Recent study reveals spike in number of articles from researchers in predatory journals
Cape Town - University scholars who publish their research in "dodgy" online scientific journals may be compromising their integrity in the new race to publish swiftly and prolifically, the Department of Higher Education and Training (DHET) acknowledged this week.
The department was responding to queries after education experts raised serious concerns over the steady increase of South African research papers published in foreign "predatory journals", that often dispense with the time-honoured peer review process, or simply provide fake peer reviews.
Predatory journals have been described as publications that prey on young and unsuspecting scholars to submit their manuscripts, solely to make money from the scholars - often imitating the names of legitimate academic journals.
While these journals claim to be based in the United States, UK, Canada or Australia, most appear to operate from Pakistan, India or Nigeria.
Writing in the current issue of the SA Journal of Science, Stellenbosch University education expert Prof Johann Mouton said a recent study showed that there had been a sudden spike in the number of articles from South African researchers in journals that were considered to be predatory.
'A matter of urgency' Mouton and his colleague Astrid Valentine warned that subsidies from the Department of Higher Education and Training appeared to be driving a trend that could bring the country's higher education system into disrepute and devalue the quality of scientific publishing.
They urged the department, "as a matter of urgency", to review its list of approved journals that allow scholars to claim a subsidy for publication costs.Assuming that all the South African papers published in predatory journals each received a R1 000 subsidy, then up to R300m had been paid to local universities by government in recent years for publication in predatory journals.
Responding to queries on Monday, the department acknowledged that Mouton's research had highlighted the magnitude and prevalence of publication in predatory journals by South African authors and universities.
While it stopped short of announcing an immediate review or moratorium on its approved list of journals that qualify for subsidy payments, the department said publication in predatory journals tarnished the quality and integrity of researchers and their universities. The department said it had already taken action when there was evidence of unethical practices at play in the publication of journal articles and it had also funded a new research project – led by Prof Mouton – to ensure that government only funded "quality research".
If there was satisfactory evidence that any journals named by Mouton were involved in predatory publishing, no further subsidies would be paid for articles published in these journals. "The department is committed to incentivising good research and to ensuring that research productivity is rewarded. However, vanity or predatory publishing will not be recognised, and it is expected that all institutions uphold high standards with respect to the research outputs.
In the SA Journal of Science article, Mouton and Valentine commented: "It is important to emphasise that it is not our view intention to lay blame on individual academics who have published in predatory journals. There is enough evidence to indicate that many academics are quite unaware of these practices.
"Young and inexperienced scholars are often advised by senior academics to publish in such journals without knowing that this may compromise their academic career."
“All too often, leaders see cultural initiatives as a last resort, except for top-down exhortations to change… But cultural intervention can and should be an early priority—a way to clarify what your company is capable of, even as you refine your strategy.”
We are equally guilty of not prioritizing cultural change in scholarly communications. So I was delighted to see that the theme for this year’s FORCE2017 meeting is Changing the Culture – a great opportunity to engage with colleagues from across the scholarly communications community on key questions such as: What needs to change in our culture and why? Who are our stakeholders and how are we going to involve them? What are the most effective ways to change the culture; which approach works best – carrot, stick, or both? How will we measure success? More
Librarians are more relevant than ever. We have no good reason to be on the
defense and every reason to take the offensive. Conversation in our
field is fraught with too much navel gazing and not enough looking at
external evidence that many things are going well. We share too many
stories about the bad stuff and too rarely share the successes. Yet we
are an adaptive profession. Positive change is our tradition; let’s talk
about that!....
An Industrial Revolution for libraries
I love following the folks who are involved in the Startup Library
mentality: the ability to grasp and engage in an emerging culture for
librarianship focused on change, innovation, experimentation and finding
the future. While some worry about a continuing malaise in our field
where the stories are all bad and we’re all doomed, I choose to focus on
indications of positive, transformational change.
From: Lucidea Think Clearly Blog, author Stephen Abram http://blog.lucidea.com/watching-the-future-tracking-library-trends 9/5/2017
"Unsurprisingly, the Activist perspective caught fire in libraries, where open access was seen as a means to offset the growing market dominance of a handful of scholarly publishers. Unacknowledged then and now in library circles is that a fully OA universe is one without libraries..."
"Thus we have the cascading model: articles rejected by the editors of the big brand-name journal are directed to other publications in the same family. This cascade can be to toll-access publications (the shining example is the line extension of the Nature Publishing Group) or to OA venues that exist to soak up the funding from OA mandates. The toll-access variant is challenged, however, by the limitations of library budgets. It just may be that no one is going to be able to emulate Nature, as Nature got there first (the value of strategic vision) before libraries were sidelined as publishing growth markets. Thus practitioners of the cascading model are likely to move to the Gold OA model..."
"Libraries will continue to purchase large aggregations, though from fewer and fewer publishers; and funding bodies will continue to build the market for mandated OA publication with attendant APCs (simultaneously and causally reducing the amount of money that goes toward research). Library publishing will suffer as more authors migrate to the branded OA services. The publishing market for scholarly material will grow.."
5 companies publish more than 50 per cent of research papers, study finds
(53 per cent of scientific papers, 70 per cent of papers in the social sciences)
Larivière says the cost of the University of Montreal's journal
subscriptions is now more than $7 million a year – ultimately paid for
by the taxpayers and students who fund most of the university's budget.
Unable to afford the annual increases, the university has started
cutting subscriptions, angering researchers.
"The big problem is that libraries or institutions that produce
knowledge don't have the budget anymore to pay for [access to] what they
produce," Larivière said.
Vincent Larivière, University of Montreal From: CBC News June 15th 2015
http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/
The Oligopoly of Academic Publishers in the Digital Era
Essentially, they've become an oligarchy, Larivière and co-authors Stefanie Haustein and Philippe Mongeon say in a paper published last week in the open access, non-profit journal PLOS ONE.
The Australia-Africa Universities Network, which has been running for going on three years with 10 institutions from each of the two regions, already has 16 collaborative research programmes underway in areas such as food security, mining and minerals, public sector reform, public health and education.
Interestingly, research at Murdoch University in Australia has shown that citations per paper with African co-authors is far higher than the university’s average citation per paper.
Article from University World News Karen MacGregor 29 May 2015Issue No:369
Connecticut library has acquired two fully-automated, walking, talking robots to provide independent assistance to its patrons. The robots, set to begin their duties at the Westport, Conn., library Oct. 11, will teach computer programming skills, the Wall Street Journal reports.
The robots, Vincent and Nancy, stand just shy of 2 feet tall. They walk, grasp, move around walls, talk, listen and have facial-recognition software. They speak 19 languages.
But library robots Nancy and Vincent will not be shelving books or explaining the Dewey Decimal System -- at least, not at first.
Information
literacy for faculty, doctoral students and other research-based
graduate students, post-docs, and other original researchers is complex.
There are fundamental differences between the processes of inquiry used
by original researchers as compared to students or even faculty who are
synthesizing information to find answers. Original research is
different from information synthesis for discovery. Therefore, the
information literacy processes to train and support those researchers
are different. Analysis of the inquiry-oriented parts of the current and
emerging information literacy Standards and Framework shows significant
differences in the approach needed for teaching research information
literacy. Promising instructional outcomes for information literacy
training based around original research include gap analysis,
theoretical and methodological discovery, and practical skills like
funding search and analysis.
Librarians working in scholarly communications need to understand how
to calculate and explain how including work in a repository affects its
impact. This presentation describes the current state of research and practice into metrics for repositories including traditional metrics and newer alternative metrics, and some preliminary results of a research study assessing the usage and impact of a Digital Commons repository. Heller, Margaret, "What Does Your Repository Do?: Understanding and Calculating Impact" (2014). University Libraries: Faculty Publications & Other Works. Paper 28.
From Musings about Librarianship blog: "The trend I am increasingly convinced that is going to have a great
impact on how academic libraries will function is the rise of Open
Access. As Open Access takes hold and eventually becomes the norm in
the next 10-15 years, it will disrupt many aspects of academic library
operations and libraries will need to rethink the value-add they need to
provide to universities....."
"The diploma that hangs in the wall of our offices is a reminder that we
were given the foundation we need to achieve the things we have dreamt
about, but it is up to all of us to develop new skills and learn new
processes if we want to survive."
An interesting article by Natasha Johnson from Purdue University looks at three common themes which characterize innovators, viz., play, purpose, and passion and wonders how academic librarians can foster creativity in "library as space", in information literacy (allow failures!), in stimulating students' interests (displays, social media, etc.??) and in encouraging their development.
(I have ordered a copy of the book which Johnson used as the basis of her article for the Rhodes Library - Wagner, T. 2012. Creating Innovators: The Making of Young People Who Will Change the World. New York: Simon and Schuster.)
