Everyone, who has ever been a researcher or a doctoral candidate, experienced the academic mantra of publishing. First perhaps in research methods courses, in which instructors commonly talk about wider sense of a scientific inquiry, about the joy of discovery and the passion for exchanging and sharing ideas with peers and wider academic community. Nevertheless, the archetypal belief that science has a superior transcendental power to cross boundaries of ethnic, political, religious, or social divides starts deteriorating when junior faculty learn there has been a practical side to researching – measurement of scientific production.
Better scientist do not necessarily have better ideas, they just may have higher scores in scientometric mechanisms implemented at their institution. Number of publications, pages, count of intellectual property registrations, attended conferences, number of entries in various databases, and other numerical parameters do not measure directly the joy from researching, but are easy to report and verify. Just as in any walk of life, goals need to be set, monitored and assessed in the domain of science. It is unclear, whether H. James Harrington, H. Thomas Johnson, or Robert S. Kaplan shall be credited with the paraphrase: What you measure is what you get. And here, the story starts reading scary.
The end justifies the mean. Every measure or performance indicator will ultimately deviate a process from its original purpose, if it does not cover the main process components and consider all three crucial process elements: inputs, transformation, and outputs. Scientometrics as a young discipline has been largely anchored in focusing on outputs. Hence, scientists do focus primarily on outputs and not on the scientific inquiry itself. They scan conferences and journals based on various indices of their potential impact, strive for number of points in their academic leagues and spend just the same and more time on reporting than on researching. Language barrier, inexperience, lack of time or resources, or dishonest intentions may easily drive a researcher into the arms of predatory publishers, who run science production businesses of the worst kind.
Predatory publishers scan conferences and journals and offer “free” reprints to authors. Some journals have been hijacked for the purpose of fraudulently offering authors the opportunity to swiftly publish their research. With the emergence of open access journals it has become difficult to see the forest for the trees. Many of online outlets have been legitimate, several operate as article mills. Vanity publishers collect (hefty) fees from authors to have their article published. A number of fake publishers and journals capitalize on names of well-established universities or destinations linking themselves to Cambridge, Oxford, or Harvard. A slew of them resides in emerging academic markets such as India or Pakistan, or operates out of a tropical paradise.
In the meantime, several leading databases have been reported to allow for certain predatory journals to become crawled and indexed. Journals are challenged to cover the cost associated with databases and review processes without collecting unreasonable submission fees, quality editors and reviewers are hard to find, and measures to combat plagiarism have been both costly and unreliable. Researchers are confronted with a lengthy task to select the most appropriate destination for their next publication and to maintain appropriate levels of scientific productivity while not losing sight of greater scientific curiosity. The battle to deal with illegitimate and deceitful scientific publishing has just started. Avoiding predatory (email) offers is the first thing, all of us can do.
Résumé
Publikuj nebo zmiz: O predátorských vydavatelstvích v marketingových vědách
Predátorská vydavatelství, časopisy, jejichž jména připomínají věhlasné journaly nebo světoznámé univerzity, nelegitimní kopírování a plagiování článků i celých časopisů, uvádění jmen smyšlených osob v redakčních radách – to jsou všechno praktiky, jejichž příčinu lze kromě rozvoje internetu spatřovat i v celosvětově se zvyšujícím důrazu na vědeckou produkci a její měření. Nicméně co je předmětem měření a vyhodnocování, se také může stát ultimativním smyslem a jediným cílem, a v tomto scientometrie selhává.
Jazyková bariéra, nezkušenost, nedostatek času a zdrojů, nebo nečestné úmysly mohou zejména juniorní výzkumníky vehnat do náruče predátorů. Na druhé straně časopisy se stále častěji potýkají s nedostatkem kvalitních kandidátů a kandidátek na místa editorů či recenzentů, se zvyšujícími se náklady na zalistování v databázích či na účinná opatření v boji proti plagiátorství. Boj s nelegitimními a zavádějícími publikačními praktikami právě začal, nástroje k jeho vedení však může každý výzkumník začít aplikovat sám u sebe.
