Saturday, August 19, 2017

2 interesting studies on journal quality!


Two really smart people sent me separate articles recently about something called "Predatory Journals." I'm going to reserve my opinions and just put the papers out there because I think they're both really interesting.


This is the second (most recent one above) that I was sent. Some people who read this silly blog may already find something funny about this post, but this gets better.


I strongly recommend this new paper by Lucas McGeorge and Annette Kin (Edit -- this has now been taken down). It deals with mitochondria -- and more specifically -- midichlorians, which are what allows organisms to interact with The Force -- yes...

...this Force...

This entirely fictitious study -- that includes Reddit's favorite scene from the prequels -- in it's entirety(!!) was part of this --


--sting operation! The "study" was sent to 9 journals. Apparently 4 accepted it!  One of them offered the fictional Dr. Lucas McGeorge a position on their editorial board...having obviously never read a single page of this work. As of this second as I'm writing this...only one of these journal websites that accepted it still has this paper up.

Okay -- again, I'm just pointing y'all toward these articles. No opinions on my part. However, I've flipped through some articles on a couple sites that accepted this spoof article. There appears to be some legitimately good and interesting science here. I'd be so bummed to think -- "wow, the reviewers loved my article, it went right through!"  -- and find out this reputable sounding journal with this reputable looking website was on this list. And I think this is why the journals themselves are considered the predatory part....

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