I promised that I would post about my speech topics, and I mean I love my speeches, but they aren't always that exciting to read (I promise my enthusiastic delivery and charming smile make them super fun to listen to) so I am posting them, with a few modifications. If they sound weird, remember that they were originally written for speaking in a very specific format of speeches not reading. Here we go!
Mark Shrime is, a renowned ear, nose and throat doctor and a medical researcher at Harvard University, like many other medical professionals, bombarded with emails requesting him as a “peer reviewer” or suggesting he submit his research to such and such journal. The emails of course are annoying, but they also inspired a concern in Mark, what was the goal of all these “Journals” and were they actually the credible sources they claimed to be? Shrime’s solution? He had a random text generator create a scientific looking article by Pinkerton LeBrain and Orson G. Welles titled “Cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs? The surgical and neoplastic role of cacao extract in breakfast cereals.” The fake article contained sentences like; “For who thoroughly her boy estimating conviction. Removed demands expense account in outward tedious do.” Sounds pretty scientific right? On January 27th, 2015 World Net Daily reported that he submitted the fake article to 37 different journals. It was accepted to 17 of them (Yes that rounds to 50%, which is a lot!), and all he had to do to get it published was pay the $500 processing fee. And as it turns out, Mark Shrime is only one of many scholars to take note of a growing problem: predatory and fraudulent academic journals.
Academic, peer reviewed, sources are our world’s most trusted source for sharing and gathering knowledge. They are the backbone of our scholarly world, providing a platform for the communication and recording of academic findings. A corruption of these sources decreases the integrity of all knowledge. This is the part of my speech where I tell you about how I'm going to tell you about problems causes and solutions. It's a weird format thing specific to this type of speech. So sit back and read all about how these money driven companies are ruining our academic literature.
Readers (Hey that's pretty much everyone!) are largely unaware of the scope and significance of the problem of predatory and fraudulent journals. According to Retraction watch.com on August 19, 2015, 250 articles have been retracted from peer reviewed journals in the past few years alone. The article further explains that it is commonplace for authors to submit suggested reviewers for their papers. Taking advantage of this situation many authors submit fake email addresses, that then allow the author to “review” his or her own work. (Yeah, because we are all sooooo good at critiquing ourselves and everyone out there is super honest and trustworthy right?) Furthermore Sources continue to be used after retraction. In fact On January 11th, of 2016 mirasmart reported that one source that was reacted in 2007 was cited 247 times before retraction and 776 times after retraction. As students, we are all taught to “check our sources” and make sure they are trustworthy, but when was the last time you opened up a Google scholar article from a peer reviewed journal and thought, mmm not sure if I can trust it? The answer is most likely never. (If you even looked to see if it's peer reviewed because when it's three in the morning an your paper is do at 9 do you really care?)
Authors (Okay, this isn't everyone but it's still important!) need to be aware of the very real threat that pay journals pose to their academic work. On March 1st, 2016 retraction watch.com (Incase you haven't noticed retraction watch has a lot of information on this subject and is really cool! Check them out!) reported that an entire paper calming to be authored by Dr. Feng Lu of Henan University Medical School is being retracted from the Chinese Medical Journal because the paper was entirely plagiarized. The actual research and paper writing occurred at the University of Connecticut by Dr. Lawrence Rothfield. This means, that a person can pay to have someone else’s work published in their own name. Not only can we not trust the work we read in scholarly journals, but our own, legitimate work, is not safe. (Duuuuude. Not. Cool.)
You still hanging in there people reading this? Alright cool, lets go learn why this awful thing is happening okay?
One of the leading causes of predatory and fraudulent academic publishing stems from the fact that academic journals are for profit businesses.(SHOCKER! People do corrupt things for money? No way!) According to NPR on October 4th, 2013 they make more money when they publish more frequently. So it is in the publishing companies best interest to publish more articles instead of rejecting them. Especially, when they require that authors submit hundreds of dollar processing fees. The incentive is for corruption, not for spreading knowledge.
These journals also persist because of the intense pressure put on academics to publish. Publishing is a focus at most colleges and universities, because it draws attention to the schools which often brings in more students and more money. According to the US National Library of Medicine (Yes, this is a reputable journal) on Feburary 19, 2014, universities often use the frequency of an individual’s publications to measure a faculty member’s scholarly competency. This fact combined with the problem that many fraudulent journals have legitimate sounding names like the “International Journal on Research Methodologies in Physics and Chemistry” (That's a mouthful to say just incase you're curious) means that authors have an incentive to publish in them without seriously investigating their legitimacy. (Busy professors don't have time to grade, much less research a billion journals)
Fraudulent journals are cheaper and easier to access than most legitimate journals, which now tend to sit behind pay walls. (Again corrupt people, doing corrupt things, for money??) According to The Atlantic on April 23, 2012 Harvard University Library spends 3.75 million dollars a year on academic journals, with one journal alone, costing $40,000. In fact according to The Gaurdian on August 29th, 2011, in order to read a single article published by the popular group, Wiley-Blackwell, it will cost you $42 (That's four bottles of cheep wine and about 21 chocolate bars). As frequent consumers of academic journals, college students have a vested interest in the cost of journals (Because we like wine and chocolate) Even though, most colleges subscribe to these journals and an individual student may be able to find a way around the pay wall, it is unlikely they will bother trying, with free, more easily available, seemingly legitimate information at their fingertips.
"Wow Lacie, this problem is super awful!" "I know imaginary blog reader!""How do we fix it!?" "I'm so glad you asked blog reader!"
Well, according to the Washington Post July 8th, 2015, the problem of unethical academic publishing is an international issue. There are academics using and publishing in predatory journals throughout the world (basically, there are awful people everywhere. EVEN here in America, crazy right?), and this means that a legal solution to this problem is impossible. Unfortunately it also means that in order to see changes, we as individuals hold the majority of the responsibility. The good news is that there is a lot an individual can do to help solve this problem. (YAY!)
We can start by working to increase awareness of the issue since knowledge about the problem is a key to solving it. (hence the blog post and speech giving) As students attending colleges and universities, we are immersed in this problem every day, and this gives us the power to really make a difference. (I realize you aren't all students, but you can all help!) The biggest thing that I can ask you as an individual to do is to really look into your sources when you are writing papers, or speeches, or you know? Facebook posts? Blog posts? Tweets? Basically anytime you run your mouth. According to the Winter 2013 Journal of Information Ethics (Also a very reputable journal) , one step we should all take is to check the journals’ addresses and the staff on their editorial boards for suspicious activity. These little things can help weed out the false information which will make the world of academic literature as credible as it once was. Many journals such as “The International Journal of Research Methodologies in Physics and Chemistry” appear legitimate but are easily exposed as fake by a quick check of their address. According to this journal’s website last accessed March 23rd, 2016 their address is listed as “Behind the Bank”. (Because that's really specific and totally not shady at all)
Jeffery Beall, a faculty librarian at the University of Colorado in Denver (He's super cool and does a ton of research not his subject!), has compiled a list of suspicious academic journals. He updates it regularly but as of February 1st, 2016 the list had 926 journals on it. A simple search on this list can expose published articles that maybe should not be considered in faculty evaluations. An honest discussion about the differences between “pay” journals and legitimate “peer reviewed” scholarship can reduce the incentive for academics to publish in these predatory and fraudulent journals.
The purpose of scholarly research is to add to our collective knowledge and insight about the world. Academic articles that are filled with sentences like “In an intention dependent on questions on elsewhere, we betrayed possible jointure in throwing cocoa” do not add to our collective knowledge. It is clear that when space in journals is for “sale” these types of problems will persist. So let’s save the coco puffs for breakfast, and fill our scholarly journals with legitimate, peer-reviewed scholarship.
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