At Insty, TRUST THE SCIENCE! IT’S PUBLISHED RESEARCH!
Paper Trail: In the latest twist of the publishing arms race, firms churning out fake papers have taken to bribing journal editors. “Rather than targeting potential authors and reviewers, someone who called himself Jack Ben, of a firm whose Chinese name translates to Olive Academic, was going for journal editors—offering large sums of cash to these gatekeepers in return for accepting papers for publication. . . . So cash-rich paper mills have evidently adopted a new tactic: bribing editors and planting their own agents on editorial boards to ensure publication of their manuscripts. An investigation by Science and Retraction Watch, in partnership with Wise and other industry experts, identified several paper mills and more than 30 editors of reputable journals who appear to be involved in this type of activity. Many were guest editors of special issues, which have been flagged in the past as particularly vulnerable to abuse because they are edited separately from the regular journal. But several were regular editors or members of journal editorial boards. And this is likely just the tip of the iceberg.”
The problems with peer review were fairly apparent when I was in science. Reviewing papers was something you did, more or less in addition to your regular job, to help the system work. It was haphazard at best, and slightly corrupt at its worst, and I'm not surprised to hear it's gotten worse. As Eric Hoffer said “Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket.”
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