The Relative Weirdness of Birds | Hacker News Reader

The Relative Weirdness of Birds

theweek.com

67 pointswho-knows18 comments

It's mildly amusing, sure, but publishing a rehash of a joke made on April 1st two weeks later, on April 15th, feels like seeing someone lag in real life. The paper should have been just left alone to be discovered by someone later as a fun curio. Especially since The Week seems to be a completely serious website the rest of the time, what a weird choice to publish that article two weeks after April Fool's.

It's not just a joke, it has a serious purpose.

From the article > it does seem to prove his point: That the Scientific Journal of Research & Reviews is among dozens of "predatory journals" that publish low-quality or unreviewed papers, often for an exorbitant fee.

I mean, it got published on April 1st, surely they were in on the joke?

The author submitted it specifically to expose the predatory nature of the journal, not as a joke. If the journal were "in on the joke", they were alone in there.

Following the thread of the substantive academic issue through the links,

https://predatoryjournals.com/about/

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2017/01/18/librarians-li...

We arrive at a 2013 essay by University of Colorado librarian Jeffrey Beall:

> To boost the open-access movement, its leaders sacrifice the academic futures of young scholars and those from developing countries, pressuring them to publish in lower-quality open-access journals

> The movement relies on unnatural mandates that take free choice away from individual researchers, mandates set and enforced by an onerous cadre of Soros-funded European autocrats.

http://triplec.at/index.php/tripleC/article/view/525/514

Still working on what to make of all this ...

The closed-access traditional publishing field fears the loss of their business model in favor of open access, in which researchers and the public can read articles without a paywall. To do this, they have tried to focus the attention of the public on low-end obscure open-access journals which they term "predatory journals" and hope that this discredits the idea of open access in general. The problem is that while bad open access journals certainly exist, so do bad closed-access journals.

The paper about which is written there is:

https://irispublishers.com/sjrr/pdf/SJRR.MS.ID.000540.pdf

and, to warn anybody expecting more, ends with:

"Acknowledgements

We thank Big Bird from Sesame Street for comments on the manuscript. Several trained monkeys transcribed videos."

Also: "Published Date: April 01, 2020"

In short: meh. Doesn't even appear to be funny, especially especially when "covered" on April 15, 2020, for my understanding of what is actually funny:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yL_-1d9OSdk

Summary much appreciated though.

I'm an English professor and I get email from predatory journals all the time. They often have weird, incredibly expansive titles (The International Journal of Business, Science, and Human Culture -- something like that).

I don't really understand how they manage to stay in business, though. We all know that there's a difference between Cell Biology and this kind of fly-by-night nonsense. In some disciplines, journals are quite explicitly ranked by "quality," acceptance rate, etc. Certainly, my colleagues would know immediately if I was publishing in some venue like this; it just wouldn't "count."

Perhaps this scam is intended for another group? Some quack scientist (say) wants to create a giant verifiable CV of their "publications?" Or someone needs some kind of scholarly credentials as a humanist or social scientist, but is unaffiliated?

The whole thing is a bit mystifying to me.

EDIT: I don't mean to imply, by the way, that "unaffiliated" scholars are somehow forced to do this. I know quite a few independent scholars who do excellent work and publish in high-quality, peer-reviewed journals.

> I don't really understand how they manage to stay in business

I suspect they follow the vanity press model and charge authors publication fees.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vanity_press

Allow me an academic masterpiece released this April Fools: “Defining the Really Habitable Zone”, https://arxiv.org/abs/2003.13722

https://irispublishers.com/sjrr/pdf/SJRR.MS.ID.000540.pdf

> We suggest that planets in the Really Habitable Zone be early targets for the JWST, because by the time that thing finally launches we're all going to need a drink.

LOL.

Footnote 6 is great too:

> 6 Yes, gins and tonic, not gin and tonics. You want multiple gins, not more tonic.

Or the note on Table 1:

> Note: all coefficients assume a pressure of 1 bar, as one simply cannot be in more than one bar at any given time. Once you find a good bar, you should stay in it.

Exhibit A: Shoebill: https://www.google.com/search?q=shoebill&tbm=isch

I see your shoebill and raise you a cassowary. They make it very plausible that birds are descended from dinosaurs.

https://www.google.com/search?q=cassowary&tbm=isch

Kiwis are pretty weird too.

Is this usually a legit journal??

No, it says so in the article that it’s a predatory journal.

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