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Be careful of the journals run by Bentham Science, where you pay to get a paper in. They claim to be peer-reviewed - but one of them accepted a paper consisting of computer-generated random sentences, whose imaginary authors both worked at the Center for Research in Applied Phrenology (CRAP).
Other open access journals can be good! I recently published a paper in Entropy, and there were two referee reports, both by people who read it carefully and suggested improvements.
Here are the Bentham Science journals:
http://www.benthamscience.com/open/a-z.htm
It's possible that some are really refereed - I have no idea.
Thanks to +Mark Hahnel for pointing this out!
Other open access journals can be good! I recently published a paper in Entropy, and there were two referee reports, both by people who read it carefully and suggested improvements.
Here are the Bentham Science journals:
http://www.benthamscience.com/open/a-z.htm
It's possible that some are really refereed - I have no idea.
Thanks to +Mark Hahnel for pointing this out!
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Yes, but there is an "if" and it continues. Is more like a natural transformation :-) .
Seriously, probiotic products are a previous waste transformed into a good sell by the dairy products industry. Likewise, the wood pellets are previous waste from the furniture industry turned into a product. That was the point, because now peer-review reports are used BEFORE publication and then they are discarded, while they could be done AFTER free open access publication and sold. This way the publisher may use its infrastructure to get honest money instead of building pay-walls around our creations.
Moreover, maybe this is worthy to stress and probably it has been said by somebody, but I am no specialist into this. What is the role of peer-review? There are two sides: authority provider and an economy of time. A peer-reviewed article takes authority from the anonymous (but guaranteed professional) reviewers. But also, because peer-reviewing filters articles, there is this service brought to the community, which consists in saving (reading) time. I think that the authority part will become less important in the future, compared to the saving time part. (That is why I am not so much convinced by networks based on authority arguments, finally). Long post, sorry.Dec 21, 2012
+Marius Buliga The main reason I deal with journals is because I need to have something like it on my c.v. to get research grants. When I retire from academia, I'll post stuff on arXiv and possibly react when people criticize my work, but I won't bother with journals.Dec 21, 2012
Dec 21, 2012
I know this is an ancient post now, but I'm curious if you've had any further experience with Entropy? I went down the rabbit hole of investigating it after an email soliciting papers came through -- seems to have a reputation among a lot of people as being predatory, but many well-respected people have also published in it.
On and off of Beall's list it seems. Any change in heart since this post?24w
I've published several times in Entropy and they seem fine to me. They take refereeing seriously, etc.24w
Thanks! There seems to be really divided feelings on both the journal and the publisher as a whole -- I came across this thread trying to suss it out. Looks like there's plenty of good work in there, but there are also plenty of people who swear it's predatory. But anyway, thanks for the response! Appreciated24w