Friday, February 17, 2012

Fake "Peer Review" Journals

These are growing like weeds as a result of the open access movement. On the one hand, legitimate open access journals online help scholars and students by keeping costs low while making research more readily available. But hucksters have tried to cash in, creating a "reader beware" environment in which anyone can have his/her crank theory validated with the imprimatur of having been published in a "scholarly" journal.

Think of it as job security for librarians as our job has long ago morphed into educating people about how to evaluate information. But this one's easy. Hint: if its editor wins a fictitious person of the year award it's probably not a reliable source of authoritative information.

No comments: