1) I started reading this blog post and was trying really hard to believe it was true. Am I a total jerk because I find the articles in my discipline published in open access journals to be complete and utter junk? Well, they are. The publication chain is: Nature or Science, vice versa, if those don't work then try PNAS. If none of those work, there is a split in the road. If it is good science, the authors usually then turns to a specialized journal with real peer-review. If the author is aiming more for media attention and know that their article won't pass muster through real peer-review, then they turn to PLoS... I was appalled when I reviewed for them recently. You know the criteria? It is essentially, "do you think this is fraudulent?" If not, we'll publish it. If yes, well, we'll publish it anyway and let the scientific process figure it out eventually. Is it really more productive to have EVERYONE participate in peer-review? I may not think all of my colleagues are doing a great job at peer-review, but at least some peer-review is better than none. An article in a specialty journal is likely to be somewhat worth reading (in fact, all the really good articles are published at that "lower" level in my discipline these days). An article in PLoS? Pretty much guaranteed to be bad science with a sensational spin so the media will find it irresistible, it will then get so much play in the media that textbook authors who are writing new editions every other year will include it so that their newest edition is more "relevant", and then I end up spending class time explaining why details in their text books is bad science rather than teaching my students good science. Ugh.
2) My three-year-old talked all about "joking" us today.
3) I did not intentionally do any April fool's day pranking.
4) I did, however, spend every single minute between 10am and 4pm in back-to-back meetings that dealt with various forms of administrative fiascos. Back-to-back. I am not kidding. My entire day felt like one huge April fool's joke being played on ME.
2) My three-year-old talked all about "joking" us today.
3) I did not intentionally do any April fool's day pranking.
4) I did, however, spend every single minute between 10am and 4pm in back-to-back meetings that dealt with various forms of administrative fiascos. Back-to-back. I am not kidding. My entire day felt like one huge April fool's joke being played on ME.
I hope that you aren't also april-fooling about open access, because here it is April 2, and I totally agree that open access is crap. In the age of technology we're all totally 'drowning in information and thirsting for knowledge', and the open access craze is completely feeding into that trend. I support the BMC open access journals, but I would never put my hard, rigorous work through the 'journal of trivial and spurious results' that is PlosOne. And I also agree that the best papers in our field are not in Science or Nature (where ecology seems to be the fluffy section, kind of like the funny pages or at least 'arts and leisure'), but rather in AmNat, Evolution, Ecological Monographs, etc. etc. (not that I would refuse to publish in Science or Nature!). I also needed to vent about this. Thank you for the forum! :)
ReplyDeleteThe last article I reviewed for plosone was really good. I wondered why they didn't send it some place better.
ReplyDeleteNot reviewed anything good for PloS-one, and definitely have colleagues playing that media-chasing game... but it's called 'impact' and they're the ones who get promoted...
ReplyDeleteI think this is very discipline-dependent. The sub-editor for my field in PLoS-One is a very reputable scientist and everything I reviewed for them was of the highest quality and could easily go into best discipline journals.
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