Luxury Journals Pick and Choose What Science Will Sell
February 6, 2014
The article on The Guardian titled How Journals Like Nature, Cell and Science are Damaging Science is written by scientist Randy Shekman explores the difficulties posed by publishers for scientists doing important but less flashy work. The article particularly targets “luxury journals” favoring provocative papers over less fashionable or exciting papers that are occasionally better science.
The article explains:
“In extreme cases, the lure of the luxury journal can encourage the cutting of corners, and contribute to the escalating number of papers that are retracted as flawed or fraudulent. Science alone has recently retracted high-profile papers reporting cloned human embryos, links between littering and violence, and the genetic profiles of centenarians. Perhaps worse, it has not retracted claims that a microbe is able to use arsenic in its DNA instead of phosphorus, despite overwhelming scientific criticism.”
This problem of publishers printing more interesting papers over well made ones is salvageable, the article posits. Open-access journals that will take any papers so long as they meet industry standards can lessen the importance of citations to researchers. Similarly, universities must make changes in their doling out of grants and professorships. If they base their accolades of papers on content and quality instead of what journal published them, the researchers won’t have to scramble to be published in journals with more prestige.
Chelsea Kerwin, February 06, 2014
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