Sunday, May 24, 2009

Modern Applied Science - another Fake Journal?

I got this in my email the other day, with a request to pass it on to my associates and colleagues. As a friend pointed out, the verb "focus" when applied to such a variety of topics is amusing.
Dear Sir/Madam,
I am Susan Sun, the editor of Modern Applied Science which focuses on the fields of chemistry, management and economics, physics, mathematics and statistics, geology, engineering, environmental sciences and biology. And I know you are an expert in this field, so we would like to get paper submissions from you.

Please find more details at http://www.ccsenet.org/mas/.

If you have any questions, please contact with me at: mas@ccsenet.org

It is appreciated if you could share this information with your colleagues and associates.

Thank you.

Note: We are recruiting reviewers for the journal, please find more details at: http://www.ccsenet.org/reviewer.html

Best Regards,

Susan Sun
Editor
Modern Applied Science
Canadian Center of Science and Education
*************************************
Add: 4915 Bathurst St. Unit #209-309, Toronto, ON. M2R 1X9, Canada
Tel: 1-416-208-4027
Fax: 1-416-208-4028
E-mail: mas@ccsenet.org
Website: www.ccsenet.org
The CCSE has a web site and publishes lots of journals. Its advertising page is on lots of blogs - but it is, if anything, a NGO with no official ties to the government of Canada.

The editor, Susan Sun, can be found with this gem published:

Recycling Economy and Sustainable Development
Susan Sun
Abstract

Economic development is the main theme of social progress. By recalling the economic development, the necessity and inevitability of sustainable development is fully demonstrated. With the acceleration of economic globalization, the influence for sustainable development is increasing. There is a complex opposite and united relationship between economic globalization and sustainable development. People are seeking a way to eliminate confrontation and get united. In social practice, we found that the recycling economy is the best way to achieve sustainable development, and it is an important embodiment of the economic, social and ecological sustainability.
Sounds like gobbelty-gook to me.

So how does one tell if a journal is legit? They have a web site! It's new, so no one has quoted it yet. But the very broad scope of the journal quite disturbs me and leads me to think that this is yet another fake journal. Does anyone have more information on this organization, beside their own online information that is all from March 2009 or later? Google maps points to a car lot for the address given. That would make it hard to get mail, I suppose...

Update: 2013-04-22: Link for the journals fixed

21 comments:

  1. Susan sounds like she might be related to Eliza.

    ReplyDelete
  2. The editorial team contains a lot of scientific lightweights (relatively); for example, graduate students, etc. There are some senior (professor-level) people in there, however, so I don't think it's completely made-up. Anyone know anyone on the editorial team personally?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Legitimate academics also get drawn into these scams. Those from third world countries just want to claim that they are editors of journals from Canada or Europe. It's a sad state of affairs.

      Delete
    2. Most people on the Editorial Board are from the United States. Some evidences to show which are graduate students would be good.

      Delete
  3. Actually it is a true and high quality journal even if there are lot of different scientific domains. I konow persons in the editorial board who have published at very important and high impact factor journals (for exemple Applied energy with an impact factor of 5!!!!)

    So why do you think that it is a fake journal? It is not the publisher nor the editor that assumes the quality of a journal. It is just the content. So have a look in the published papers before judge the journal's quality!!!!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I read some of the papers, most of them are indeed substandard.

      Delete
  4. This article from a Canadian newspaper regarding Canadian Center of Science and Education might be of interest to professor Weber-Wulff and the readers of her blog: http://news.nationalpost.com/2012/03/04/iranian-researchers-plagiarized-material/

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I have been monitoring this publisher for quite awhile (in a soon to be release analysis on open access journals in the first quarter of 2014) and they are now using a plagiarism software. It is a good experience for this publisher and it should be commendable to this publisher for taking corrective action towards plagiarism.

      Most of their journals include the following statement:

      The publisher and journal have a policy of “Zero Tolerance on the Plagiarism”. We check the plagiarism issue through two methods: reviewer check and plagiarism prevention tool (ithenticate.com).

      All submissions will be checked by iThenticate before being sent to reviewers.

      Delete
  5. I am very surprised that Modern Applied Science is actually ranked "A" in Australia's ERA list.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. http://theconversation.edu.au/journal-rankings-ditched-the-experts-respond-1598

      The lobbying around the ERA journal rankings has been very strong.
      Researchers should not follow the ranking blindly, instead, they are advised to make judgments about the journal publication patterns for each unit of evaluation.

      Delete
    2. but they are a source to evaluate performance...i believe modern applied science is tier 2 (or a-rank as others have called) in the states....

      Delete
    3. It doesn't really surprise me - there are plenty of examples where journals with no real impact, unknown outside a very narrow clique, got an "A" or "B" ERA rating. Typically, someone on the editorial board of the journal would be on the ERA Advisory Board or know someone on the ERA Advisory Board. It is then easy to "slip in" an inconsequential journal into a relatively high ERA tier. Conversely, a lot of leading international journals ended up with a "B" ranking because there was no-one to lobby for them. The ERA journal ranking scheme was a sham from the start, and it's good to see that it was eventually abandoned by ARC.

      Delete
  6. Jeffrey Beall, a metadata librarian at the University of Colorado Denver. Beall maintains a list of what he calls “predatory publishers”. That is, publishers who, as Beall puts it, “unprofessionally exploit the gold open-access model for their own profit.” Amongst other things, this can mean that papers are subjected to little or no peer review before they are published.

    Currently, Beall’s blog list of “predatory publishers” lists over 100 separate companies, and 38 independent journals. And the list is growing by 3 to 4 new publishers each week. Canadian Center of Science and Education is certainly on the list of predatory publishers 2013:
    http://scholarlyoa.com/2012/12/06/bealls-list-of-predatory-publishers-2013/

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. This list seems to include all open access journals and thus suggest some degree of bias.

      There is value to open access journals and many papers convey important insights to readers. The quality of articles appear to be a concern and rightly so. Some indicators can be used to judge the quality of the journal such as being indexed and listed in ISI and Scopus. Most journals with a reasonable standard of quality will be accepted in such listing rather than fake journals which often pride itself in fake listings such as Index Copernicus.

      Delete
  7. This list certainly does not include ALL open access journals. Beall's criteria seem valid and many hiring and promotion committees are using this list as a guide. However, I think his list is incomplete, probably still missing out many predatory journals.

    ReplyDelete
  8. I am confused. Is this a good journal or not?

    ReplyDelete
  9. seems legit to me...ive not see many good open access journals...canadian center of science and education seems to be a good provider of open access journals based on the web atmospherics and content...review process, acceptance rate, reputable indexing are all there...

    i think the issue for modern applied science is that its multidisciplinary nature makes it an easy target for criticism....

    personally i dont really see a problem with the content as proper procedures for research are followed in the articles published...i personally think that the science and engineering articles offer good insights..

    some european scholars are in there like newcastle university (uk), kore university (italy), university of padova (italy), university of napoli (italy), university of la rochelle (france)...

    although consisting of many non-european scholars, scholars from good non-eu universities are in there, like university of queensland (australia), monash university (australia), curtin university of technology (australia), shizuoka university (japan), seoul university (korea), national university of singapore (singapore), city university of hong kong (hong kong), university of malaya (malaysia) ...

    i believe scholars from these prestigious universities will not consider this journal if it is not a good journal...of course we cannot expect ivy league universities to publish their articles here...theirs will only be in mainstream tier 1 journals...for mordern applied science, i think it would be fair to classify it as a tier 2 journal or an a-ranked journal based on its quality of articles (although not perfect; which journal is anyway) and the fact of its stated rigorous standards and indexing for an open access journal...

    ReplyDelete
  10. I checked "Modern Applied Science" in www.scimagojr.com, which shown the journal has a H-index 2. Pls see: http://www.scimagojr.com/journalsearch.php?q=19900191611&tip=sid&clean=0
    The journal is included in Scopus, as scimagojr takes journal data from Scopus. Scopus has a very rigorous process to select journals.
    I think "Modern Applied Science" should be a good journal, although it is new to the academic world.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. The Journal is NOT included in SCOPUS. Don't rely on journal's homepage.

      Delete
  11. The journal is not listed on Science Direct, but I did find it deep in Scopus. Let's have a look at what H-index = 2 means. There were 2 articles that were cited 2 times. Out of 181 articles published 2011-2013 there were 46 citations. 16 of those were self-citations. And the H-index really only makes sense for individual scholars, not so much for a journal.

    ReplyDelete

Please note that I moderate comments. Any comments that I consider unscientific will not be published.