I have an abstract presented by my colleague at a local conference. I got an email from a company called David Publishing Company claiming that they are interested in publishing our paper in the Journal of Materials Science and Engineering A, B they had?  Things look suspicious for me and I want to know if anyone has an idea about their legitimately as a science publisher. they claim to have a peer-reviewed process but they charge money as publication fees.
7402
. While the reasons for his doing this are not yet public, this is a real loss of a valuable service. Does anyone know of similar services available to the general public?  Edit:  is definitely relevant, but that approach is more appropriate for finding top journals rather than identifying bottom ones. I.e., following that method would probably exclude lots of valid, lower-tier journals. Are there any approaches to easily identifying a predatory publisher?
10642
My colleague has just published a paper on which I am co-author. This is the first paper that has my name on so I am not familiar with the systems yet.   He has received an email from arXiv to confirm his submission and it gave a "paper password". It recommended he forward this to the co-authors so "They may use it to claim ownership."  What does this mean, why would I want to do it and how do I go about it?
106591
A few months ago, I submitted a manuscript. After the reviews were completed I received a rejection decision from the Associate Editor (AE). The rejection was based on the basis of a single rejection recommendation by one of the four reviewers. The journal has very high standards so this is not uncommon. However, the reason for the rejection appears really awkward to me. The reviewer wrote in his/her report that another paper with a similar idea was submitted (not published) in another journal. He/she wrote that the submission date of the other paper was earlier than mine so the originality of my idea is questionable. The AE agreed with this report and adopted this argument in the rejection letter.    I want to emphasize that my results were independently developed and I have no knowledge whatsoever of the other manuscript which according to the reports that were attached has not been published yet. The whole situation seems rather awkward and I am not sure how to react. Of course the reviewer's identity is not known to me, but I find it hard to believe that he/she is not an author or somehow related to the author of the other paper.   Furthermore, I feel really offended by these comments  as it appears to me that I am implicitly being accused of plagiarism. I am considering writing a letter to the Editor in Chief. I do not want to change the decision, but I would like to make clear that my results were independently obtained. Also, what are your thoughts on how should I proceed with my manuscript?
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On the advice of a senior colleague, I decided that I do not want to publish the paper anymore and with that journal. I wrote the editor several times; he has received the emails, but refuses to reply. I know he gets the emails because if its on other matters he has replied but not on the paper. I am ready to forfeit the processing fee I gave them but they refuse to reply and have already published the abstract of the paper to their site but not the full paper. Is legal action an option and do I have the right to sue? What are the guidelines in matters like these?
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I wonder how a researcher send an unsolicited email to another one asking for feedback to their work. I guess it will be something like this?  Hello Dr. X To introduce myself, I am Y, in institute Z. I'm sorry if this email is not convenient at this time, but my work about A is highly relevant to your work in B, so I think it will be interesting to you too. If possible, can you take a look at it and tell me what you think? Here is the link:  Thank you for your reading, hope you enjoy it.  I wonder if the summary/abstract should be included in the email too, since the principle for  is to show everything you know about it. Maybe it's not necessary, since the title of the link should prove its interestingness nevertheless? I'd like to have your confirm. I'm also interested in the case where Y has no Z, and the link is just a collection of observations posted in a blog, not a full paper with proper citation and literary review. It is possible that the observations may have been covered in the field, but Y isn't aware of that yet. I also think that if the link is interesting enough, then putting a tracking method in there is fine too? Even if they finds out, they wouldn't feel insulted either, because they find that the link is indeed interesting.  Related: •  •  •
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The paper in question is based on research my collaborator X and I did together some months ago. Our respective contributions to the research were around 2/3 for X and 1/3 for me. In terms of the actual text of the paper, X wrote about 1/3 and I wrote about 2/3.   During the writing of the actual paper, X decided to leave academia. I can no longer contact X: emails to the old address go undelivered and there is no forwarding address for physical mail. Attempts to find X through web searches and contact X through mutual acquaintances have been unsuccessful. X has thus not seen a complete draft of the paper, only the sections that were actually written by X.  In these circumstances, is it ethical for me to submit a paper with X's name on it, without a complete version having been checked by X and without X's approval?  If I do submit it, should it contain a note of the fact that X was unable to check the completed paper? I am considering the hypothetical possibility that I could have inadvertently introduced an error while writing the complete paper (and such an error might survive through peer-review and into publication); responsibility for such an error should be mine alone.   There is no possibility of separating out my contribution into a separate paper. Either the work has to be published as a whole or not at all.  I am in a field where alphabetical listing of authors is standard, so there is no question of the order of authors.
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Can someone give me a legitimate, convincing argument as to why scientific papers should be locked behind subscriptions and paywalls? That unless you happen to be on a campus, you can't get view a manuscript without paying an often extortionate amount?
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I had submitted a paper manuscript to JAMS (J. of Amer. Math Soc) and recieved the following email 2 months after the submission. Can you help me interpret this email, as to what the situation is and what would be the best way moving forward. Are there any positives/negatives that can be taken. I have not received any referee reports or any technical points on my work, which is what disappointing me. I would like to understand the circumstances/rationale behind this decision.  I am new to journal publishing. I want to know how i can take this decision moving forward, while choosing another journal for submitting. And also self evaluating my work from this. Is there anything to loose heart?  email : (names and references removed for privacy reasons)     Dear Professor XXXX,      This message concerns the manuscript       XXXXX    by XXXX      submitted to the Journal of the AMS.       We regret to inform you that we cannot accept this paper for   publication in JAMS. The reviewers who evaluated this submission did   not think that it meets the acceptance standards at JAMS.      JAMS is the premier journal of the AMS, with extremely selective   acceptance criteria. A paper must be truly exceptional to obtain the   unanimous approval from the editors, which is required for   publication. We publish fewer than 30 papers per year in all of   mathematics. As a result, less than 10% of submissions are accepted   for publication, and many excellent papers are rejected.      One reviewer suggested that the discussion in your paper should   include a comparison with the following reference:      XXX, XXXX, XXX. XXXX: XXX.XXXXX XXXXX XXXX, Journal of XXXXX.   5555;5(XXX):5555-4444.      Sincerely,      XXXXXX, Editorial Assistant Journal of the American Mathematical   Society      --- Sent via EditFlow by JAMS Editor  &lt;journal.american.math.society@gmail.co        Dear Professor XXXXX,      The reviews we received were intended for the editors' eyes only, so   we are unable to send them to you.       Apologies, XXXX
51960
I am currently submitting a paper for Nature Structural &amp; Molecular Biology. I worked on this project for the last four years and was the only one working on this project. I had everything going very well. In order to get the crystallization, I gave the plasmid construct to another laboratory which has expertise in crystallization. Fortunately, they got the crystals. After the crystallization got successful, one researcher (say, A) from their lab came to my lab and my professor told me to teach him all the methods. I happily agreed to do so. After A went back to his lab, I got the draft of the paper from my professor, where, my name appeared as first co-author! I almost fainted. There were 20 figures in the paper. 13 were contributed by me, 4 by A and rest by 2 other people. The paper was mostly about my work. But in the contribution section, my prof and the prof of A  mentioned that I and A had equal contribution. In fact it is mentioned that A was solely contributor of crystals and he equally contributed in all other results. I discussed this issue with my prof, but he tells that he is getting pressure from A's prof to make A the first author. And my prof does not want to estrange relationship with A's prof. I am heart-broken and I don't know what to do. Please suggest me what to do. Edit 2021: It has been quite some time since I posted this question. I accepted the authorship as recommended by my advisor. Now I feel mature and realize that maintaining a cordial relationship with one's advisor and colleagues is more important than anything else. If one is capable enough, s/he will get more opportunities to prove their worth.
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A professor of mine gave me a paper, because he wanted to show me the kind of work that we might do together in future. It is the advance access version of the paper, but I've found some errors, like typos, and wrong references of some figures in the text. Should I warn him about those things? If so, what would be the best way to do that?   Update   I'm from Italy, but I would love to know about other different cultures as well, especially USA; My professor is very open minded, nice and easy-going; Let's put it this way: if I was a computer I wouldn't understood the meaning of the figures because the references in the text don't match with the right plot, but since I'm human being I've understood that he meant the other figures.   I believe that pride is less important than the truth, especially when it comes to scientific publications. I mean, everyone can be wrong, there is nothing bad about it in my opinion. But I know that not anyone think the same, so I've asked this question because I wanted to know if it's worth to risk what @littleScala pointed out, to spread higher quality articles around the world and to show meticulousness in reading the paper.  Basically I thought:    Maybe a professor could be nicely impressed by such a level of attention; What if he find its own errors? He might think that I didn't read the paper with caution.
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I have received a manuscript to review for a journal. The interesting thing is, I had already reviewed this article (exact same title, abstract and author list, almost exact same content) for another journal a few weeks ago where I recommended that it be published, but only after major revisions of both form and content. When I first reviewed it, I wrote a two-page review, listing some questions and several “actionable” comments, ranging from some concerns about exactness of the text (some conclusions didn't seem fully backed by the results) all the way down to trivial stuff (grammar, a few typos, graphic issues with the figures, etc.).  Now, the manuscript has come to me for review again, but it is almost unchanged from the first version. None of the serious stuff has been addressed, and even most of the trivial stuff was not fixed (there's at least one remaining typo, and the figures still aren't fully legible). However, I think this behavior from the authors is clearly a bad signal, which should be somehow conveyed to the editor: they're not willing to amend their work, and would rather do some journal-shopping.  What would you suggest me to do? Should I just re-send my earlier review? Add a note to the editor about my knowledge of the “history” of the paper? Or maybe even include it in my review, so the authors are aware that people know of their behavior, and maybe feel bad enough to change their ways?    PS: I wrote it in the present tense, but it's actually a story from my past. I'm not sure I did the right thing at the time, and I think it's better to actually formulate it as an open question…
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I think the title asks the question, but once again in more words:  Suppose you submit a paper to a journal and it is accepted by the journal.  By this I mean that the journal tells you that they have decided to publish your paper but you have not submitted or examined final proofs and -- especially -- not signed any paperwork allowing the journal to publish the paper.    I wonder how people feel about the ethics of deciding not to go through with the publication because you now feel that the paper could be published in a better journal?  This could happen either because of outside feedback you received in the meantime or because of feedback from the referees/editors of the journal itself.  (Added: In case this was not clear, I am assuming that upon submission one was seeking to publish in that journal conditional on not learning that one has "shot way too low".)    As far as I can see, it is absolutely legal to do this, so I am not interested in the legality of it, but rather its ethics and ramifications as an academic practice.  I also think I will get better answers if I do not telegraph my own feelings about this; I will be happy to document them later on.  Let me just say (i) this is a hypothetical question, but (ii) based on my own experience it is not ridiculous that it might be in the interest of the author to engage in this practice, if it happened to be kosher to all parties involved.  Note: I had previously asked a related question, at the time wondering whether it would be better asked separately.  Based on the way things have gone thus far, I now think it is better to post this followup question separately (not necessarily right away).
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Please go through the following incidents to understand the problem.  Mr. A is a Ph.D. student of some institute who was working with Prof. B of another institute on a very interesting mathematical problem since last three years. Recently, they came across a significant solution to it. They wrote a research article to publish in a very good mathematics journal that accepts the online submission.  Prof. B wanted to submit it to the journal by himself. Mr. A agreed.   A few days ago, Mr. A wanted to know about the submission of their article via telephone. Prof. B informed that the article is submitted. But, Mr. A received any confirmation e-mail neither from the journal nor Prof. B forwarded the submission mail to him. Prof. B did not upload it in arXiv, which is a free preprint repository.  Mathematics journals used to take a long duration to review and publish an article. Prof. B told that submitting this article to arXiv will immediately attract community attention. Many researchers will start working in the new direction. As a result, Mr. A and Prof. B may lose their opportunity to work on that problems. Also, the article may be stolen.  Mr. A did not ask Prof. B to forward the submission confirmation mail to him. Prof. might think that Mr. A is suspecting him. It may affect the relationship. Also, Prof. is a very powerful person in the administration, who may prevent an opportunity for Mr. A to gain a job. Again from some of his friends, Mr. A came to know that Prof. had distributed related research problems to his collaborators.  As a consequence, Mr. A is thinking that Prof. has submitted this work in his own name and he has lost his credit as the first author of this article.  Now the question is: How Mr. A may save his credit and his work without hampering his relationship with Prof B?
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I've looked at the resumes of the type of candidates that get into computer science PhD programs at the top few universities (e.g. Stanford, MIT etc.) and a lot of them seem to have multiple publications (2-4) done during their undergraduate years. Is this representative of the entire pool? Or is this just a self-selected group that puts their resumes online.  I currently have one first-author workshop paper (5 pages), and I wonder how this might affect my chances at entry into these top universities.
70970
I have developed a method to process images I use for my research. It's nothing revolutionary but I think it might be useful to others than me, and why not, be worthy of being published somewhere (at least for me to cite when I use it).   As it is outside my primary field of research, nobody in my direct lab vicinity can help evaluating its scientific value or novelty (I did a bit of literature research and didn't find any obvious precedent). Normally I would just put it as an appendix in the first article where I use it, but this one is quite long to describe and completely out of my field. It would thus be off-topic in the journals in which I usually publish.  I though of seeking collaboration from someone in my university who works in signal/image processing, I don't know anyone personally and I foresee possible political issues, authorship quarrels, etc. I would nonetheless like to get some sort of evaluation before submitting to a journal. As an outsider, I wouldn't like to waste an editor's time and make a fool of myself.  I have zero experience submitting to the arXiv, by looking at the website it's not clear how/if there is an active system of feedback, even informal.   Is it advisable to submit my methods paper there and expect a feedback?
20045
I submitted one of my research paper in a fake conference by mistake. Now I want to withdraw my paper from it, But I am facing problem in withdrawal as no email id is given on that website. The problem is that now my paper has been accepted by another conference. But according to Turnitin, my abstract is already published somewhere else. Does anyone here know how and where to report such fake conferences?
97220
I recently came across several papers in the area of Information Extraction and Data Mining which seem to have passed the review process even if they (1) use some new terminology without describing it, (2) replicate some old and popular technique and just describe it in a new way, (3) use new datasets without releasing them publicly or describing them in detail, (4) confusing language that doesn't seem to describe the methods... and much more.   Why challenge them? Such papers give these people a kind of leverage in situations where number of publications count rather than quality of genuine work. They also encourage, let's say, 'pseudoscience' within the scientific community - or fraud, as those more experienced among you say.  I've faced situations like:-   Someone hired me from a freelance site to implement a previously published paper. The paper doesn't adequately describe the novel methods they claim. I spend a week on it but don't get paid.  Similar situation but the implementation's accuracy doesn't match the claim. In a semi-academic gathering (tea time in a summer school), a discussion turned into a debate. Though I wasn't involved in it, one of the others said something which I pointed out as being logically wrong. It turned personal and one of them claimed that they knew better because of having twice the number of papers than me. Later when I read their papers I found that they didn't contain any ideas that would count as a genuine research.    I guess some of you might have been in similar situations before. Yes it doesn't matter in the longer term; but it is hard to avoid some situations like this and I think it might be hampering the research community as a whole.   Here are the exact points of my question:   Should we confront such publications? Would we get anything out of it?  Is it even feasible?   How can I do so? What actions are possible in such cases? What is the best course of action?   p.s. Yes citations matter more than just throwing papers - but such publications also get citations from other equally content-less papers published in similar conferences.   pps. Most of these papers are from less-than-tier-3 level conferences but still published by top publishers like IEEE and Springer.