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Peregrinus

silverharp wrote: »

maybe they are showboating a bit but it is an area that looking at it from the outside has issues. I certainly wouldn't pay for my kids to do a gender studies degree

Oh, it may have huge issues, but this episode does nothing to show that it does.

Or, if it does show that, then all disciplines are similarly compromised. A scholarly paper entitled "Get me off Your F@cking Mailing List" (but without the typographic substitution that I have made), and consisting of nothing but that phrase repeated several hundred times, was submitted to the supposedly peer-reviewed International Journal of Advanced Computer Technology and was accepted for publication. What does this tell us about the discipline of computer science?

robindch

Peregrinus wrote: »

Quite why the acceptance of their article by the pay-to-publish journal is assumed to characterise ?the social sciences in general and gender studies in particular?, while the rejection of the article by the more academically respectable journal is not, the authors do not make clear.

Perhaps because other researchers have already established - at least for some areas or with some publishers - pay-to-publish has some kind of peer-review process?

If that's the case, then the authors of this nonsense have shown that the area of "gender studies" can contain articles of no worth - which most of probably knew already from the Sokal incident.

Peregrinus

I'm not sure I'm following you, Robin. The acceptance of a dud article by a pay-to-publish journal shows that there are problems with that particular journal (to put it mildly) and suggest that there may be systemic problems with the pay-to-publish industry. But I don't see that it suggests there are problems with the particular discipline in which the bogus journal purports to publish. The same article was rejected by a not-bogus journal in the same discipline. Why does the existence of the bogus journal characterise the discipline in a way that the existence of the not-bogus journal apparently does not?

This might make some kind of sense if the authors argued that it's only disciplines like gender studies that have bogus journals associated with them. But they don't argue that and, if they did, they would be wrong (as my post a few minutes ago illustrates).

Does the fact that the bogus journal claim to be peer-reviewed change matters? I don't think so. The claim to be peer-reviewed could obviously be bogus itself. And bogus journals in the STEM disciplines also claim to be peer-reviewed.

I mean, think about it. If you're going to run a bogus journal, why wouldn't you claim to be peer-reviewed?

robindch

Peregrinus wrote: »

A scholarly paper entitled "Get me off Your F@cking Mailing List" (but without the typographic substitution that I have made), and consisting of nothing but that phrase repeated several hundred times, was submitted to the supposedly peer-reviewed International Journal of Advanced Computer Technology and was accepted for publication. What does this tell us about the discipline of computer science?

And a brief look at the website for the sonorously titled "International Journal of Advanced Computer Technology":

http://www.ijact.org/
http://www.ijact.org/pubfees.htm

...and - to pick one indiscretion of many - its note that "Please wait for review report which will take maximum 01 to 02 week" suggests that quality is not a major concern for the IJACT, nor seemingly, for its publishees.

robindch

Peregrinus wrote: »

The same article was rejected by a not-bogus journal in the same discipline. Why does the existence of the bogus journal characterise the discipline in a way that the existence of the not-bogus journal apparently does not?

I'm assuming that we don't know the reason for the rejection by the non-bogus journal - it could be that it failed to meet criteria for publication which were not relevant to the bogus content.

Publication by a journal, on the other hand, indicates that the article meets all the criteria for publication - including the implied criterion of quality.

A better and more reliable study would have submitted the article to multiple bogus and non-bogus journals and recorded the response from each. The rejection by non-bogus journals for reasons of quality and simultaneous acceptance by bogus journals would have adequately demonstrated the author's hypothesis. As it stands, the hypothesis is, at best "not disproved".

Peregrinus

robindch wrote: »

And a brief look at the website for the sonorously titled "International Journal of Advanced Computer Technology":

http://www.ijact.org/
http://www.ijact.org/pubfees.htm

...and - to pick one indiscretion of many - its note that "Please wait for review report which will take maximum 01 to 02 week" that quality is not a major concern for the IJACT, nor seemingly, for its publishees.

\
Yes. The point is that the STEM disciplines have their bogus journals just as much as the social science disciplines. If Lindsay and Boyle argue that the existence of bogus journals in gender studies points to "the meaningless nonsense that can be accepted by the social sciences in general and gender studies in particular", they'd have to accept the same conclusion with respect to computer science and other STEM disciplines, wouldn't they?

Christy42

robindch wrote: »

And a brief look at the website for the sonorously titled "International Journal of Advanced Computer Technology":

http://www.ijact.org/
http://www.ijact.org/pubfees.htm

...and - to pick one indiscretion of many - its note that "Please wait for review report which will take maximum 01 to 02 week" that quality is not a major concern for the IJACT, nor seemingly, for its publishees.

I think the point is that this journal is the gender studies equivalent of the international journal of advanced computer technology.

Therefore it is a stupid experiment that merely showed said journal is utter muck and nothing, and I repeat nothing to do with the field of gender studies.

I myself don't really trust the field of gender studies but that does not mean this is not a stupid experiment. It is like trying to claim that gravity is a thing because you like ham sandwiches. Sure the main point may be true but the person making the claim is still an idiot.

If you want a good one pick a respected journal in the field and then go. As is it is an obvious set up from someone trying too hard to get some result to try and claim gender studies is stupid and fudging the results (and marking themselves out as frauds in the process for making the claim without evidence).

Peregrinus

robindch wrote: »

I'm assuming that we don't know the reason for the rejection by the non-bogus journal - it could be that it failed to meet criteria for publication which were not relevant to the bogus content.

Publication by a journal, on the other hand, indicates that the article meets all the criteria for publication - including the implied criterion of quality.

A better and more reliable study would have submitted the article to multiple bogus and non-bogus journals and recorded the response from each - the rejection by non-bogus journals for reasons of quality and simultaneous acceptance by bogus journals would have adequately demonstrated the author's hypothesis. As it stands, it's at best "not proven".

As it stands, they haven't any evidence at all, as far as I can see. My point all along has been that their first premise ("the episode highlights the low standards of pay-to-publish journals") fatally undermines their second claim. This would be true even if they hadn't submitted the paper to any other journal.

Or, to put it more plainly, the fact that a particular journal will publish sh!te does nothing to suggest that a particular discipline produces a disproportionate share of sh!te. It just shows that the journal in question is bogus.

robindch

Peregrinus wrote: »

If Lindsay and Boyle argue that the existence of bogus journals in gender studies points to "the meaningless nonsense that can be accepted by the social sciences in general and gender studies in particular", they'd have to accept the same conclusion with respect to computer science and other STEM disciplines, wouldn't they?

Yes, but again, I'd have to point out that there's a world of difference between the two sites quoted so far - "Cogent Social Sciences" which appears to be a high-profile, well-funded, genuine journal. And the "International Journal of Advanced Computer Technology" which seems to be something put together by an intern over a weekend.

It's easy to spot that the IJACT is bogus. While, after thirty seconds' clickaround anyway, the CSS looks entirely legit.

A sample of two, of course, doesn't demonstrate anything other than the existence of a problem. The scale and consequences of the problem can only be established by a wider, multi-disciplinary study.

silverharp

Peregrinus wrote: »

As it stands, they haven't any evidence at all, as far as I can see. My point all along has been that their first premise ("the episode highlights the low standards of pay-to-publish journals") fatally undermines their second claim. This would be true even if they hadn't submitted the paper to any other journal.

Or, to put it more plainly, the fact that a particular journal will publish sh!te does nothing to suggest that a particular discipline produces a disproportionate share of sh!te. It just shows that the journal in question is bogus.

The general consensus is that IT as an area is doing its job , it researches and is throwing out better kit and software year on year there is no suggestion that the field is in trouble or has gone down some cul-de-sac.

robindch

Peregrinus wrote: »

Or, to put it more plainly, the fact that a particular journal will publish sh!te does nothing to suggest that a particular discipline produces a disproportionate share of sh!te. It just shows that the journal in question is bogus.

For clarity, I don't especially disagree with your general claim - see above for the post where I point out that the authors' claim about gender studies being disproportionately open to publishing sh!te is, at best, "not disproven".

However, it's fun to note that the CSS website is sleek, modern, busy and filled with well-formatted articles, while the IJACT website is old, creaking, almost empty and containing poorly-formatted articles. This suggests, on an entirely inadequate sample base of just two bogus journals, that there's better money to be made faking articles in gender studies - increasing one's confidence, proportionately to the evidence of course - in the authors' original hypothesis.

Incidentally, the IJACT seems not to have published the "Get Me Off Your F*cking Mailing List" article. The CSS website, on the other hand, is still leaving the "Penis as Construct" article dangling around in public, for all to see:

https://www.cogentoa.com/article/10.1080/23311886.2017.1330439

Christy42

robindch wrote: »

For clarity, I don't especially disagree with your general claim - see above for the post where I point out that the authors' claim about gender studies being disproportionately open to publishing sh!te is, at best, "not disproven".

However, it's fun to note that the CSS website is sleek, modern, busy and filled with well-formatted articles, while the IJACT website is old, creaking, almost empty and containing poorly-formatted articles. This suggests, on an entirely inadequate sample base of just two bogus journals, that there's better money to be made faking articles in gender studies - increasing one's confidence, proportionately to the evidence of course - in the authors' original hypothesis.

Incidentally, the IJACT seems not to have published the "Get Me Off Your F*cking Mailing List" article. The CSS website, on the other hand, is still leaving the "Penis as Construct" article dangling around in public, for all to see:

https://www.cogentoa.com/article/10.1080/23311886.2017.1330439

The fact that the journal had a half decent Web designer on staff at some point does not make it a respected journal. It really reads as if you have a conclusion and are sorting the argument to fit.

This is just the first link I found, there may be better but it is interesting to note it does not seem to be in the top tier of gender studies journals http://www.scimagojr.com/journalrank.php?category=3318&page=3&total_size=115

Note: this should not be construed as a defense of gender studies as a field. Merely that I do not believe the arguments being presented against it are well founded logically.

Peregrinus

What Christy said. The Cogent business model generates revenue from authors, not from subscribers, so a bit of marketing investment in a website that will induce authors to spend money to be published make sense.

For the record, I don't object to a degree of scepticism about the academic rigour of gender studies, and I entirely accept computert science/computer technology an academically respectable and rigorous discipline. My point is that a study of the phenomenon of pay-to-publish academic journals can do little to illuminate or verify concerns about this.

If somebody wants to argue that there's a lot more pay-to-publish journals per academic in gender studies than in the STEM disciplines, fine; assemble your evidence and mount the argument. Then you might have established something about gender studies. But "Look! I found a bogus pay-to-publish journal in the field of gender studies!" tells me precisely zero about the field of gender studies.

(It does tell me something about the people who think it says anything meaningful about gender studies, though.)

robindch

Christy42 wrote: »

The fact that the journal had a half decent Web designer on staff at some point does not make it a respected journal.

Um, I didn't say it did:

robindch wrote:

This suggests, on an entirely inadequate sample base of just two bogus journals, that there's better money to be made faking articles in gender studies [...]

robindch

Peregrinus wrote: »

If somebody wants to argue that there's a lot more pay-to-publish journals per academic in gender studies than in the STEM disciplines, fine; assemble your evidence and mount the argument. Then you might have established something about gender studies. But "Look! I found a bogus pay-to-publish journal in the field of gender studies!" tells me precisely zero about the field of gender studies.

As I mentioned above somewhere, the fact that there's pay-to-publish in gender studies means that there's a market for this kind of thing and therefore, that there are at least some people working in gender-studies who are prepared to lower their standards in order to get published.

The existence of a single bogus journal doesn't say anything about the scale of the problem, but it would be interesting and useful to look into this further to figure out - for instance - within gender-studies, how many journals do accept pay-for-publish, how many people publish in these journals, how many relevant articles appear in these journals and of these, how many are cited by not-pay-for-publish, and whether the same people publish in both types of journal. Then, compare these figures with STEM-related fields and see how things pan out.

On the inadequate basis of the two journals cited here (the one I cited and the one you cited), there's quality-related evidence that gender-studies are more open to abuse.

But again, more research is needed to establish reliably whether that's incidental from the choice of journal or whether it's a general trend - I suspect the latter and you are refusing to draw any conclusion of any kind - fair enough

Christy42

robindch wrote: »

Um, I didn't say it did:

If it is inadequate then why mention it?

It is incredibly inadequate to the point where it should not be mentioned till more evidence is garnered. The journals in question should also not be specifically targeted as easy to publish in with respect to the rest of gender studies (which is how I suspect this journal was chosen).

I mean there is so much wrong with this as evidence it is embarrassing to present this right now. Further evidence is required-evidence is meaningless as is.

Peregrinus

robindch wrote: »

Incidentally, the IJACT seems not to have published the "Get Me Off Your F*cking Mailing List" article. The CSS website, on the other hand, is still leaving the "Penis as Construct" article dangling around in public, for all to see:

https://www.cogentoa.com/article/10.1080/23311886.2017.1330439

That's because the authors of the piece submitted to the IJACT didn't pay, and "pay for publish" means what it says. If you don't pay them $150, they don't publish the article.

CSS, by contrast, has a "pay what you can" business model. The "recommended" article publishing charge is $1,350, but you can pitch for a lower charge or a nil charge, and furthermore you don't pay until invoiced, which is on publication date.

I don't know whether Lindsay and Boyle pitched for a nil charge, or whether they simply didn't pay the invoice.

Presumably, Cogent collects or hopes to collect the full recommended charge in the majority of cases.

It's notable that it's nine times larger than the charge levied by the IJACT. The generally sexier look and feel of the Cogent website may be related with the need to persuade academics who are seeking to improve their publishing metrics that an off-print of (or link to) an article published in Cogent is going to look, at least superficially, somewhat credible, and therefore it's worth paying the relatively high charge.

There's a fundamental flaw, I think, in attempting to perpetrate a Sokal-type hoax using a pay-to-publish journal. The acceptance of a rubbish article proves that the journal has no effective critical standards. But, hey, it's a pay-to-publish journal; we knew that already. If you're trying to establish something about the discipline in question, you need to submit your article to regular journals - and if, as happened here, it's turned down by one regular journal, then submit it to another, and keep submitting it until accepted. Getting it accepted by a pay-to-publish journal just proves what we already know - you can get anything accepted by a pay-to-publish journal.

On edit: FWIW, I think the whole phenomenon of pay-to-publish academic journals, and the erosion of academic rigour, is largely a product of the bureaucratisation and commodification of higher education. Academics pay to publish not to gratify their vanity, but because professional advancement (or, increasingly, simply keeping the job they currently have) depends on crude metrics like number of articles published. And those metrics are chosen not because they are particularly meaningful, but because they are easily measured.

This is a problem, but I don't think it's a problem particularly confined to gender studies, or to the social sciences at large. FWIW, a connection of mine is an academic in a medical school; it's a huge problem in that field. I see no reason why other STEM fields would be exempt.

There may well be an issue with academic rigour in gender studies and other fields, but I think trying to demonstrate it by wading into the swamp of pay-to-publish journals is a fruitless exercise, because how are you going to disentangle the two issues? Even if you could show that there was more pay-to-publish shenanigans going on in gender studies than in computer science, that wouldn't necessarily tell you anything intrinsic about gender studies (or about computer science). It might just tell you that the forces and circumstances which have given rise to this problem are affected gender studies more than computer science.

Back to basics, here. If we're trying to test for academic rigour in gender studies, we need to devise a better experiment.

silverharp

regressive students force lecturers off campus

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n3SdJhJ2lps

recedite

Difficult to understand what is going on there, but it seems that black students had been absenting themselves from the college for one day every year on an official Day of Absence. The idea being, apparently, that everyone else would miss them, after everything fell apart on that day. And then the others would all be delighted when they returned.

It seems this was not working too well, because things carried on pretty much as normal. So they decided instead to forcibly "absent" any white people from the college.
Good interview from the man himself here....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-st73zhZL3A

silverharp

he was interviewed the other day, he still hasn't been back on campus as no one can guarantee his security. Hopefully their student numbers crash. It would now be toxic to have that college on your CV. It might push them to do something

recedite

silverharp wrote: »

he still hasn't been back on campus as no one can guarantee his security...

Its lucky he's a jew, otherwise he'd be a racist nazi. And punching nazis is a thing, apparently.

robindch

recedite wrote: »

Difficult to understand what is going on there [...]

Hardly surprising - it's Tucker Carlson on Fox News!

silverharp

robindch wrote: »

Hardly surprising - it's Tucker Carlson on Fox News!

ah come now, the fact that it is fox news or Carson is not a factor here. its an open goal for any reporter

silverharp

recedite wrote: »

Its lucky he's a jew, otherwise he'd be a racist nazi. And punching nazis is a thing, apparently.

he has been called a racist though, see anti nazis below

PopePalpatine

Oh look, it's Breitbart pandering to their fanboys' prejudices.

PopePalpatine

PopePalpatine wrote: »

Oh look, it's Breitbart pandering to their fanboys' prejudices.

fanpersons, lest you reveal your latent misogyny.

Cambridge University examiners told it is sexist to use the word 'genius' to describe students

Word Policing is bizarre.

silverharp

PopePalpatine wrote: »

Oh look, it's Breitbart pandering to their fanboys' prejudices.

in fairness I wouldnt expect students from a STEM field to be chasing Jews off campus. You clearly think they are justified?

PopePalpatine

silverharp wrote: »

in fairness I wouldnt expect students from a STEM field to be chasing Jews off campus. You clearly think they are justified?

Where did you infer that I think they're justified in trying to force Weinstein out of a job? Was it just that I bothered copying the image's source URL, pasted it into my browser and noted that it was Breitbart, the rag of choice of the alt-right?

silverharp

PopePalpatine wrote: »

Where did you infer that I think they're justified in trying to force Weinstein out of a job? Was it just that I bothered copying the image's source URL, pasted it into my browser and noted that it was Breitbart, the rag of choice of the alt-right?

I googled searched the image, means nothing to me that its from Breitbart, if its fake for sure point it out. but to me the salient point is about conduct on a US campus and all im getting is deflection, hence wondering

recedite

Deleted User wrote: »

Cambridge University examiners told it is sexist to use the word 'genius' to describe students

Word Policing is bizarre.

We're rewriting our first two years of our History degree...
...to really try and root out the unhelpful and very vague talk of ?genius?, of ?brilliance?, of ?flair? which carries assumptions of gender inequality and also of class and ethnicity.

You'd think it would be racist and/or sexist to assume these attributes were only associated with a particular gender/ethnicity, but now we learn that its the opposite, apparently.