Rupert Murdoch is taking notes.
Well it takes time to build a reputation. I wonder if thereās already another journal of cardiology, or if itās time for a new one? Clearly thereās no saving this one. Itās like the scholarly equivalent of private equity.
I canāt find pricing information for either the old version or the new one (I checked two major vendorsāone, Ebsco, gives the price for the new one as $0.00, another, Harrassowitz, doesnāt list the title at all) but at least libraries are going to save some money by cancelling their subscriptions. The downside of that, of course, is that any savings will likely be eaten up by ābig dealsā with Elsevier, Wiley, Springerā¦
It is important to realize that not everything labelled āscienceā is good science.
Suggestion: Kickstarter campaign to raise enough to pay them to publish an entire issue of nothing but Onion-style nonsense, a la āCanine Fecal Matter as a Conductant in Electrocardiogramsā or āDeciphering Heart Arhythmia for Secret Satanic Code.ā
There it is, āEnter Paper Titleā:
http://cardiologyacademicpress.com/?p=20733
Somebody paid $1200 for thatā¦ They should have submitted to these guys instead:
http://www.domainsmoon.com/medical.html
Isnāt this just the Buzzfeed business model? All will be forgiven/forgotten if they just raise their standards at some point in the future (and delete those 4000 articles) in exchange for some VC funding.
Meanwhile: fuck the world!
But itās on the internet
While this sort of behavior is very bad indeed, I would point out that calling this journal āRespectedā is a substantial exaggeration.
At least for the last few years (I only looked at data for 2009 onwards) its metrics hovered near the bottom of those for the field. For example, the 800-pound-gorilla of journal metrics, who shall not be named, ranked them 111th out of 125 Cardiology/Cardiovascular journals in 2013. Thatās before the sale.
Publishing there was already just slightly better for your promotion dossier than peeing on the Deanās lawn in a powder-blue tuxedo at breakfast time on a Sunday. Although at least before the sale, you probably had to spell your title correctly.
I bring this up because, if we want to fight this sort of fake journal disease, we have to recognize what kind of journals it is likely to happen to. I suspect (citation needed!!!) that mostly this sort of practice occurs with journals that are already a waste of bandwidth, which makes the slide into toxicity easier.
I notice that wiki guidelines seem to allow electronic journals for references. $1200 to give your bogus wiki article verifiability.
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