Predatory "scientific journals" tricked into publishing Star Wars-themed hoax

As other have pointed out up thread, that might work in some countries and in some disciplines, but not in STEM in North America, Europe, or Japan. Number of lines on the CV is important. Demonstrated impact and quality of those lines is equally as important.

The tenure application portfolio at my institution requires information regarding both the quality of the journals in which the applicant’s papers appear and the citations garnered by those papers. Similar information is showing up on applications for starting faculty positions as well.

If an applicant for a job in my department listed a paper in a predatory open access journal on their CV, they’re immediately in the “no” pile. If an Associate Prof at my institution was trying to get tenure on the basis of such papers, their Head and Dean would make it clear to them in an annual career progress meeting that those publications would be a strike against, and that they needed to publish in legitimate venues.

2 Likes

Sounds a little similar to this other hoax, except the target journal in this more recent hoax is in an even less reputable journal.

It’s not really similar, no.

This Star Wars paper sent to various biology journals, and the Get me off Your Fucking Mailing List paper I linked to above, were sent by academics to predatory pay-to-publish paper mills in their own fields, to point out that those specific journals were bogus, and didn’t follow their own claims of rigorous peer review. Those hoaxes targeted a journal, not the discipline as a whole.

The Boghossian and Lindsay gender studies paper, the Sokal cultural studies paper, and others like them, were hoaxes designed to support a claim by authors from outside a field that that an entire field of study is bogus, not merely a specific predatory journal within the field.

2 Likes

This topic was automatically closed after 5 days. New replies are no longer allowed.