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It Just Got a Lot Harder to Pretend that Predatory Publishing Doesn't Matter

posted by martyb on Wednesday August 08 2018, @07:51AM   Printer-friendly
from the Publish-AND-Perish dept.

An Anonymous Coward writes:

The first solid indication of how widespread this problem really is came with last year's Federal Trade Commission (FTC) action against one of the largest and most profitable of the alleged predators, the prolific journal publisher and conference organizer OMICS, which publishes 785 titles generating over $50M in annual revenues. The FTC alleges that OMICS makes false promises of peer review in return for article processing charges (APCs), assesses those charges without disclosing them up front (then refuses to let authors withdraw their papers from submission), and lies about both the membership of its editorial boards and the names of presenters at the many conferences it sponsors - all classic examples of predatory publishing practices.

Now comes a small flood of even more alarming reports [...]

(source)

Original Submission

 
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  • (Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Wednesday August 08 2018, @02:10PM (4 children)

    by AthanasiusKircher (5291) on Wednesday August 08 2018, @02:10PM (#718785) Journal

    One thing I noted after submitting my post is this statement quoted in the summary:

    ... assesses those charges without disclosing them up front (then refuses to let authors withdraw their papers from submission)

    Can someone explain what the heck that parenthetical even means??

    -- Publisher: "Give me more money or we won't publish your article!"
    -- Author: "Uh, then don't publish my article."
    -- Publisher: "We refuse to let you withdraw your paper from submission!"
    -- Author: "Uh, what are you going to do to punish me? Not publish my article??"
    -- Publisher: "Umm... well...."

    Seriously. I don't understand what's going on here. Are authors signing some weird contractual agreement in advance that signs over rights to their research to the publisher? Otherwise, what exactly is stopping an author from simply submitting somewhere else?

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  • (Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Wednesday August 08 2018, @07:13PM

    by maxwell demon (1608) on Wednesday August 08 2018, @07:13PM (#718932) Journal

    Can someone explain what the heck that parenthetical even means??-- Publisher: "Give me more money or we won't publish your article!"
    -- Author: "Uh, then don't publish my article."
    -- Publisher: "We refuse to let you withdraw your paper from submission!"
    -- Author: "Uh, what are you going to do to punish me? Not publish my article??"

    --Publisher: "Publish your article anyway."

    If you retract your article, you obviously didn't previously know that it was a predatory journal, so there's a good chance that your paper is legit. Which will help with faking reputation of the journal.

    --
    The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.

  • (Score: 2) by FatPhil on Thursday August 09 2018, @01:05AM (2 children)

    by FatPhil (863) <reversethis-{if.fdsa} {ta} {tnelyos-cp}> on Thursday August 09 2018, @01:05AM (#719162) Homepage
    Have you never encountered journals that insist on you signing over exclusive rights to publish upon submission? Basically an "I won't shop around" promise. Plenty of that in big-name maths journals.
    --
    Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves

    • (Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Thursday August 09 2018, @07:11AM (1 child)

      by maxwell demon (1608) on Thursday August 09 2018, @07:11AM (#719273) Journal

      Have you never encountered journals that insist on you signing over exclusive rights to publish upon submission?

      No. In my experience, signing a copyright form is only required after acceptance. At submission, you only have to state that you haven't published, nor submitted for publication elsewhere. But admittedly, those were not maths journals.

      --
      The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.

      • (Score: 2) by FatPhil on Thursday August 09 2018, @01:59PM

        by FatPhil (863) <reversethis-{if.fdsa} {ta} {tnelyos-cp}> on Thursday August 09 2018, @01:59PM (#719367) Homepage
        Yeah, I'm thinking of maths journals. But the "nor submitted for publication elsewhere" clause is the clause that brings about the exclusive rights, for the one that you first submit for publication to.
        --
        Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves