Journals should learn a lesson from computer-science hoaxes
Source: Cyril
The discovery by a French computer scientist that more than 120 published computer science papers were actually nonsense written by a computer program called SCIgen was an occasion for lots of ribbing in the academic world. But it should prompt deeper scrutiny of the numerous new journals that are popping up to feed researchers’ desire for published credentials. If totally phony works can get through the system, so too can shoddily researched and misleading ones.
Most of the papers ended up in published conference proceedings, but some actually made it through the peer-review process. The two publishers involved, Springer and the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers, have since removed the articles. French computer scientist Cyril Labbé, who has raised concerns about this phenomenon in the past, spent two years finding and cataloguing these hoaxes.
It’s not entirely clear who posted the papers and why, but the creators of SCIgen say on their website that their goal is to expose conferences with shoddy standards. Mission accomplished. Now the organizers of those conferences and the editors of scientific journals have to figure out a better way to guarantee the integrity of the works they publish.
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