Dear Dr. Makemelaff,
Please find enclosed the manuscript by [two chuckleheads] that you sent to me for review on [date]. I regret that I cannot review this or any other manuscript for Worst Journal Ever or Penultimate Worst Journal Ever.
These publications have an international and interdisciplinary reputation as peer-reviewed journals. Nonetheless, it is widely appreciated among [my peers] that these are little more than ``vanity'' outlets. Reviewers' remarks are not taken into consideration in the editorial decision to accept or reject a manuscript for publication, and the quality of the articles published in these journals testifies to this editorial practice. I cannot imagine what I could say about an article that might influence your decision as an editor, or the authors' decisions concerning points of revision, and therefore I do not wish to waste my, your, and the authors' time on a review.
Please remove me from your list of potential reviewers for your journals.
Sincerely,
Angry Professor
Monday, April 03, 2006
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17 comments:
I've never understood why people use the tilde key to make `` when the norm is to use the quotations mark key (") like was used after the word vanity.
If you look close that's actually '_' after vanity. And seperating opening and closing quotes can be useful for anyone not using a WYSIWYG editor.
You have tenure, so maybe you really could say that to the editor. (Whereas I have to accept every paper that comes my way for fear of pissing off an editor who might be inclined to help me out later.)
hahaha
Who was it that said that more writers should be discouraged!
Discourage them every chance you get!
Ianqui, this particular editor set up these two journals to make himself a quick buck.* He never was a serious academic, and a bad word from him would make your dossier look good, not bad.
That said, I confess that I did not actually send this letter, although I very, very much enjoyed writing it. I sent the manuscript back marked "returned to sender" with no explanation, which was just as effective a message.
I have made it my personal mission to have these journals removed from the LSU library. I have not yet succeeded.
*What a tremendous success they are in this respect! These journals are the fattest on the shelf, the most expensive for the library, and have been publishing continuously since the 1960s. The editor and his family (all of whom are on the editorial board) are fabulously wealthy.
If the editor writes thank-you-notes to the referees, then a more constructive approach might be possible: Suggest some of your foreign graduate students and younger colleagues as referees (and tell them to keep their thenk you notes). They will come in handy in applications for the green card. To be recognized as an "outstanding researcher", you need to show that you acted as a "judge of your peers" - as a referee or as an organizer for conferences.
This kind of journals are ideal for this purpose: The letters have an impressive letterhead, and inexperienced referees can do no real harm,
Damn it, AP, is that another one we're gonna have to beat out of you??!! come on, spit it out: what are these publications? If my library carries them, I'll ask them to dump them.
Come on: name names!! *flashing big spotlight in face*
You're gonna have to break out the bamboo splinters.
If those journals deserve no space on your library shelves then they deserve none on ours either. We are currently discussing yet again what journal subscriptions to cancel. So, think of it is a public service.
Email me.
Amen. I've never been asked by such journals, which exist in every field.
Ianqui - 3rd rate journals have 3rd rate editors. The work tends to be submitted from less successful labs that do not have the time. money, or desire and they are solely doing it for the purpose of proving to their on-campus peers that they "do research." At "well below R1" type schools, the peers often don't know better and buy into it.
There are also vanity conferences in this same category. There is a particular organization in Europle that seems to offer an annual meeting on every conference under the sun, and asks me to help organize them regularly, when there is no relevant reason whatsover why they should ask me. They are now in my email SPAM filter.
A thought on vanity journals.
One can name names, but that is all heresay.
One could use SCI metrics, like impact factors.
However, I suspect that impact factors alone would not identify vanity journals, if they engage in a lot of self-referencing. Maybe I'm wrong.
Dr. Gentleman's example aside, I often wonder how often these journals are run for an ulterior motive vs simply having a well intentioned by not-very-academically-competent editor.
One thing I try to track is the number of authors published in a particular journal who are or were students (or in one recent case, child) of someone on the editorial board of that journal. It isn't hard to spot the journals that are too willing to lend a helping hand.
ianqui,
It sounds like you're putting some notional value to your career ahead of good scholarship. Is that what you wanted to do when you got into academia?
ianqui, the editor of the type of journal
to which the angry professor refers is not a person who will be in a position to help you out later. They're just wasting your time. Admitting, on your vita or your annual report, that you have agreed to spend time refereeing articles for this type of journal, will weaken your record and make people who would be in a position to help you out later, less inclined to do so.
How does a person recognize these journals? I'm starting grad school in the fall in a field of biology. I knoe that there are prestigious journals that have good reputations but I suppose I naively did not consider that the opposite existed.
SFW, you'll learn eventually which ones are bad. One thing I tell my students is that they can look at the impact factor (via ISI) relative to the other journals in the same discipline listing, but you also have to look at the total number of articles published. If the impact factor is very small and the number of articles published is very large, that should send up a red flag. Also, look on the submission instructions page inside the front cover and see how much they charge to publish an article. A "per page" publication fee should also send up a red flag.
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