Who knew scientific publication was so easy?


get-me-off-your-mailing-list.fw_

Take a look at this paper that was accepted for publication by the International Journal of Advanced Computer Technology (pdf). It’s beautifully clear and simple, and could have been written by non-advanced computer technology.

The International Journal of Advanced Computer Technology is apparently one of those exploitive scam journals: they’ll publish (meaning they’ll dump your file onto a website) anything, for a fee. They tarnish the reputation of open source publishers, but keep in mind — this is not how legitimate journals work.

Comments

  1. khms says

    #1 F [i’m not here, i’m gone]

    Ha! References.

    Beautiful references … since I’m actually in the contributor’s list there :-)

    Always warms my heart seeing 2821 and 2822 referenced, even if that’s a bit outdated these days – I forget what the current version is. Not that it’d be hard to look it up.

  2. dõki says

    I should try and send that manuscript to SCIRP and see if they stop clogging my mailbox with their spam.

  3. twas brillig (stevem) says

    I did not click any of the links provided in the OP, but I gotta ask, Any mentions of the motivation for submitting this excessively repetitive, wall of single sentence, paper? That it was submitted in all seriousness to be taken as written, explicitly. Formatted as a submission, as an outright joke (satire). The authors never intended it to actually get published and were themselves totally shocked, shocked I say, to see it published, and peer reviewed, etc.
    .
    Somehow I doubt that they WILL be removed from that mailing list. Papers are to be published, not read, by the publishers, donchanoe?

  4. johnharshman says

    A few things.

    1. Did it work?

    2. Chicken chicken chicken was better written, though I like the figure in this one.

    3. Hardly a day goes by without a solicitation from some similar journal in my inbox. Which brings me back to #1.

  5. David Marjanović says

    The “journal”!

    Best part:

    Review Process
    Website design services

    The International Journal of Advanced Computer Technology (IJACT) was developed for Engineering, Engineering Technology, and Industrial Technology professionals and is a highly-selective, refereed journal. Manuscripts that appear in the IJACT Articles section have been subjected to a tiered review process. This includes blind review by three or more members of the international editorial review board followed by a detailed review by the IJACT editors.Although feedback ordinarily will be given, the editors reserve the right to reject a manuscript for publication without a rationale for their decision.

    Blind review by three or more referees, followed by “a detailed review” by the editors. My ass.

    Oh, BTW, “Website design services” isn’t part of the text. It’s the alt-text of the image next to the paragraph and came along when I copied the paragraph and its headline.

  6. dvizard says

    I always wonder who it is that actually publishes in journals like this. I mean, is part of it actual, worthwhile research? Are there departments at universities that just non-stop produce garbage and publish it in junk journals? Who even pays them?

  7. F.O. says

    This is a blight on scientific development.
    Scientific publishing in general sucks, and it’s still the best thing we have.
    Isn’t there any idea (besides “blogging your research”) to overcome this?

  8. iankoro says

    #5

    I’ve always wondered if that paper was inspired by this comic: http://plif.courageunfettered.com/archive/wc072.gif

    The comic seems to be from 1996, before the Chicken paper, so it wouldn’t surprise me. More comics are hosted here, but a bunch of them have disappeared: http://plif.courageunfettered.com/archive/archive.htm
    It might be in there somewhere.

    I had a friend whose grade 9 teacher was the artist for those comics. When he asked his teacher about it, the teacher denied it, and the name was changed to a pseudonym a few days later on the entire site.