Re: Vanity Press Journals

From: Millington Peter <Peter.Millington_at_NOTTINGHAM.AC.UK>
Date: Fri, 11 May 2007 14:05:00 +0100

I can think of some journals that cover niche subject areas - notably in
the humanities - where the absolute numbers are quite low, and which
could be incorrectly mistaken for vanity journals. In these cases, the
usual metrics and quality concerns need to be viewed differently.

With such niche subjects, there may only be one or two dozen researchers
working in the area, so the number of articles submitted to their
preferred niche journal is also low in absolute terms. My feeling is
that rejection rates tend to be low. This could be viewed as reflecting
desperation on the part of the editors to get material, but my
observation is that the quality criteria tend to be no worse than
higher-profile journals. The explanation could be that the members of
such a small group of specialists are so intimately acquainted with each
others' work that they know more clearly what will and will not be
acceptable, and submit or withhold accordingly.

The other logical consequence is that the number of citations, whether
absolute or relative, is also low, so high Impact Factors and similar
metrics are something they can only dream of - if they are calculated at
all.

Peter Millington
SHERPA Technical Development Officer, University of Nottingham
http://www.opendoar.org/
http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/

-----Original Message-----
From: American Scientist Open Access Forum
[mailto:AMERICAN-SCIENTIST-OPEN-ACCESS-FORUM_at_LISTSERVER.SIGMAXI.ORG] On
Behalf Of Stevan Harnad
Sent: 11 May 2007 12:54
To: AMERICAN-SCIENTIST-OPEN-ACCESS-FORUM_at_LISTSERVER.SIGMAXI.ORG
Subject: Vanity Press Journals

On Thu, 10 May 2007, [identity deleted] wrote:

> Professor Harnad,
>
> In my discipline... there has developed a plethora of vanity press
> journals that with time and money virtually guarantee a publication.
> Recently we had a job candidate who had capitalized on this process
> and was comparing his work to that in reputable... journals. In
> reputable... journals, as in most disciplines, the acceptance rate for

> submissions are low and outright rejection is the most likely outcome.

> I am interested in any articles or research reports that investigate
> this issue. Of course in the top research universities only an
> article in an elite journal is acceptable, but in second tier
> universities some faculty attempt to use the vanity press route to
> inflate their resume.
>
> Are you aware of any articles or working papers that expressly address

> the issue of proliferation of these vanity press journals that attempt

> to sell themselves as legitimate academic outlets?

I am afraid I don't know anything on precisely the question you asked,
but I will forward your query (anonymized, and removing details about
discipline, etc.) to the sigmetrics list.

My general answer would be that it has always been known that the
journal quality hierarchy stretches down all the way to a vanity press
at the bottom, and that the name and established quality standards of
the journal has always been taken into account, rather than just a blind
bean count of publications. In addition, both the impact factor (average
citation count) and more recently the actual citation count of the
article and the author have also been weighed, in evaluations. Still
more metrics will soon be available.

Apart from deliberate vanity-press pseudo-journals (in some fields there
are also homologous pseudo-conference-proceedings) there is also the
question of legitimate new journals that have not yet had a chance to
establish a reputation or an impact factor. I think it would be unfair
to class the latter with the former, though it is probably true that it
is easier to get a paper accepted by a new journal; this too has
exceptions, though, such as PLoS Biology, which explicitly began seeking
to establish the highest standards, and succeeded from the very outset.

In particular, it is incorrect to assume that journals that charge for
publication are all vanity press journals. Open Access journals that
charge for publication, for example, are not vanity press journals.

There have also been some studies on the relation between journal
citation counts and rejection rates (positive correlation) but this
correlation will not be as high as one would expect, as high-quality
journals develop a reputation, and sometimes that means authors
carefully self-select rather than submitting and wasting their own and
referees' time. But even for this there are exceptions, such as the
highest-profile journals, Science and Nature, which receive so many
submissions from authors (who send it there first, like a lottery) that
they have multi-tier refusals, including declining to referee a paper
that does not look as if it has a chance.

So the overall picture is probably more complicated than just the
proliferation of vanity journals, authors trying to use them, and hiring
committees unaware of them.

I did not understand the allusion to "online opinion poll." (There are
indeed some who want to replace peer review by online tags and comments,
but I don't think that has gotten very far.)

Stevan Harnad
American Scientist Open Access Forum
http://amsci-forum.amsci.org/archives/American-Scientist-Open-Access-For
um.html

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Received on Fri May 11 2007 - 15:53:21 BST

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