff there...) but even so, producing a quality journal costs money and it has to come from somewhere.

I guess the point I'm trying to stress is that paying to have something published doesn't in itself make it a vanity publication. But that doesn't stop the Benthem journals being utterly rubbish. If someone does publish a debunking paper, putting it in a more credible journal would very effectively trump Jones and co. That and I'd be loathed to give any money to that cowboy outfit, if this is the standard of work they're willing to disseminate.

[Lenbrazil]

Originally Posted by Spud1k

The open peer review system is something fairly unique, even among OA journals, but it does work very well, helping to make it all a lot more transparent and accountable..

Bentham has starnge cross between open and annonymous peer review. The editors and readership don't know who the referees were but the authors do.

Quote:

They don't actually pay the referees (at least, they've never paid me anything to review stuff there...) but even so, producing a quality journal costs money and it has to come from somewhere.

They made reference to the 'cost of peer-review' (not an exact quote) what costs are there if they don't pay the referees?

Quote:

I guess the point I'm trying to stress is that paying to have something published doesn't in itself make it a vanity publication. But that doesn't stop the Benthem journals being utterly rubbish.

I guess several 'debunkers', myself included, were too quick to judge open access publishing but Bentham raises a few black flags including that it is a for profit venture and a rather obscure one at that, add in the information in my post below and their spamming and the doubts raised by academics about it and Ryan Mackay's discovery Jones previous paper there was published without the forknowledge of the editor and the resignation of Dr. Pileni etc etc etcand the whole mess stinks incrediblly of a company far more preoccupied with profit than any kinds of standards.

[Lenbrazil]

As if further evidence were needed that the "peer review" process at Bentham Open is completely irregular I took a look at the Open Chemical Physics Journal's (OCPJ) submissions page. Pay attention to the e-mail addresses in this excerpt:

Quote:

A successful electronic submission of a manuscript will be followed by a system-generated acknowledgement to the principal/corresponding author within 72 hours of the dispatch of the manuscript. Any questions with regards to the preparation of and submission of your manuscript to the journal should be addressed to tocpj@benthamopen.org and copied to shehzad@benthamscience.org

NOTE: Any queries therein should be addressed to oa@bentham.org and copied to Jalil@bentham.org

http://www.bentham.org/open/tocpj/MSandI.htm

oa@bentham.org

"oa" as in "Open Access" thus authors' inquires about the peer review of their manuscripts are processed by a central office

shehzad@benthamscience.org / Jalil@bentham.org

The same three e-mails are listed on the submission pages for 9 other Bentham Open "journals" such as ones covering: Addiction, Numerical Methods and Urban Studies.

http://www.google.com.br/search?q=%2...pt-BR&filter=0

Bentham's HQ is in the UAE but much (most?) of the work is done in Pakistan*. Except for one from Bangladesh (formerly part of Pakistan) all the people named "Shehzad" I found on Google were Pakistanis. The name Jalil is common through out the Islamic world. None of the editorial board members are from southwestern or south central Asia or Muslim countries.

http://www.aardvarknet.info/access/n...m?monthnews=11

The only one with 's' as their first initial is "S Zhou" from China, "shehzad zhou" generated zero hits on Google. The few who have 's' as their 2nd or 3rd initial or the initial 'j' live in Spain, Australia, the US, Germany, Singapore or Sweden and don't have last names indicating their are of south-central Asian/Muslim descent.

And just in case you were wondering none of the OCPJ editorial board members discussed above are also members of the editorial boards of the Bentham Open 'Journals' of Addiction, Numerical Methods or Urban Studies.

Although there is no mention of Mr. Shehzad the most recent submissions page of the OCPJ on the Internet Archive, from January 2008 also instructed authors "Any queries therein should be addressed to oa@bentham.org and copied to Jalil@bentham.org", the same instructions also appear on the current and most recent archived copies of the Bentham Open Civil Engineering Journal submission pages. Authors are currently instructed "your manuscript to the journal should be addressed to tociej@benthamopen.org and copied to ambreenirshad@benthamscience.org" Like Mr. Shehzad, Ms. Irshad also handles 11 Bentham Open "journals" on a diverse range of subjects in addition to civil engineering: Sports Sciences, Fuel Cells and Parasitology among others.

http://www.bentham.org/open/tociej/MSandI.htm
http://web.archive.org/web/200709181...iej/MSandI.htm
http://www.google.com/search?q="and+copied+to+ambreenirshad@benthamscien ce.org"&hl=en&rlz=1C1GGLS_enBR325&start=0&sa=N&fil ter=0

To make a long story short not only is the peer review process of Bentham Open's "journals" run by the commercial publisher rather than the respective editorial boards but

1) This should be apparent to anyone who submits to them especially someone like Dr. Jones who submitted to two different publications.

2) The staff who do this do NOT specialize to particular branches of science and thus have no way of being able to select competent reviewers. What makes this especially suspicous is that authors are encouraged to recomend referees. Though this is common even among serious publication normally with expertise in the subject makes the selection. Though Jones claimed "editors choose the referees and usually pick at least one or two reviewers that the authors did NOT mention -- and that is almost certainly the case with this paper" Harritt indicated to the Danish magazine he "know(s) the names of the two researchers –so-called referees—who have reviewed he article".Assuming there was a slight translation* or paraphrasig error and he meant he 'knows the names of two of the researchers' Harrit et.al. knew two of the 3 - 4 referees, then again Jones might have lied
Jones however claimed that "In the end, all the reviewers -- who were selected by the editor(s) -- approved publication. Thus, the paper was subjected to peer review by the editor or editors, and it passed the peer-review process."* But the reviewers were almost certainly chosen by the publisher not any editors and Jones almost certainly knows this especially after his exchange correspondence with Ryan Mackay and Mahmood Alam from Bentham over the peer review process for the "14 Points" 'paper' published by the Open Civil Engineering Journal. In other words Jones seems lied.

http://911blogger.com/node/19780

* Can any of the Danes out there double check the translation of this phrase?

[Lenbrazil]

"Impact factor provides nowadays the main quantitative tool for ranking, evaluating, categorizing, and comparing journals" A journal's IF "is defined as the ratio between citations and recent (previous two years) citable items published or, in other words, as the average number of citations in a given year of articles published in that journal in the preceding two years" [1] Thus if a journal published 100 citable articles in 2007-8 and they were cited 500 times it would have an IF of 5.0 if they were cited 20 times its IF would be 0.2. In 2004 the two top journals Nature and Science had IFs 14 - 16 the average journal's score is 0.88 [2]. IFs are calculated by ISI a division of Reuters

http://us.geocities.com/iipopescu/Jo_rankingb.htm
http://us.geocities.com/iipopescu/Jo...htm#references

What then is the IF of the Open Chemical Physics Journal (OCPJ)? Since its 1st issue came out in 2008 it won't be ranked by ISI till 2010. A Google Scholar (GS) search returned 11 results with a single citation which gives it an abysmally low Google IF of 0.09, even if we don't count the single indexed 2009 paper, because it is so recent, the GS-IF would be 0.1 but even that is a bit of an over count. The paper was written by "L Yu, JL Ding, B Ho, SS Feng, T Wohland" it was cited in a paper by "Lanlan Yu, Lin Guo, Jeak Ling Ding, Bow Ho, Si-shen Feng, Jonathan Popplewell, Marcus Swann and Thorsten Wohland" i.e. the authors cited themselves. Although self citation is rather common even in legitimate academic publications GS has not found any cases of anyone (other than the authors themselves) citing the OCPJ (or the other Bentham journal Jones published in- see below)

http://scholar.google.com/scholar?nu...09&btnG=Search

But Google only counts papers that are online and it's quite possible they miss some online publications on the other hand they might count publications ISA doesn't and ISI's methodology is complex, thus ISI - IF and GS -IF aren't comparable, so how does the OCPJ compare to the leading journals in the field?

A GS search for Chemical Physics (Elsevier) just for the year 2008 returned 878 results. To get a rough average I counted the citations of the 1st, middle (5th) and last (9th) pages of results.

1st: 100 papers 35 of which were cited 84 times
5th (middle): 100 papers 5 of which were cited 23 times
9th (last): 78 papers 25 of which were cited 45 times
Total: 278 papers 65 of which were cited 152 times. 23% of papers cited, approximate IF 0.55, the self citation rate was very close to 50%.

http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Elsevier+-"chemical+physics+letters"&num=100&hl=en&lr=&as_pu blication=chemical+physics&as_ylo=2008&as_yhi=2008 &start=0&sa=N

A similar search for the Journal of Chemical Physics (Am. Inst. of Physics) returned 713 results but many of them were for "Citations" or cited articles not online, though by definition they have at least 1 online citation each, the citations are not counted, I counted them as 1 citation even though most presumably had more.

1st: 100 papers 95 of which were cited at least 97 times
4th (middle): 100 papers 73 of which were cited at least 80 times
8th (last): 11 papers 4 of which were cited 5 times
Total: 211 papers 172 of which were cited at least 182 times. 82% of papers cited, IF > 0.86 (probably over 1.0) the self citation rate was about 65%.

It should be noted that since the 2008 edition of the OCPJ came out February 14 of that year thus its papers have all been available for 15 months or more, CP and the JoCP were published through out the year and their papers have been available on average for 10 months and have had less time to be cited.

http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://...penaccess2.htm

In 2008 Kevin Ryan Dr. Jones and some of the other co-authors "published" a "peer-reviewed" paper in another Bentham publication, the Open Civil Engineering Journal. GS located 20 papers published there 2007 - 8. The only one cited was the Jones paper but neither of the two were peer reviewed of from scholarly publications. The 1st was our own Ryan Mackay's refutal of David Ray Griffin that appeared on several debunking sites and the other was a self published article (i.e. in the JO9/11S) by the Kevin Ryan the lead author of the original paper.

http://scholar.google.com/scholar?nu...08&btnG=Search


And what of the rest of Bentham Open's engineering, chemistry and physics journals? GS located 193 papers published in them in 2008 only 13 were cited 17 times the self citation rate was 65%. But even counting the them the collective G-IF comes out to 0.08, looking only at the chemistry and physics journals the G-IF comes out to 0.06 with a 83% self-citation rate.

Other than complaining about being spamed the scientific community has ignored Bentham Open. Truthers seem to think it is a prominent publisher but it is the scholarly equivalent of the proverbial unheard tree that fell in the forest.