Probably my question (or, better to say, note) will not be new at all. I have accepted being a co-invited guest editor of a special issue and had to realize that after sending out more than 500 invitations to various persons with relevant scientific interest in the field where the publications are expected the response rate is meagre. The other guest editors did their work too but after several months the number (let alone the quality)of the submitted papers did not reach the critical level of a special issue, although the journal is NOT a predatory one - but involves payment by the authors. I had to realize that in several cases the journals just make money for themselves by special issues and the guest editors do the work for them by searching the potential clients. There are several well or less well known journal trying to get publictions, some of them maintaining peer review system at higher or lower level - just to make money. This is too general statement, and conditions change form one journal to the other, but the publication system is extremely swollen at the expense of quality. This does not mean that one cannot find good articles in obscure journal - hust the contrary. It onyl means that one has to do even more work to separate the grain from the hay. Peer reviewing is also declining as it is also "counted" therefore many accept reviewing and return nemaningless 1-2 sentence evaluations just to increase their score. No wonder that trust is science is diminishing.
Unfortunately, overall it's true! Many journals reject our submissions because they do not contain new experimental data, they answer me because we want to distribute the maximum number of articles, look for another Journal! While I present a new concept of prediction of the boiling temperature through the study of temperature-viscosity dependence in some liquid systems by investigating data already published by others, etc......
Yes, publications -in some journals- became a "money making industry" Some of the new journals tend to accept papers no matter how the quality of the article is. They need to increase their impact factor. At the same time the authors need to publish their work for promotion, for getting their MSc or PhD degree or for applying to a prize. So, just they know that a certain journal easily accept the articles, they go to publish their work there. Suddenly this journal gets high impact factor due to the increased number of publications. However, the high quality journals are well known and are indexed in well known international databases and publishers. So, the authors know where to go according to the quality of their work. The reviewers and guest editors also have to reject reviewing or editing for journals of bad quality work. Sure they can easily know the quality of the journal be exploring the previous published papers.
But what's good for science isn't necessarily good for science publishers, whose interests have drifted far out of alignment with ours. Under the old model, publishers become the owners of the papers they publish, holding the copyright and selling copies around the world – a useful service in pre-internet days. But now that it's a trivial undertaking to make a paper globally available, there is no reason why scientists need yield copyright to publishers.
The contribution that publishers make – coordinating editors, formatting, and posting on websites – is now a service that authors can pay for, rather than a bargaining chip that could be worth yielding copyright for. So authors making their work available as open access pay publishers a fee to do so, and the publisher does not own the resulting work.
As a member of the editorial staff of a journal achieving high impact factor I have to tell that a journal will NOT get a high impact factor just by publishing several articles. First they have to prove for YEARS that the journal is regularly published before even condiering for impact factor. Then, again, impact factor does not come from PUBLISHING but from CITATION. Therefoe the editors have to accept high quality articles that can be expected to be quoted by others. There are tricks here too, but a strict editorial policiy is indispennsable to achieve high impact factor. In our journal the rejection rate is above 80%.
Now, publishing the papers is a business not a science, I have seen several articles, which has been published in high impact journal, however, there is nothing special in that article. Another hand, I have seen very good papers in low impact journal, because now a days, the quality of paper is decided by the reviewer(if good friendship relation between author and reviewer, paper will be accepted , no matter, what is in that paper).
Nodoubt, publications - in some journals- became a "money making industry" Some of the journals tend to accept papers no matter how the quality of the article is. The only goal is to increase their impact factor. At the same time the authors need to publish their work for promotion, for getting their degree /award . So, just they know that a certain journal easily accept the articles, they go to publish their work there. Suddenly this journal gets high impact factor due to the increased number of publications.
Manal El-Sheikh I don't think publishing frivolously or papers with low or no novelty earns more impact factor (IF). Number of papers is a denominator factor of proportionate estimation for IF. Rather, it is how well the papers published get cited/referenced in another or subsequent studies.
A good publisher would not accept anything-that-goes if they intend to have good IF. Accepting anything just for generating money is the thematic content pointed above.
The solution is from individual academic employers who use this for promoting their staff members. Once they require good IF journals, the problem will reduce to barely minimum.
Publication in open access books costs almost 1 month salary of mine (at least the order of magnitude is similar). If it is not financed by soemone I will surely not invest into scientifc glory. I know that the reviewing, editing etc. costs have to be paid by someone but it again gives advantage to richer countries and individuals.
Availability of non-open access publications gets harder. In the old days I could buy in local libraries almost any article copy (even by inter-library loan) at an acceptable price. Nowadays governments occupied by power struggles sepnd their money only to maintain their own positions and do not spend on science. In our country e.g. the government will not finance acces to international scientific databases even for the largest acedemic or univeristy libraries. And they are surprized that talented young researchers leave country. Maybe they even feel relieved ats thinking people tend to ask unwanted questions.
I knew some people who had their way to use the money of the state to pay the journals and to travel for the presentation of their work in several countries where clever people were having their meetings and symposia. I never had the chance to get such help and everything I did was from the money I had for my children. Therefore, do the minimum you can with your money and do not expect that someone will let anything left for you.
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