Sunday, March 6, 2011

Another fake journal

Journal of Cosmology. Another fake science journal to make the list. As the title of the article reviewing it says "Aliens riding meteorites." Need I say more? OK, I will. Here's a description of the field of cosmology according to the journal's website:
Cosmology is the study and understanding of existence in its totality, encompassing the infinite and eternal, and the origins and evolution of the cosmos, galaxies, stars, planets, earth, life, woman and man.

Hey, I study something that fits in there, so I'm a cosmologist! Clearly everyone would be interested in this journal.

Not so:
The interdisciplinary Journal of Cosmology is devoted to the study of "cosmology" and is dedicated to those men and women of rare genius and curiosity who wish to understand more and more about more and more: The study of existence in its totality.

Man, now I kind of feel bad about putting PLoS One on my list.

3 comments:

  1. I don't know that PLoS One is any worse reviewed than many other scientific journals, the only difference I have if I review for PLoS One or Immunity is that PLoS One explicitly does not have a novelty criteria attached.

    That said, there are some bad papers there, but nothing on the level of Journal of Cosmology, which doesn't even rank as science. Even Nature sometimes screws up and publishes a paper on homeopathy.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Agreed, they're not at the same level at all (which is why I felt bad about bashing on PLoS One earlier). With a 70% acceptance rate, though, PLoS One publishes a lot of crap that (with the PLoS name) gets a lot more attention than they should. I suppose I should separate my list into "Completely Fake Journals" and "Journals that may compromise the review process."

    ReplyDelete
  3. The list has stratified by level of "fakeness."

    ReplyDelete