Simon Linacre Academic Publishing, Coronavirus, COVID-19, Predatory publishing, Research

No time for rest

This week The Economist published an article on predatory publishing following collaboration with Cabells. Simon Linacre looks into the findings and points to how a focus on education can avert a disaster for Covid-19 and other important research.

One of the consequences of the all-consuming global interest in the coronavirus pandemic is that it has catapulted science and scientists right onto the front pages and into the public’s range of vision. For the most part, this should be a good thing, as there quite rightly has to be a respect and focus on what the facts say about one of the most widespread viruses there has ever been. However, there have been some moments where science itself has been undermined by some of the rather complex structures that support it. And like it or not, scholarly communication is one of them.

Let’s take the perspective of, say, a mother who is worried about the safety of her kids when they go back to school. Understandably, she starts to look online and in the media for what the science says, as many governments have sought to quell fears people have by saying they are ‘following the science’. But once online, they are faced with a tangled forest of articles, journals, jargon, paywalls and small print, with the media seemingly supporting contradictory statements depending on the newspaper or website you read. For example, this week’s UK newspapers have led on how the reduction of social distancing from 2m to 1m can double the infection rate, or be many times better than having no social distancing – both factually accurate and from the same peer reviewed study in The Lancet.

Another area that has seen a good deal of coverage has been preprints, and how they can speed up the dissemination of science… or have the capability of disseminating false data and findings due to lack of peer review, again depending on where you cast your eye. The concerns represented by media bias, the complexity of information and lack of peer review all combine into one huge problem that could be coming down the line very soon, and that is the prospect of predatory journals publishing erroneous, untested information as research in one of the thousands of predatory journals currently active.

This week Cabells collaborated with The Economist to focus some of these issues, highlighting that:

  • Around a third of journals on both the Cabells Journal Whitelist and Blacklist focus on health, with predatory journals in subjects such as maths and physics number more than legitimate journals
  • Geography plays a significant role, with many more English language predatory journals based in India and Nigeria than reliable ones
  • The average output of a predatory journal is 50 articles a year, although 60% of these will never be cited (compared to 10% for legitimate journals)
  • Despite the like of peer review or any of the usual publishing checks, an estimated 250,000 articles each year are cited in other journals
  • Most common severe behaviors (which are liable to lead to inclusion in the Blacklist) are articles missing from issues or archives, lack of editor or editorial board on the website, and journals claiming misleading metrics or inclusion in well-known indexes.

Understandably, The Economist makes the link between so much fake or unchecked science being published and the current coronavirus threat, concluding: “Cabells’ guidelines will only start to catch dodgy studies on COVID-19 once they appear in predatory journals. But the fact that so many “scholars” use such outlets means that working papers on the disease should face extra-thorough scrutiny.” We have been warned.

Simon Linacre Coronavirus, COVID-19, Research, Scholarly Communication

Unintended consequences: how will COVID-19 shape the future of research

What will happen to global research output during lockdowns as a result of the coronavirus?  Simon Linacre looks at how the effect in different countries and disciplines could shape the future of research and scholarly publications.

We all have a cabin fever story now after many countries have entered into varying states of lockdown. Mine is how the little things have lifted what has been quite an oppressive mood – the smell of buns baking in the oven; lying in bed that little bit longer in a morning; noticing the newly born lambs that have suddenly appeared in nearby fields. All of these would be missed during the usual helter-skelter days we experience during the week. But things are very far from usual in these coronavirus-infected days. And any distraction is a welcome one.

On a wider scale, the jury is still very much out as to how researchers are dealing with the situation, let alone how things will be affected in the future. What we do know is that in those developed countries most impacted by the virus, universities have been closed down, students sent home and labs mothballed. In some countries such as Italy there are fears important research work could be lost in the shutdown, while in the US there is concern for the welfare of those people – and animals – who are currently in the middle of clinical trials. Overall, everyone hopes that the specific research into the coronavirus yields some quick results.

On the flip side, however, for those researchers not confined to labs or field research, this period could accelerate their work. For those in social science or humanities freed from the commute, teaching commitments and office politics of daily academic life, the additional time will no doubt be put to good use. More time to set up surveys; more time for reading; more time for writing papers. Increased research output is perhaps inevitable in those areas where academics are not tied to labs or other physical experiments.

These two countervailing factors may cancel each other out, or one may prevail over the other. As such, the scholarly publishing community does not know yet what to expect down the line. In the short term, it has been focused on making related content freely accessible (such as this site from The Lancet: ). However, what we may see is that there is greater pressure to see research in potentially globally important areas to be made open access at the source given how well researchers and networks have seemed to work together so far during the short time the virus has been at large.

Again, unintended consequences could be one of the key legacies of the crisis once the virus has died down. Organizations concerned about how their people can work from home will no doubt have their fears allayed, while the positive environmental impact of less travelling will be difficult to give up. For publishers and scholars, understanding how their research could have an impact when the world is in crisis may change their research aims forever.