from the how-many-7-letter-words-start-with-"F"? dept.
The International Journal of Advanced Computer Technology, an open-access journal some accuse of being predatory due to its lack of actual editorial judgment of any kind, has recently accepted for publication a paper entitled Get me off Your F****** Mailing List [pdf]. (warning: NSFW language, in case it wasn't obvious)
This raises an interesting point about open-access journals: How does one police the quality of the work when some are faking the editorial process entirely?
Related Stories
In an effort to show how politically correct nonsense and evil (but I repeat myself) can get through academic peer review and be published, some academics did just that with seven papers. More are partly through the process.
A particularly funny and horrifying case is the Gender Studies journal Affilia. Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf only needed to be translated with wording in the typical style of intersectionality theory, and it passed muster.
Another published paper, considered exemplary scholarship by the journal that published it, contains this whopper: "Dog parks are microcosms where hegemonic masculinist norms governing queering behavior and compulsory heterosexuality can be observed in a cross-species environment."
The Grievance Studies Scandal: Five Academics Respond
Now, three academics have submitted twenty spoof manuscripts to journals chosen for respectability in their various disciplines. Seven papers were accepted before the experiment stopped; more are surviving peer review. This new raid on screamingly barmy pseudo-scholarship is the Alan Sokal Opening, weaponised. Like dedicated traceurs in a Parkour-fest, the trio scrambled over the terrain of what they call Grievance Studies. And they dropped fire-crackers. One published paper proposed that dog parks are "rape-condoning spaces." Another, entitled "Our Struggle is My Struggle: Solidarity Feminism as an Intersectional Reply to Neoliberal and Choice Feminism" reworked, and substantially altered, part of Mein Kampf. The most shocking, (not published, its status is "revise and resubmit") is a "Feminist Approach to Pedagogy." It proposes "experiential reparations" as a corrective for privileged students. These include sitting on the floor, wearing chains, or being purposely spoken over. Reviewers have commented that the authors risk exploiting underprivileged students by burdening them with an expectation to teach about privilege.
Also at WSJ.
Related: Publishing Stings Find Shoddy Peer Review
Absurd Paper Accepted by Open-Access Computer Science Journal
Media World Fooled with Bogus Chocolate Diet Story
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 23 2014, @03:16PM
We have all kind of crap in the old style respected money hoarding publications, e.g. http://www.nature.com/news/publishers-withdraw-more-than-120-gibberish-papers-1.14763 [nature.com]
(Score: 3, Funny) by GoonDu on Sunday November 23 2014, @03:23PM
Reminds me of this rather enlightening paper about chickens [isotropic.org]. And this brilliant professor's presentation on it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yL_-1d9OSdk [youtube.com]
That aside, minus the subscription fee, why don't we use the old model of peer review for this? Is it the monetary compensation or the usual political dickings?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 23 2014, @05:37PM
Frank Perdue is suing for plagiarism.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 23 2014, @03:37PM
I'd say we've all been at the point where yelling "Get me off Your F****** Mailing List" a million times was the sanest thing on our minds.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 23 2014, @04:55PM
Quite [slashdot.org]
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 23 2014, @05:45PM
Nice.
This was very lulzworthy:
umadbro? it must be hard having a UID over 2.5 million.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by maxwell demon on Sunday November 23 2014, @03:41PM
The same way you do with closed-access journals: Look at the quality of the articles the journal publishes, and judge the journal accordingly. For an OA journal that's easier, since you don't have to buy it to examine the articles.
I mean, by accepting the article, that journal has basically shoved its own grave. Any self-respecting scientist will not choose it for his papers because everyone knows now that getting a paper published there is no more a sign of quality than putting it on your home page, so it's not worth the money, and even can harm your reputation because by publishing there you'll suggest that you cannot get your paper published at a more respectable journal.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 23 2014, @07:36PM
Easiest reading i had for a long while. Lots of good points too. Even a really cool self expressing and self populating graph. Maybe a little lite on references but it did have the two most important ones for emailing anything in the modern internet world. I think the most important message of the paper was "Get me off your Fucking Mailing List."
(Score: 2) by hubie on Monday November 24 2014, @03:18AM
I laughed out loud. My favorite were the figures.
(Score: 2) by jcross on Monday November 24 2014, @02:46PM
Yes! Interestingly the email addresses of the authors were not included, making me wonder: how exactly they would know which addresses to remove from their mailing list?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 23 2014, @11:07PM
On one hand this is probably Elsevier and their ilk trying to impugn open access. But on the other hand, if you're an academic (or even a grad student) you'll have gotten these stupid solicitation emails. "The New Journal of Astrophlebotomy is accepting articles", etc. And it's very true that their unsubscribe method doesn't work, because they don't give a shit.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 24 2014, @12:10AM
Which is why I don't bother with trying to unsubscribe. The first couple of times I ignore and delete the email. (Yes, I'm a very patient guy.) If they decide to persist, I report it to my sysadmin as spam and let them deal with it whatever way they deem appropriate. I've never had to escalate beyond that.
(Score: 2) by FakeBeldin on Monday November 24 2014, @09:04AM
There is a review :)
(Score: 2) by Marneus68 on Monday November 24 2014, @09:52AM
Well, not reall, but I've been working on a research paper for the better part of 5 months now and I've been reading a lot of papers.
I have to admit that even if it's nonsensical, some work went into this. The graphs are just awesome.
That's a good laugh and I really needed that.