From newspaper to science journal for $40

The newspaper you are reading allegedly publishes research of global importance, on a par with the Canadian Medical Association Journal and other top scholarly journals.

That’s what a black-market rating agency claims, anyway. For $40, they are offering us an academic “impact factor,” a formal metric of how important we are to research in universities and hospitals.

The hockey and baseball coverage we carry? They are a big influence in global research, the agency claims.

So are stories about traffic on the 417, Mayor Jim Watson’s busted hip, and our restaurant reviews.

A real impact factor, such as the scores commonly attributed by Thomson Reuters, shows researchers which journals publish significant work in science, medicine, and social sciences, and where they should publish their own discoveries.

But there’s a booming business in fake factors, which are fake credentials. In return for payment wired to a bank in India, our black marketeers offered to advertise that the Ottawa Citizen has scholarly influence “around the globe.” This is simply untrue. And there are other outfits just like them.

Welcome to the slippery world of “predatory” academic publishing, in which thousands of fraudulent websites pose as science and social science journals. They can acquire a veneer of legitimacy by purchasing bogus impact factors, and then they con researchers into paying a fee and publishing with them. So, what’s an impact factor? Cameron Macdonald of Canadian Science Publishing in Ottawa explains that an impact factor tells “the quality and reputation of a journal.” It shows researchers which journals are publishing the most important work by their colleagues.

“This is quite important to our community,” he said.

No newspaper should have an impact factor any more than a car dealer should win an Oscar. We’re not in that business. Scientists investigating stem cells or distant galaxies don’t publish their work with us.

Yet an outfit in India called International Institute of Organized Research has put us in its official register of academic journals. The impact factor it offers us is 4.335, which is very high. (The Canadian Medical Association Journal is at 5.5, but most science journals in this country would be rated at 2 or lower. Even a 1 is very respectable.)

The agency compliments us on “the quality of publication and citation your papers are having around the globe.” When we suggested this didn’t sound right they replied: “There is no need to think on a negative line as nothing is fishy/ fraudulent. The Citizen has been judged on quality of its publication and its reach.”

This drives a final spike through the heart of the persistent theory that these are well-meaning academics who just need to be taught about good business practice. In fact, the predators online are just con artists.

“Predatory journal publishers initially really didn’t care about the impact factor, but they caught on pretty quickly that (it) was an important part of their promotion of illegitimate journals,” Macdonald said.

He and others say predatory publishing is a growing problem and becoming more sophisticated, attracting business from junior academics at Canadian universities who are under pressure to publish.

Reaction also came quickly from Jeffrey Beall at the University of Colorado, widely seen as the world’s top expert in predatory publishing.

“My congratulations to The Citizen on finally earning an impact factor!” he wrote in an email.

“Seriously, the use of these counterfeit metrics is victimizing many honest researchers, especially those in developing countries. Unfortunately, many open-access advocates turn a blind eye to such abuses for fear of drawing attention to the weaknesses of the openaccess publishing model.”

Other academics see this as a non-issue in Canada. Astronomer Paul Delaney of York University says he and his colleagues won’t tolerate grad students who publish in sub-par journals. “That’s it. End of conversation.”

Finding impact factors for sale closes the circle on the Citizen’s year-long exploration of fraud in academic publishing.

We have tracked thousands of online websites pretending to be academic journals and publishing anything for a fee, even if it’s dead wrong or plagiarized.

We have found marketing agencies that help under-qualified academics sneak low-quality work into publication.

Now we’ve found bogus impact factors that are used as bait to attract naive or underqualified researchers.

And we’re not paying the $40.