DOCSLIB.ORG

PREVALENCE of POTENTIALLY PREDATORY PUBLISHING in SCOPUS on the COUNTRY LEVEL 1 Prevalence of Potentially Predatory Publishing in Scopus on the Country Level

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
PREVALENCE of POTENTIALLY PREDATORY PUBLISHING in SCOPUS on the COUNTRY LEVEL 1 Prevalence of Potentially Predatory Publishing in Scopus on the Country Level PREVALENCE OF POTENTIALLY PREDATORY PUBLISHING IN SCOPUS ON THE COUNTRY LEVEL 1 Prevalence of Potentially Predatory Publishing in Scopus on the Country Level Tatiana Savinay∗ Ivan Sterligovy y National Research University Higher School of Economics, Moscow, Russia ∗Russian Foundation for Basic Research, Moscow, Russia. [email protected] [email protected] F Abstract—We present results of a large-scale study of po- of various degree of competence as well as by tentially predatory journals (PPJ) represented in the Scopus researchers themselves [Leydesdorff et al., 2016]. database, which is widely used for research evaluation. Both In short, research evaluation has become substan- journal metrics and country/disciplinary data have been evalu- tially more formalized relying on various indicators, ated for different groups of PPJ: those listed by Jeffrey Beall which are mostly based on publication and citation and those discontinued by Scopus because of “publication con- counts. This metrics explosion is partially attributed cerns”. Our results show that even after years of discontinuing, hundreds of active potentially predatory journals are still highly to the priorities of many nations and organizations visible in the Scopus database. PPJ papers are continuously to reproduce the success of world leaders in science produced by all major countries, but with different prevalence. and technology. Most ASJC (All Science Journal Classification) subject areas In this paper, we provide a bird’s eye view of the are affected. The largest number of PPJ papers are in engineer- growth of articles in potentially predatory journals ing and medicine. On average, PPJ have much lower citation (PPJ), a global phenomenon stemming from both metrics than other Scopus-indexed journals. We conclude with a the evaluation/metrics culture and globalization. survey of the case of Russia and Kazakhstan where the share of “Potentially predatory journals” refers to publication PPJ papers in 2016 amounted to almost a half of all Kazakhstan venues providing publishing services of question- papers in Scopus. Our data suggest a relation between PPJ able quality while having the formal characteristics prevalence and national research evaluation policies. As such of respected academic journals, usually to receive policies become more widespread, the expansion of potentially predatory journal research will be increasingly important. article processing fees. We introduce an algorithm that matches Jef- Index Terms—potentially predatory journals, government pub- frey Beall’s lists [Beall, 2016a,b] of publishers and lishing policy standalone journals with the Source title list from arXiv:2003.08283v3 [cs.DL] 7 Feb 2021 Scopus and achieve a significantly better rate of detection than in previous studies [Bagues et al., 1 INTRODUCTION 2017; Machacek and Srholec, 2017, 2019]. This al- ECENT years have witnessed many dramatic lows us to show a comprehensive breakdown of R changes in scholarly communication across the such publications by countries and disciplines over world. The main drivers of these changes are the time, and provide an overview of indicators for globalization of academia and proliferation of the PPJ, as compared to non-PPJ sources. We argue that Internet and digital technologies as well as the the PPJ phenomenon is mainly due to prolifera- spread of the evaluation culture in research manage- tion of indicator-based research evaluation systems ment [Dahler-Larsen, 2011]. The publish-or-perish [Glaser¨ et al., 2010] and is an example of a goal motto [Roland, 2007; Steele et al., 2006] and an ever- displacement [Colwell et al., 2012; Rijcke et al., 2016] increasing supply of available metrics [Weingart, and opportunistic behavior [Onder¨ and Erdil, 2017]. 2005; Wilsdon et al., 2015] have facilitated the rapid In contrast to the previous work [Shen and Bjork,¨ growth of “citizen bibliometrics” including the us- 2015], our data suggest that almost all countries are age of scientometric indicators by administrators affected, although with marked differences in the PREVALENCE OF POTENTIALLY PREDATORY PUBLISHING IN SCOPUS ON THE COUNTRY LEVEL 2 share of PPJ articles by country. intentional and central to its main marketed ad- First, we provide an overview of Scopus usage vantage over WoS, i.e. the scope, reflected in its across the world in order to justify choosing this name itself. Mongeon and Paul-Hus [2016] find that particular data source. Next, we describe the PPJ Scopus has a “larger journal coverage in all fields”, phenomenon and review emerging studies of it. especially in Business & Management and in Social We pay special attention to the peculiarities and Sciences. Country-level data presented by these au- limitations of Jeffrey Beall’s lists. We also describe thors also is favorable for Scopus for all 15 major our data and methods. Then, the main section countries studied both in the number of published describes global PPJ statistics in Scopus and also journals and in the number of published papers. reviews some recent efforts by Elsevier to clean its Thus, we conclude that in recent years Scopus has database. We conclude with an analysis of possible outperformed WoS in terms of coverage in all or at causes of the observed drastic variations in relative least in the vast majority of disciplines. PPJ publications across various nations and sum up Also, Scopus has been chosen instead of WoS with policy advice. for several high-profile nation-wide evaluation projects, namely Research Excellence Framework in the United Kingdom, Excellence in Research 1.1 Scopus in Research Evaluation for Australia (until 2019), and Evaluation of R&D Before talking about potentially predatory journals, Units in Portugal. As the Australian Research it is important to briefly describe the reasons of Council (ARC) put it in their press release, “When Scopus to be attractive for publishers and authors. selecting Scopus, the ARC had regard to their Scopus is widely used in research evaluation. Along coverage of relevant journals...”3. Scopus has with the Web of Science (WoS) and Google Scholar, recently replaced WoS as a bibliometric data source Scopus is a leading resource for searching relevant for the influential Times Higher Education World works and evaluation of researchers and journals University Rankings, and is already used by QS [Wouters et al., 2015]. These three databases, how- World University Rankings. ever, have different indexing policies and market- Overall, Scopus can now be considered as a ing strategies, leading to different coverage and more popular bibliometrics database, if we take indicator values (for recent comparisons see [Moed into account Google Trends data that reflects global et al., 2016; Mongeon and Paul-Hus, 2016; Harz- search intensity (see Figure 1). This metric is plau- ing and Alakangas, 2016]). Google Scholar is not sible because there are almost no meanings of the widely used by research managers, because of its terms “Scopus” and “Web of Science” other than strategy of covering virtually all scientific literature those related to the two databases4. with little quality control. So the options suitable The country-level data may be more relevant to for research evaluation are the Web of Science and the topic of our paper (see Figure 2), which show Scopus. that in some regions people search for WoS and Sco- The Web of Science is the most exclusive in terms pus much more than in the others and that Scopus of the number of indexed journals and poses itself as leads the way in many of the countries studied in a “painstakingly selected, actively curated database the results section. Although vague, Google Trends of the journals that researchers themselves have data show that the general interest is substantial. judged to be the most important and useful in their fields”1. Scopus’ promotional text is similar, with a 1.2 Potentially Predatory Journals special reference of their customers’ high academic The PPJ phenomenon and its naming are both standards: “Scopus has a clearly stated selection directly linked to the work of Jeffrey Beall, an policy and an internationally acclaimed board of selection experts so you can be sure that what you 3. See http://www.arc.gov.au/news-media/ see on Scopus meets your high standards”2. Judging media-releases/scopus-provide-citation-information-era from the sheer number of indexed journals, Scopus accessed on 21 June 2017 and currently available only via Internet Archive: https://web.archive.org/web/ has more inclusive criteria, which is perceived as 20151010083040/https://www.arc.gov.au/news-media/ media-releases/scopus-provide-citation-information-era 1. Promotional info at http://clarivate.com/?product= 4. While “Web of Science” usually clearly means relevant web-of-science accessed on 20 june 2017 database, “Scopus” may also refer to Mount Scopus, a historical 2. Promotional info at https://www.elsevier.com/solutions/ mountain in northeast Jerusalem, or a latin name of the bird scopus/content/content-policy-and-selection accessed on 21 species Hamercop (Scopus Umbretta), or a specialist journal on June 2017 east African ornithology. PREVALENCE OF POTENTIALLY PREDATORY PUBLISHING IN SCOPUS ON THE COUNTRY LEVEL 3 It is important to note that Beall clearly links the problem to the Gold Open Access (“author pays”) model of journal publishing. He quotes Reed Else- vier’s CEO Crispin Davis, who mentioned in 2003 that “if you are receiving potential payments for every article submitted, there is an inherent conflict of interest that could threaten the quality of the peer review system”6. The somewhat controversial term “predatory” was coined by Jeffrey Beall in his 2010 review [Beall, 2010] of nine Gold OA scholarly publishers. As a Fig. 1. Monthly Google Trends* data for search queries “Web of result of his subsequent efforts on maintaining his Science” (blue) vs “Scopus” (red) in 2004-2019. The horizontal famous lists, it became a standard term used by axis of the main graph represents time, and the vertical is how notable peer-reviewed articles published in main- often a term is searched for relative to the total number of stream journals in recent years [Shen and Bjork,¨ searches, globally.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • A Scientometric Analysis
    Tropical Ecology 59(3): 431–443, 2018 ISSN 0564-3295 © International Society for Tropical Ecology www.tropecol.com Global research trends in ‘Ecology’: A scientometric analysis 1* 2 ANWESHA BORTHAKUR & PARDEEP SINGH 1Centre for Studies in Science Policy, Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), New Delhi-110067, India 2Department of Environmental Studies, PGDAV College, University of Delhi, New Delhi-110065, India Abstract: Ecological research has observed a near constant growth during the past few decades. Considering the significance and diversity of ecological research with regard to both its vastness and specificity, this paper is an attempt to map out the research activities in ‘ecology’ through a ‘scientometric analysis’ of the world research outputs. The aim was to identify and document the historical and current research trajectories in the subject. We recognize the fact that in the absence of an in-depth analysis of the trends in research, it is utterly possible that some areas of research get more than adequate attention from the global research and policy community while some equally important areas of the subject remain completely unaddressed or neglected. The study was carried out using two major databases – Scopus and SCImago for the 21 years period from 1996 to 2016 by means of a defined scientific method. Among the several interesting observations, we have found that apart from China, no countries and research institutes from the global south are listed among the top 10 research producing countries/institutes on ecology. Considering the fact that majority of the ecologically sensitive areas and biodiversity hotspots of the world are located in the developing world and have significance influences on the ecological processes across the globe, this calls for immediate attention from the research community.
    [Show full text]
  • Supplementary Text and Figures
    SUPPLEMENTARY TEXT John P.A. Ioannidis1, Richard Klavans2, Kevin W. Boyack2 1 Departments of Medicine, of Health Research and Policy, of Biomedical Data Science, and of Statistics, and Meta-Research Innovation Center at Stanford (METRICS), Stanford University 2 SciTech Strategies, Inc. Contents Technical note on methods 1 References 7 Figures: trends over time and effects of co-authorship 8 Survey to hyperprolific authors for calendar years 2016: text of e-mail 12 Survey to hyperprolific authors for calendar year 2016: open responses 14 Request to contribute comments sent to all listed hyperprolific authors 18 Comments contributed by hyperprolific authors 20 Acknowledgments 119 Technical note on methods An author publishing the equivalent of one full paper every 5 days will end up publishing 73 papers in a calendar year. We selected this number as a threshold to define and study outlier, hyperprolific authors. Of course, published papers may reflect the final presentation of work that has happened over many years, but focusing on calendar years allows to study peaks in productivity and to use a clearly definable time unit. 1 We identified all author records in Scopus that included 73 or more published full papers in any single calendar year between 2000 and 2016. Full papers included in our analysis are the ones classified as Articles, Conference Papers and Reviews in Scopus. All other Scopus categories of published items (Editorials, Letters, Notes, Short Surveys, Errata, and so forth) were excluded. Papers take variable amounts of effort to produce. For items such as editorials, notes, letters to the editor, in theory large numbers of publications are possible to produce by authors who have a talent, proclivity or obsession for writing; such works may occasionally be very important and influential, but they take, on average, substantially less time to produce than Articles, Conference Papers and Reviews.
    [Show full text]
  • Bibliometric Analysis of Document Ow on Academic Social Networks in Web of Science
    Bibliometric analysis of document ow on academic social networks in Web of Science Tatyana Busygina ( [email protected] ) State Public Scientic-Technological Library of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0329-414X Anna Yuklyaevskaya State Public Scientic-Technological Library of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9837-9423 Research Article Keywords: Scientometrics, Academic social network, Web of Science, Altmetrics, Documents co-citation analysis, co-word analysis, CiteSpace Posted Date: February 3rd, 2021 DOI: https://doi.org/10.21203/rs.3.rs-196204/v1 License: This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Read Full License Page 1/34 Abstract Analysis of a document array on academic social networks (ASNs) in Web of Science for the period from 2005 to 2020 was carried out with use of analytical services data of the WoS and CiteSpace (the program for visualization of patterns and trends in scientic literature). The following parameters of the array were analyzed: publication dynamics; document types structure; countries, organizations and authors leading in the number of publications; thematic categories to which documents of the array are assigned; publications (journals, monographs) in which the documents of the array are published; most cited publications. An increase in the number of publications on the ASNs in WoS was established since 2005. The largest number of ASNs studies is conducted in the USA (University of Pittsburgh), UK (Wolverhampton University, Manchester University), China, Spain (University of Granada), Germany (Max Planck Society for Scientic Research), Canada, India and the Netherlands (Leiden University).
    [Show full text]
  • Do Authors Comply with Mandates for Open Access?
    COMMENT GOVERNANCE Make more ART Pre-Raphaelites LAB LIFE Memoir of PUBLISHING Engage more voices use of the patenting system interpreted discoveries neuroscientist and equality in the debate over Europe’s to regulate gene editing p.486 of a fecund age p.490 advocate Ben Barres p.492 open-access plan p.494 ILLUSTRATION BY SÉBASTIEN THIBAULT SÉBASTIEN BY ILLUSTRATION Do authors comply with mandates for open access? The first large-scale analysis of compliance with open-access rules reveals that rates vary greatly by funder, report Vincent Larivière and Cassidy R. Sugimoto. ast month, European research funders is open access1–4. Here, we report the first They highlight the importance to open access collectively called for research publica- large-scale analysis of compliance, focusing of enforcement, timeliness and infrastructure. tions to be made free, fully and immedi- on 12 selected funding agencies. Biblio metric And they underline the need to establish sus- Lately; so far, 14 funders have signed up. Before data are fraught with idiosyncrasies (see tainable and equitable systems as the financial that, at least 50 funders and 700 research insti- ‘Analysis methods’), but the trends are clear. burdens for science publishing shift from tutions worldwide had already mandated Of the more than 1.3 million papers we research libraries to authors’ research funds. some form of open access for the work they identified as subject to the selected funders’ support. Federally funded agencies and insti- open-access mandates, we found that some FREE FOR ALL tutions argue that taxpayers should be able two-thirds were indeed freely available to read.
    [Show full text]
  • Click Here to View Or Download the Proceedings
    Computational Creativity 2007 Foreword The International Joint Workshop on Computational Creativity began life as two independent workshop series: the Creative Systems Workshops and the AISB Symposia on AI and Creativity in the Arts and Sciences. The two series merged in 2004, when the 1st IJWCC was held in Madrid, as a satellite workshop of the European Conference on Case Based Reasoning. Since then, two further satellite worshops have been held, at the International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence in Edinburgh, in 2005, and at the European Conference on Artificial Intelligence in Riva del Garda, in 2006. This workshop constitutes the workshop’s first attempts at independent existence, and the quality of the papers submitted suggests that the time is now ripe. This workshop received 27 submissions, all of which were subjected to rigorous peer review (at least 3 reviewers to each paper), and 17 full papers and 3 posters were accepted (one poster was subsequently withdrawn). We believe this volume represents a coming of age of the field of computational creativity. It contains evidence of not only improvements in the state of the art in creative systems, but also of deep thinking about methodology and philosophy. An exciting new development is the inclusion, for the first time, of a session on applied creative systems, demonstrating that the field is now ready and able to impinge on broader artificial intelligence and cognitive science research. As co-chairs, we would like to thank the programme committee and reviewers, our able local assistants, Ollie Bown and Marcus Pearce, and all those who submitted papers to make this a really exciting event.
    [Show full text]
  • Citation Performance of Indonesian Scholarly Journals Indexed in Scopus from Scopus and Google Scholar
    pISSN 2288-8063 Sci Ed 2018;5(1):53-58 eISSN 2288-7474 https://doi.org/10.6087/kcse.119 Case Study Citation performance of Indonesian scholarly journals indexed in Scopus from Scopus and Google Scholar Lukman Lukman1, Yan Rianto1, Shidiq Al Hakim1, Irene M Nadhiroh2, Deden Sumirat Hidayat3 1Research Center for Informatics, Indonesian Institute of Science, Cibinong; 2Research Center for Science and Technology Development Studies, Indonesian Institute of Science, Jakarta; 3Research Center for Biology, Indonesian Institute of Science, Cibinong, Indonesia Abstract Citation frequency is an important factor for estimating the quality of a scientific journal, and the number of citations that an academic paper receives is often used as a measure of its scientific impact. This study aimed to characterize the citation performance of scientif- ic journals published by Indonesian publishers that have been indexed in Scopus by ana- lyzing the number of citations available in the Scopus database and Google Scholar. The results of the study identified 30 Indonesian journals that have been Scopus-indexed, of which 22 were listed in SCImago Journal Rank up to October 2017. Journals in the engi- neering field were the most cited, with 2,427 citations, including 930 self-citations. A large proportion of the citations were of recently-founded journals. The mean proportional dif- ference in the citation frequency between Scopus and Google Scholar was 14.71%. Keywords Citation analysis; Google Scholar; Scholarly journal performance; Scopus Received: November 14, 2017 Accepted: January 9, 2018 Correspondence to Lukman Lukman [email protected] Introduction ORCID Scopus is a multidisciplinary database, with 67 million records (as of August 2017) and more Lukman Lukman http://orcid.org/0000-0001-9633-6964 than 22,794 peer-reviewed journal titles in the life sciences, social sciences, health sciences, and Yan Rianto physical sciences.
    [Show full text]
  • Incites Lunedi’ 26 Ottobre 14.30-15.30 Questa Sessione Tratta Le Nozioni Basiche Di Utilizzo Di Incites
    NOZIONI DI BASE InCites Lunedi’ 26 ottobre 14.30-15.30 Questa sessione tratta le nozioni basiche di utilizzo di InCites. InCites dataset: come e quando viene creato e dove CNR trovare le informazioni relative. Come esportare un set di dati da Web of Science a InCites e come visualizzare un set di papers da InCites su Web of Science. Altre possibilità di caricamento di un dataset. Come funzionano i filtri e come selezionare i vari indicatori. Come visualizzare i diversi tipi di grafici, come salvare e/o condividere un “tile”. Come esportare le tabelle, i grafici e le metriche a livello di articolo. Registrazione → LE PRINCIPALI CARATTERISTICHE DEI VARI MODULI E DEI SYSTEM REPORTS Martedi’ 27 ottobre 14.30-15.30 Questa sessione prende in considerazione le principali caratteristiche dei 6 moduli Explorer e dei due tipi di report di sistema. Le differenze tra i vari moduli e come è possibile passare da un modulo all’altro (refocus). Le unificazioni sottostanti (organizzazioni, editori, agenzie di finanziamento): limiti e caratteristiche. Le baselines, ovverosia come crearsi un proprio benchmark. La classificazione per aree geografiche NUTS. Limiti ed esempi. Le collaborazioni internazionali e con l’industria. Le analisi sull’Open Access. Registrazione → LA VALUTAZIONE DI UN PAPER, DI UN AUTORE O DI UNA ISTITUZIONE Mercoledi’ 28 ottobre 11.00-12.00 Questa sessione presenta l’utilizzo dei dati di Web of Science Core Collection per le valutazioni: il concetto di citazione (e indicatore) normalizzato, l’importanza della categorizzazione, i principali ranking internazionali, la passata e la presente VQR, i percentili, la posizione degli autori, i dati per la ASN (con ESCI) e l’analisi dei profili personali, il problema delle autocitazioni, i Web Services.
    [Show full text]
  • Exploratory Analysis of Publons Metrics and Their Relationship with Bibliometric and Altmetric Impact
    Exploratory analysis of Publons metrics and their relationship with bibliometric and altmetric impact José Luis Ortega Institute for Advanced Social Studies (IESA-CSIC), Córdoba, Spain, [email protected] Abstract Purpose: This study aims to analyse the metrics provided by Publons about the scoring of publications and their relationship with impact measurements (bibliometric and altmetric indicators). Design/methodology/approach: In January 2018, 45,819 research articles were extracted from Publons, including all their metrics (scores, number of pre and post reviews, reviewers, etc.). Using the DOI identifier, other metrics from altmetric providers were gathered to compare the scores of those publications in Publons with their bibliometric and altmetric impact in PlumX, Altmetric.com and Crossref Event Data (CED). Findings: The results show that (1) there are important biases in the coverage of Publons according to disciplines and publishers; (2) metrics from Publons present several problems as research evaluation indicators; and (3) correlations between bibliometric and altmetric counts and the Publons metrics are very weak (r<.2) and not significant. Originality/value: This is the first study about the Publons metrics at article level and their relationship with other quantitative measures such as bibliometric and altmetric indicators. Keywords: Publons, Altmetrics, Bibliometrics, Peer-review 1. Introduction Traditionally, peer-review has been the most appropriate way to validate scientific advances. Since the first beginning of the scientific revolution, scientific theories and discoveries were discussed and agreed by the research community, as a way to confirm and accept new knowledge. This validation process has arrived until our days as a suitable tool for accepting the most relevant manuscripts to academic journals, allocating research funds or selecting and promoting scientific staff.
    [Show full text]
  • Location, Event&Q
    # from what/ where which how why who for MOBILE versi on click here when who who where when index source "location, event" "phys, pol, med, doc" detail physical detail political name "9/11 Truth Interactive Spreadsheet Click on dow n arrow to sort / filter, click again to undo." Top 100 / compilations entity entity detail country / state date Item .. right-click on li nk to open in new tab 1 "Francis, Stephen NFU" WTC physical Controlled demolition Explosive experts "Overwhelming evidence indicates that a combination of n uclear, thermitic and conventional explosives were used in a controlled demoliti on of the WTC on 9/11. Nanothermite contributed but does not have sufficient det onation velocity to pulverize the WTC into dust. Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth is leading gatekeeper trying to deflect Israel's role. See Cozen O'Connor 9/11 lawsuit." pic "9/11 Truth, anti-Zionists" Engineers / Scie ntists "U.S., Israel, SA, Britain" 2 "Francis, Stephen NFU" "WTC, Pentagon, PA" political False flag Cabal "The cabal: U.S., Britain, Saudi Arabia and Israel execu ted the 9/11 false flag attack in order to usher in a new 'war on terror' along with the Iraq and Afghanistan wars and fullfil the PNAC's 'Full Spectrum Dominan ce' of the Middle East and its resources ... all have roots that go back to Zion ist / Nazi Germany, the Cold War ... 9/11 was a planned step." lnk Intel ag encies "Cabal: US, UK, Israel & SA" Mossad / Sayeret Matkal "U.S., Israel, S A, Britain" 3 "Fox, Donald" WTC 1-2 physical "Mini Neutron, Fissionless Fusio n" Controlled demolition "VeteransToday: Fox, Kuehn, Prager, Vike n,Ward, Cimono & Fetzer on mini neutron bombs discuss all major WTC theories micr o nuke (neutron) most promising comparatively low blast effects, a quick blast o f radiation that doesn't linger, a series of shape charged mini-neutron bombs we re detonated from top to bottom to simulate a free fall collapse.
    [Show full text]
  • Tortured Phrases: a Dubious Writing Style Emerging in Science Evidence of Critical Issues Affecting Established Journals
    Open Call for Investigation Tortured phrases: A dubious writing style emerging in science Evidence of critical issues affecting established journals Guillaume Cabanac · Cyril Labbé · Alexander Magazinov Version: July 12, 2021 Abstract Probabilistic text generators have been used to produce fake scientific papers for more than a decade. Such nonsensical papers are easily detected by both human and ma- chine. Now more complex AI-powered generation techniques produce texts indistinguish- able from that of humans and the generation of scientific texts from a few keywords has been documented. Our study introduces the concept of tortured phrases: unexpected weird phrases in lieu of established ones, such as ‘counterfeit consciousness’ instead of ‘artificial intelligence.’ We combed the literature for tortured phrases and study one reputable journal where these concentrated en masse. Hypothesising the use of advanced language models we ran a detector on the abstracts of recent articles of this journal and on several control sets. The pairwise comparisons reveal a concentration of abstracts flagged as ‘synthetic’ in the journal. We also highlight irregularities in its operation, such as abrupt changes in editorial timelines. We substantiate our call for investigation by analysing several individual dubious articles, stressing questionable features: tortured writing style, citation of non-existent liter- ature, and unacknowledged image reuse. Surprisingly, some websites offer to rewrite texts for free, generating gobbledegook full of tortured phrases. We believe some authors used rewritten texts to pad their manuscripts. We wish to raise the awareness on publications containing such questionable AI-generated or rewritten texts that passed (poor) peer review. Deception with synthetic texts threatens the integrity of the scientific literature.
    [Show full text]
  • Hundreds of Gibberish Papers Still Lurk in the Scientific
    News in focus says Coudert. He had previously posted about says she was surprised and angry to learn that of Toulouse, France, came up with a new idea: the Nature story on Twitter; McNutt replied, scientists continued to collaborate with the searching for key grammatical phrases char- urging him to take action. astronomer, pointing out that manuscripts acteristic of SCIgen’s output. Last May, he and “The NAS has chosen a policy that is very posted on the arXiv preprint server in the past Cabanac searched for such phrases in millions weak and that protects them in a way,” says six months still listed Marcy as a co-author. of papers indexed in the Dimensions database. Coudert. “Where is the justice for women pushed out of After manually inspecting every hit, the The academy has said in the past that it does the field if people continue to work with him?” researchers identified 243 nonsense arti- not have the resources for formal investiga- Some of those papers point to Berkeley as cles created entirely or partly by SCIgen, tions, apart from for internal NAS business. Marcy’s affiliation. A Berkeley spokesperson they report in a study published on 26 May The group relies on publicly documented (G. Cabanac and C. Labbé J. Assoc. Inf. Sci. investigations carried out by other organiza- “Where is the justice for Technol. https://doi.org/gj7b8h; 2021). These tions to begin inquiries into its members. articles, published between 2008 and 2020, The NAS informed Coudert of Marcy’s ter- women pushed out of the appeared in various journals, conference pro- mination last month; the chemist says it is a field if people continue ceedings and preprint sites, and were mostly in preliminary step in the right direction.
    [Show full text]
  • Journal List Emerging Sources Citation Index (Web of Science) 2020
    JOURNAL TITLE ISSN eISSN PUBSLISHER NAME PUBLISHER ADDRESS 3C EMPRESA 2254‐3376 2254‐3376 AREA INNOVACION & DESARROLLO C/ELS ALZAMORA NO 17, ALCOY, ALICANTE, SPAIN, 03802 3C TECNOLOGIA 2254‐4143 2254‐4143 3CIENCIAS C/ SANTA ROSA 15, ALCOY, SPAIN, 03802 3C TIC 2254‐6529 2254‐6529 AREA INNOVACION & DESARROLLO C/ELS ALZAMORA NO 17, ALCOY, ALICANTE, SPAIN, 03802 3D RESEARCH 2092‐6731 2092‐6731 SPRINGER HEIDELBERG TIERGARTENSTRASSE 17, HEIDELBERG, GERMANY, D‐69121 3L‐LANGUAGE LINGUISTICS LITERATURE‐THE SOUTHEAST ASIAN JOURNAL OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE STUDIES 0128‐5157 2550‐2247 PENERBIT UNIV KEBANGSAAN MALAYSIA PENERBIT UNIV KEBANGSAAN MALAYSIA, FAC ECONOMICS & MANAGEMENT, BANGI, MALAYSIA, SELANGOR, 43600 452 F‐REVISTA DE TEORIA DE LA LITERATURA Y LITERATURA COMPARADA 2013‐3294 UNIV BARCELONA, FACULTAD FILOLOGIA GRAN VIA DE LES CORTS CATALANES, 585, BARCELONA, SPAIN, 08007 AACA DIGITAL 1988‐5180 1988‐5180 ASOC ARAGONESA CRITICOS ARTE ASOC ARAGONESA CRITICOS ARTE, HUESCA, SPAIN, 00000 AACN ADVANCED CRITICAL CARE 1559‐7768 1559‐7776 AMER ASSOC CRITICAL CARE NURSES 101 COLUMBIA, ALISO VIEJO, USA, CA, 92656 A & A PRACTICE 2325‐7237 2325‐7237 LIPPINCOTT WILLIAMS & WILKINS TWO COMMERCE SQ, 2001 MARKET ST, PHILADELPHIA, USA, PA, 19103 ABAKOS 2316‐9451 2316‐9451 PONTIFICIA UNIV CATOLICA MINAS GERAIS DEPT CIENCIAS BIOLOGICAS, AV DOM JOSE GASPAR 500, CORACAO EUCARISTICO, CEP: 30.535‐610, BELO HORIZONTE, BRAZIL, MG, 00000 ABANICO VETERINARIO 2007‐4204 2007‐4204 SERGIO MARTINEZ GONZALEZ TEZONTLE 171 PEDREGAL SAN JUAN, TEPIC NAYARIT, MEXICO, C P 63164 ABCD‐ARQUIVOS
    [Show full text]