Science’s fake journal epidemic

Predatory publishers, peerless reviews and those who fight against the destruction of the scientific approach.

The landscape of scholarly communication falls into two main categories: a paid access business model, where journals require readers to pay for access to an article or a subscription to the entire journal itself; or open access journals, which charge authors to publish but make content available free of charge and without restrictions to readers. The rise in popularity of open access journals has resulted in more than 50 per cent of new research now being made available free online. Legitimate open access journals such as PLOS and BioMed Central have been essential in allowing greater access to science, a higher volume of published work, improved education and a greater scope for scientists to publish negative results.

Jeffrey Beall{credit}Kevin Moloney/The New York Times/Redux/eyevine {/credit}

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Why should we work so hard to make our work reproducible?

Most scientific work isn’t reproducible. Andy Tay explains why that’s a problem.

The call for reproducibility has never been stronger in the history of science. Since two major pharmaceutical companies, Amgen and Bayer, reported in 2011/12 that their scientists were unable to replicate 80-90% of the findings in landmark papers, scientific news outlets have caught up on the issue. Their reports have catalyzed conversations among stakeholders (policy makers, funding agencies and scientists) to improve reproducibility in science.

Copyright: LEGO

{credit}LEGO{/credit}

There are a lot of reasons why reproducibility is so important, and why Amgen and Bayer’s results caused such controversy. I’ll start at the individual level. Continue reading