Post 11: Predatory publishers and journals 🦈
Published:
Today, this review became popular because its authors used an AI to create their images. While they included “The images in this article were generated by Midjourney,” I think it is an intellectual/academic dishonesty to do this. From the authors, the reviewers and editors of the journal (Frontiers). One thing is to design and edit an image for scientific purposes, and another is to present the results directly from an AI.
Using Midjourney’s results as is represents a lack of commitment from the authors, as it is evident that there was a lack of scrutiny and other aspects typical of scientific literature design. It is not dishonest to use AIs to design elements that will eventually be integrated into a cohesive whole. What is dishonest is the lack of critique and review of the information you integrate, as it is an act of misinformation; this becomes evident in this case from the anatomical aspect of the rodent. That lack of critique/review occurs on the part of the authors, reviewers, and editors.
Frontiers and MDPI are publishers known for having predatory journals, meaning they accept anything to make money. Their review process can be good at times or disastrous at others, as in this case where it seems there was no trace of review.
The scientific community must stop feeding this. On the other hand, scientists in LATAM and similar countries do not have money to publish in other equally predatory journals, which are considered elite; like Nature/Science/Cell, which charge $11,000 to publish. In these cases, I’ve seen some labs upload their articles to their official page for free downloads. Alternatively, they can opt for the preprint option with the same information as the final version of the manuscript.
Refs:
- Here is the review in question
- An article on the relationship between peer review and journal impact factor
- An example of free articles on David Baker’s lab official page
- 10 things we need to know about preprints
And more information on predatory publishers:
- List of all MDPI predatory journals
- Is MDPI a predatory publisher?
- French institutions launch list of 3,400 recommended journals
Addendum
Fun fact: Does your research need to be Open Access for everyone to read? You still have to pay to have that status. And pay a lot.
The business of publishers charging for open access brings them millions of dollars annually. Curiously, Scientific Reports, which is one of the journals that brings in the most money for publishers, is a journal where many researchers from LATAM publish because it is more economically accessible.
And this case with Frontiers has not been the only one.
