It looks like publishing fake journals was becoming closer to habit for Elsevir rather than a one-time exceptional mistake.
Scientific publishing giant Elsevier put out a total of six publications between 2000 and 2005 that were sponsored by unnamed pharmaceutical companies and looked like peer reviewed medical journals, but did not disclose sponsorship, the company has admitted.
Elsevier is conducting an “internal review” of its publishing practices after allegations came to light that the company produced a pharmaceutical company-funded publication in the early 2000s without disclosing that the “journal” was corporate sponsored.
I really hope people use this an an opportunity to detach fully from them.
Well, detaching completely will be difficult, e.g. they still run a couple of high-profile (and respected) chemistry journals, and people publishing in this field aren’t known to care about Open Access etc. a lot.
But it is very important that the word about those incidents is spreading.
I wonder whether forwarding this to scientific-related mailing lists concerned with other topics than pharmaceutical research is considered spamming…
Michael
Comment by Michael Banck — May 7, 2009 @ 3:16 pm
In November 2007 a representative of Elsevier visited our institute to discuss our feelings about their (Mathematics) journals.
It turns out that they determine the prices of journals in “bundles”. So quality journals typically “subsidise” upcoming journals — which is not necessarily a bad thing.
The problem is that new journals are inducted into the pool based on what they call “community demand”. This can in essence just be a “mutual admiration society” (or in the case you point to, a big enough company). In particular, this process is not peer reviewed by the community that contributes to the other journals that are already in the pool.
So what they have is not even “caviar”!
Comment by Kapil Hari Paranjape — May 7, 2009 @ 5:40 pm
Oops. The link should have been http://www.imsc.res.in/~kapil/blog/elsevier-vs-sunder-2007-11-26-11-15.html.
P.S. Could you have a “preview” button so one could avoid such oopses?
Comment by Kapil Hari Paranjape — May 7, 2009 @ 5:45 pm
I don’t hold Elsevier in very high regard, to say the least. The prices of their journals are completely outrageous, especially considering they get the content for free. Also, they’ve been involved in the arms trade: http://www.physics.carleton.ca/~logan/elsevier/
Comment by Johan — May 8, 2009 @ 9:03 am