Category: Only Connect

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Spoof papers on our Only Connect wall

A fist (representing Spoof) and four spoof papers from our first Only Connect wall

We recently posted an “Only Connect” wall, where we challenged you to put sixteen clues into four groups.

 

This article looks at one of the groups, discussing it in a little more detail.

 

Before we begin

If you don’t know about Only Connect, take a look at the article we wrote which describes the BBC quiz show and also explains why we are attracted to it and which parts of the show we draw from.

 

The Only Connect wall that we presented, and from which this article draws from, can be seen here. It presents the wall and the answer.

The connection

The connection between four of the papers (see Figure 1) on the wall is that they were all sting (or spoof, if you prefer) papers. That is, they were submitted to scientific journals/conferences to test the robustness of the peer review process and to see if they could get the sting/spoof paper accepted.

 

All of these papers managed to get through peer review, and were accepted, which strongly suggests that there was not any.

Sting papers, answer to out first Only Connect wall
Figure 1: Sting papers, one of the answers to our first Only Connect wall

The papers

1. Get me off your F*@^ing Mailing list

This paper was originally written as a conference paper and was subsequently submitted to a journal (International Journal of Advanced Computer Technology), in 2014. The paper repeats the same phrase over and over again, even incorporating it into graphs and figures.

We have previously written an article about this paper, which looks at its history, so we will not repeat all this information here.

You might also be interested in:

This paper looks at how the journal has performed since accepting the paper, on the basis that the idea behind a spoof paper is to highlight the lack of peer review and alert scholars to submitting to the journal.

Spoiler alert: The journal performed better in the twelve issues following the acceptance of this paper, than it did in the previous 12 years.

The spoof paper was never actually published, as the authors did not pay the article processing charges, but we have archived a copy of the paper, which is available here.

2. Experiential Learning in Secondary Education Chemistry Courses: A Significant Life Experiences Framework

The title of this paper is intriguing, in that it could easily be the title of a legitimate scientific paper, but the tell tale signs are there immediately after that.

If you familiar with the TV series Breaking Bad, the author names should leap off the page at you. Bradley C. Allf is the person who submitted the paper (to US-China Education Review A) but the other two authors (Jesse B. Pinkman and Walter H. White) are characters from the show.

The paper, essentially (loosely), follows the story line of the show.

You can read about the story of the spoof paper, in an article written by the author (Allf) and we have also written about it, but with a focus on the journal/publisher, rather than the paper.

The paper is no longer available on the journal’s web site, although it was published for a while. We have archived the paper and you can download it from here.

3. What's the Deal with Birds?

This is a great example of a spoof paper. We love the abstract:

“Many people wonder: what’s the deal with birds? This is a common query. Birds are pretty weird. I mean, they have feathers. WTF? Most other animals don’t have feathers. To investigate this issue, I looked at some birds. I looked at a woodpecker, a parrot, and a penguin. They were all pretty weird! In conclusion, we may never know the deal with birds, but further study is warranted.“

,,, but our favorite part of the paper is the acknowledgement which says:

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

To be honest, though, the entire paper is worth a read.

The paper was submitted to Scientific Journal of Research and Reviews and was published, even being assigned a DOI (10.33552/SJRR.2020.02.000540), but it has since been withdrawn and the DOI is no longer valid.

The paper attracted some publicity and we have mentioned this paper in one of our previous articles.

The paper is no longer available, but we have archived a copy.

4. Rooter: A Methodology for the Typical Unification
of Access Points and Redundancy

This paper was generated using “SCIgen – An Automatic CS Paper Generator“. This was way before ChaptGPT.

 

The paper was accepted, albeit for a non-peer reviewed session at the conference, and a fee was requested.

 

We mention this paper in a previous article of ours and the authors provide more detail on the SCIgen web site, which includes correspondence with the conference.

Comments

We find the topic of sting/spoof papers interesting. Unfortunately, there is not any evidence that they do any good. The journals we mention above are still active and do not seem to have suffered from accepting an obviously spoof paper (Kendall, 2021).

 

Some authors (Teixeira da Silva, J.A., 2021) even go as far as saying that sting papers are unethical. They state:

“COPE, ICMJE and CSE are thus urged to rapidly and urgently reform their guidelines to recognize this serious growing threat to the integrity of academic literature, biomedical and other, to specifically indicate that sting papers, or any published document or paper for that matter, that carries any false element (fake name, fake email, fake affiliation, false or concocted content) is unethical, without exception.“

 

It would make an interesting study to identify all the sting/spoof papers that have been submitted and to see what (if any) effect it had on the journal/conference.

 

Article history

Where an article has been updated since first being written, we provide a history of the changes. Why? Why not :-).

  1. The original article was published on 26 February 2023.
  2. The article was updated on 28 July 2023. We removed a profanity (at least, putting in special characters) we we felt that search engines did not like it.
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Beall’s papers on our Only Connect wall

Jeffrey Beall and four of his papers

We recently tweeted an “Only Connect” wall, where we challenged you to put sixteen clues into four groups.

This article looks at one of the groups, discussing that group in a little more detail.

Before we begin

If you don’t know about Only Connect, take a look at the article we wrote which describes the BBC quiz show and also explains why we are attracted to to and which parts of the show we draw from.

 

The Only Connect wall that we presented and from which this article draws from can be seen here. It presents the wall and the answer.

The connection

The connection between these four papers (see Figure 1) is that they were all written by Jeffrey Beall, who is credited with coining the term “Predatory Publishing“

 

Jeffrey Beall papers on our first Only Connect wall
Figure 1: Jeffrey Beall papers, one of the answers to our first Only Connect wall

In this article we provide more details about the papers, as well as few more resources, should you want to read more abour Jeffrey Beall andthe legacy has has left.

The papers

If you are interested in the papers listed in Figure 1, here are the details.

  1. Beall, J. 2009. Bentham Open. The Charleston Advisor 11(1) 29-32 (Access article here)
  2. Beall J. 2013. Medical Publishing Triage – Chronicling Predatory Open Access Publishers. Ann Med Surg (Lond) 2(2):47-9. DOI: 10.1016/S2049-0801(13)70035-9
  3. Beall J. 2015. What the Open-Access Movement Doesn’t Want You to Know. American Association of University Professors, May-June 2015 (Access article here)
  4. Beall J. 2017. What I Learned from Predatory Publishers. Biochem Med (Zagreb) 27(2):273-278. DOI: 10.11613/BM.2017.029

Paper #01

We want to specifically mention the first paper. This was Beall’s first paper that addressed predatory publishing, although he a never used the term in that paper. We had to wait until 2010 for that.

 

As this was his first paper, we have written an article that discusses this paper in a little more detail. This article also provides a little more detail about the publisher that Beall analyzed – Bentham Open.

More information

If you want more details about Jeffrey Beall, and the legacy he left, you might want to take a look at the following resources.

  1. Kendall 2021, presents legacy left by Beall, including his first papers on predatory publishing, Beall’s List and a bibliography of 40 of Beall’s papers on predatory publishing.
  2. Kendal and Linacre, 2022 revisited four of Beall’s papers, in which he analyzed 18 publishers, categorizing all but one of them as predatory. Bentham Open (the first paper listed above) was the first of four papers that were all published in The Charleston Advisor. Kendall and Linacre’s paper was written ten years after Beall’s analysis and it is interesting to see how the publishers have changed, or no longer exist.
  3. Jeffrey Beall is probably most well known for Beall’s List (a list of predatory publishers and journals). We have published an article titled “What is Beall’s List? | Why was it shut down?“
  4. As we mentioned above, we have also published an article that discusses Beall’s first paper which addressed predatory publishing.
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Predatory Publishing papers, from a Nursing perspective

Four papers that have discussed predatory publishing and nursing

We recently posted an “Only Connect” wall, where we challenged you to put sixteen clues into four groups.

 

This article looks at one of the groupings (four papers that addressed predatory publishing and nursing) and provides a little more detail.

 

Before we begin

If you don’t know about Only Connect, take a look at the article we wrote which describes the BBC quiz show and also explains why we are attracted to it and which parts of the show we draw from.

 

The Only Connect wall that we presented, and from which this article draws from, can be seen here.

The connection

The connection between the four papers (see Figure 1) is that they all address the problem of predatory publishing and they look at the problem from the perspective of nursing.

 

Nursing papers on our first Only Connect wall
Figure 1: Nursing papers, one of the answers to our first Only Connect wall

The papers

If you are interested in the papers listed in Figure 1, here are the details.

  1. Gabrielsson S, Eriksson S, Godskesen T. 2021. Predatory nursing journals: A case study of author prevalence and characteristics. Nursing Ethics. 28(5):823-833. DOI:10.1177/0969733020968215
  2. Watson R. 2018. Predatory publishing continues. Nursing Open. 6(1):4. DOI: 10.1002/nop2.226
  3. Oermann MH, Nicoll LH, Carter-Templeton H, Woodward A, Kidayi PL, Neal LB, Edie AH, Ashton KS, Chinn PL, Amarasekara S. Citations of articles in predatory nursing journals. 2019. Nursing Outlook. 67(6):664-670. DOI: 10.1016/j.outlook.2019.05.001
  4. Oermann MH, Nicoll LH, Chinn PL, Ashton KS, Conklin JL, Edie AH, Amarasekara S, Williams BL. 2018. Quality of articles published in predatory nursing journals. Nursing Outlook. 66(1):4-10. DOI: 10.1016/j.outlook.2017.05.005

Why nursing?

Why have we specifically focused on nursing? The simple answer is why not? But a longer answer is that nursing does seem to publish more than most disciplines on predatory publishing. To get some solid facts/figures, we searched on Scopus (we tend to use Scopus as this has more publications indexed that Clarivate).

Scopus search

There are many ways we could search for predatory publishing that address nursing. We decided to search for the three terms “Predatory Publishing“, “Predatory Journals” or “Predatory Publisher” (the quotes are part of the search terms) in the article title, abstract or keywords. We also searched for “Nursing” or “Nurse“, again in the article title, abstract or keywords (the quotes are not needed this time, but we included them anyway).

The (advanced) search term, if you want to try it yourself, is:

(TITLE-ABS-KEY(“Predatory Publishing”) OR TITLE-ABS-KEY(“Predatory Journals”) OR TITLE-ABS-KEY(“Predatory Publisher”)) AND (TITLE-ABS-KEY(“Nursing”) OR TITLE-ABS-KEY(“Nurse”))

Search results

The above search returned 60 results (the search was done on 18 Feb 2023). The complete list of papers is at the end of this article.

Publications by year

Figure 1 shows the spread of publications, by year.

Number of predatory publications and nursing, by year
Figure 1: Number of predatory publications and nursing, by year

It is interesting to see that in the first year (2015) that this topic was addressed, 17 papers were published. It is also interesting to see that in the past three years (2020-2022), there has been a decrease in the number of papers published. We are unsure why there has been less research than previously. We also note that there have been no papers published (yet) in 2023.

Publications by journal

The 60 papers that have been published have appeared in 48 publications. Figure 2 shows the journals which have published more than one paper addressing predatory publishing and nursing. The other 40 publications have only published one article each; not that there is anything wrong with that. Indeed, it is good to see any publications that address this important topic.

Publications which have published more than one article on predatory publishing and nursing
Figure 2: Publications which have published more than one article on predatory publishing and nursing

Most prolific authors

About 90 authors have contributed to the 60 papers. Some of those authors have authored more than one paper. These authors, and the number of papers they have published are shown in Figure 3.

Authors who have published more than one paper on predatory publishing and nursing
Figure 3: Authors who have published more than one paper on predatory publishing and nursing

Most cited papers

It is always interesting to look at which papers have received the most citations, on the assumption that these are having the most impact.

 

Of course, you need to be a little careful as older papers will tend to attract more citations and there are some papers that may be cited for the wrong reasons.

 

Bearing in mind those caveats, Figure 4 shows the five most highly cited papers from the 60 papers that we have identified.

Top five papers on predatory publishing and nursing, with respect to citations received.
Figure 4: Top five papers on predatory publishing and nursing, with respect to the number of citations received

These five papers are in the complete list below, but for ease of reference, we list them here:

 

  1. Oermann M.H., Conklin J.L., Nicoll L.H., Chinn P.L., Ashton K.S., Edie A.H., Amarasekara S., Budinger S.C. 2016. Study of Predatory Open Access Nursing Journals. Journal of Nursing Scholarship 48(6),624-632 Link to publication
  2. Oermann M.H., Nicoll L.H., Chinn P.L., Ashton K.S., Conklin J.L., Edie A.H., Amarasekara S., Williams B.L. 2018. Quality of articles published in predatory nursing journals. Nursing Outlook 66(1),4-10 Link to publication
  3. Kearney M.H., Thorne S., Chinn P.L., Nicoll L.H., Pickler R., D’Antonio P., Connolly C., Peternelj-Taylor C., Welliver D., Don Baker J., Flanagin A., Bradley-Springer L., The INANE Predatory Publishing Practices Collaborative 2015. Predatory publishing: What authors need to know. Research in Nursing and Health 38(1),1-3 Link to publication
  4. McCann T.V., Polacsek M. 2018. False gold: Safely navigating open access publishing to avoid predatory publishers and journals. Journal of Advanced Nursing 74(4),809-817 Link to publication
  5. Lewinski A.A., Oermann M.H. 2018. Characteristics of e-mail solicitations from predatory nursing journals and publishers. Journal of Continuing Education in Nursing 49(4),171-177 Link to publication

The papers

Here is a list of the 60 papers that we found. There is a link to the paper, in case you want to read it (there is one paper that we could not locate, so cannot provide a link – #46).

The papers are sorted newest to oldest.

  1. Godskesen T., Eriksson S., Oermann M.H., Gabrielsson S. 2022. Predatory conferences: A systematic scoping review. BMJ Open 12(11) Link to publication
  2. Baker K.G. 2022. Unleash your inner author: Getting published in a professional nursing journal. Nursing 52(10),36-39 Link to publication
  3. Oermann M.H., Nicoll L.H., Carter-Templeton H., Owens J.K., Wrigley J., Ledbetter L.S., Chinn P.L. 2022. How to identify predatory journals in a search: Precautions for nurses. Nursing 52(4),41-45 Link to publication
  4. Conlogue B.C., Gilman N.V., Holmes L.M. 2022. Open access and predatory publishing: a survey of the publishing practices of academic pharmacists and nurses in the United States. Journal of the Medical Library Association 110(3),294-305 Link to publication
  5. Peng M.-T. 2021. Beware of wolves in sheep’s clothing: A brief introduction to open access and predatory journals. Journal of Nursing 68(6),91-98 Link to publication
  6. Broome M.E., Oermann M.H., Nicoll L.H., Waldrop J.B., Carter-Templeton H., Chinn P.L. 2021. Publishing in Predatory Journals: Guidelines for Nursing Faculty in Promotion and Tenure Policies. Journal of Nursing Scholarship 53(6),746-752 Link to publication
  7. Gabrielsson S., Eriksson S., Godskesen T. 2021. Predatory nursing journals: A case study of author prevalence and characteristics. Nursing Ethics 28(5),823-833 Link to publication
  8. Oermann M.H., Wrigley J., Nicoll L.H., Ledbetter L.S., Carter-Templeton H., Edie A.H. 2021. Integrity of Databases for Literature Searches in Nursing: Avoiding Predatory Journals. Advances in Nursing Science 44(2),102-110 Link to publication
  9. Collom C.D., Oermann M.H., Sabol V.K., Heintz P.A. 2020. An Assessment of Predatory Publication Use in Reviews. Clinical Nurse Specialist 34(4),152-156 Link to publication
  10. Oermann M.H., Nicoll L.H., Ashton K.S., Edie A.H., Amarasekara S., Chinn P.L., Carter-Templeton H., Ledbetter L.S. 2020. Analysis of Citation Patterns and Impact of Predatory Sources in the Nursing Literature. Journal of Nursing Scholarship 52(3),311-319 Link to publication
  11. Karatas N., Dalgic A.I. 2020. Effects of reflexology on child health: A systematic review. Complementary Therapies in Medicine 50 Link to publication
  12. Thomas S.P. 2020. No Laughing Matter: Proliferation of Predatory Journals. Issues in Mental Health Nursing 41(4),269-270 Link to publication
  13. Rawas H., de Beer J., Al Najjar H., Bano N. 2020. Falling prey to predatory journal: Experiences of nursing faculty. International Journal of Africa Nursing Sciences 13 Link to publication
  14. Oermann M.H., Nicoll L.H., Carter-Templeton H., Woodward A., Kidayi P.L., Neal L.B., Edie A.H., Ashton K.S., Chinn P.L., Amarasekara S. 2019. Citations of articles in predatory nursing journals. Nursing Outlook 67(6),664-670 Link to publication
  15. Bourgault A.M. 2019. Predatory journals: A potential threat to nursing practice and science. Critical Care Nurse 39(4),9-11 Link to publication
  16. Milton C.L. 2019. Predatory Publishing in Nursing. Nursing Science Quarterly 32(3),180-181 Link to publication
  17. Clarke P.N. 2019. Open or Conventional Access: Integrity in the Process. Nursing Science Quarterly 32(3),198-200 Link to publication
  18. Florczak K.L. 2019. The Nature of Truth: The Need for Peer Review. Nursing Science Quarterly 32(3),176-179 Link to publication
  19. Sanz Á., del Valle M.L. 2019. Predatory Publishing in Palliative Care. Journal of Pain and Symptom Management 57(6),e4-e5 Link to publication
  20. Owens J.K., Nicoll L.H. 2019. Plagiarism in Predatory Publications: A Comparative Study of Three Nursing Journals. Journal of Nursing Scholarship 51(3),356-363 Link to publication
  21. Ashton K.S. 2019. Teaching nursing students and nurses about predatory publishing. Journal of Nursing Education 58(11),627-631 Link to publication
  22. Edie A.H., Conklin J.L. 2019. Avoiding predatory journals: Quick peer review processes too good to be true. Nursing Forum 54(3),336-339 Link to publication
  23. Barroga E., Mitoma H. 2019. Improving scientific writing skills and publishing capacity by developing university-based editing system and writing programs. Journal of Korean Medical Science 34(1) Link to publication
  24. [No author name available] 2018. Watch Out for Emails From Predatory Publishers. Nurse educator 43(6),333 Link to publication
  25. Schulmeister L. 2018. Publishing in Oncology Nursing: A Look to the Past, Present, and Future. Seminars in Oncology Nursing 34(4),329-337 Link to publication
  26. Nahlen D., Clark S. 2018. The Publisher’s Perspective on Journal and Book Publishing. Seminars in Oncology Nursing 34(4),381-385 Link to publication
  27. Alexander M. 2018. Authors, Beware of Predatory Publishing. Journal of Infusion Nursing 41(5),277-278 Link to publication
  28. Young E.L., Paul S.P. 2018. Menace of predatory journals. British Journal of Nursing 27(10),532 Link to publication
  29. Mauk K.L. 2018. Predatory Journals: Author Beware!. Rehabilitation Nursing 43(3),125-126 Link to publication
  30. Umlauf M.G., Mochizuki Y. 2018. Predatory publishing and cybercrime targeting academics. International Journal of Nursing Practice 24 Link to publication
  31. Ryan-Wenger N.A. 2018. Predatory journals and their effect on the advancement of nursing science. Journal for Specialists in Pediatric Nursing 23(2) Link to publication
  32. Lewinski A.A., Oermann M.H. 2018. Characteristics of e-mail solicitations from predatory nursing journals and publishers. Journal of Continuing Education in Nursing 49(4),171-177 Link to publication
  33. McCann T.V., Polacsek M. 2018. False gold: Safely navigating open access publishing to avoid predatory publishers and journals. Journal of Advanced Nursing 74(4),809-817 Link to publication
  34. Power H. 2018. Predatory Publishing: How to Safely Navigate the Waters of Open Access. The Canadian journal of nursing research = Revue canadienne de recherche en sciences infirmieres 50(1),3-8 Link to publication
  35. Gerberi D.J. 2018. Predatory Journals: Alerting Nurses to Potentially Unreliable Content. American Journal of Nursing 118(1),62-65 Link to publication
  36. Oermann M.H., Nicoll L.H., Chinn P.L., Ashton K.S., Conklin J.L., Edie A.H., Amarasekara S., Williams B.L. 2018. Quality of articles published in predatory nursing journals. Nursing Outlook 66(1),4-10 Link to publication
  37. [No author name available] 2017. Don’t fall for predatory publishers. Nursing 47(10),6 Link to publication
  38. Pearson G.S. 2017. Avoiding Predatory Journals With “Think. Check. Submit.”. Journal of the American Psychiatric Nurses Association 23(4),239-240 Link to publication
  39. Relf M.V., Swanson B. 2017. Predatory Publishing: A Growing Threat to HIV Nursing?. Journal of the Association of Nurses in AIDS Care 28(3),303-305 Link to publication
  40. Oermann M.H., Conklin J.L., Nicoll L.H., Chinn P.L., Ashton K.S., Edie A.H., Amarasekara S., Budinger S.C. 2016. Study of Predatory Open Access Nursing Journals. Journal of Nursing Scholarship 48(6),624-632 Link to publication
  41. Masten Y.B., Ashcraft A.S. 2016. The dark side of dissemination: Traditional and open access versus predatory journals. Nursing Education Perspectives 37(5),275-277 Link to publication
  42. Baker J.D. 2016. Professional versus predatory publishing: Cautions for perioperative nurse authors. ACORN 29(4),48-49 Link to publication
  43. Betz C.L. 2016. Authors Beware: Open Access Predatory Journals. Journal of Pediatric Nursing 31(3),233-234 Link to publication
  44. Angelini D., Bakewell-Sachs S. 2015. Predatory Publishing: What Do Perinatal and Neonatal Nurses Need to Know. Journal of Perinatal and Neonatal Nursing 29(2),95-96 Link to publication
  45. Nolfi D.A., Lockhart J.S., Myers C.R. 2015. Predatory Publishing: What You Don’t Know Can Hurt You. Nurse Educator 40(5),217-219 Link to publication
  46. Hawks J.H. 2015. Predatory Publisher Statement. Urologic nursing 35(5),217-219
  47. Stone T.E., Rossiter R.C. 2015. Predatory publishing: Take care that you are not caught in the Open Access net. Nursing and Health Sciences 17(3),277-279 Link to publication
  48. Taylor R.B. 2015. What every medical writer needs to know: Questions and answers for the serious medical author. What Every Medical Writer Needs to Know: Questions and Answers for the Serious Medical Author ,1-220 Link to publication
  49. Baker J.D. 2015. Professional Versus Predatory Publishing: Cautions for Perioperative Nurse Authors. AORN Journal 101(6),599-601 Link to publication
  50. Bradley-Springer L. 2015. Predatory Publishing and You. Journal of the Association of Nurses in AIDS Care 26(3),219-221 Link to publication
  51. [No author name available] 2015. Predatory Publishers: What the Nursing Community Needs to Know. Journal of Perianesthesia Nursing 30(2),87-90 Link to publication
  52. Hill K.S. 2015. Predatory publishing: What nurse executives need to know. Journal of Nursing Administration 45(2),59-60 Link to publication
  53. Nicoll L.H. 2015. Predatory publisher statement. CIN – Computers Informatics Nursing 33(2),43-45 Link to publication
  54. Susan Carroll V. 2015. Watch out for the wolves: Predatory publishing. Journal of Neuroscience Nursing 47(1),1-2 Link to publication
  55. Kearney M.H., Thorne S., Chinn P.L., Nicoll L.H., Pickler R., D’Antonio P., Connolly C., Peternelj-Taylor C., Welliver D., Don Baker J., Flanagin A., Bradley-Springer L., The INANE Predatory Publishing Practices Collaborative 2015. Predatory publishing: What authors need to know. Research in Nursing and Health 38(1),1-3 Link to publication
  56. Sorrell J.M., Owens J.K. 2015. Ethics: Predatory publishing: Keeping the wolves from your office door. Online Journal of Issues in Nursing 20(3) Link to publication
  57. Roberts D. 2015. Author, beware! a look at the dangers of predatory publishing. MEDSURG Nursing 24(1),7 Link to publication
  58. INANE Predatory Publishing Practices Collaborative 2015. Predatory publishing: What editors need to know. CANNT journal = Journal ACITN 25(1),8-10 Link to publication
  59. Fitzpatrick J.J. 2015. Predatory journals: What nurse educators need to know. Nursing Education Perspectives 36(1),7 Link to publication
  60. Pearson G.S. 2015. Predatory Publishing Practices and Nurses. Perspectives in Psychiatric Care 51(1),1-2 Link to publication
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Only Connect: Our first wall

Only Connect Wall - Header image for article post

We recently started to create content based on Only Connect, the BBC quiz show. If you want to know more about Only Connect, or what motivates us to draw on this TV program, take a look at our previous article.

In this article we talk about the first wall that we developed. We show the wall we posted, along with the answer. We also briefly describe the answers but we will articles for each answer so that we can provide more detail.

The wall

Below is the wall we posted. It was posted on Twitter, with the following message:

 

“We are fans of @OnlyConnectQuiz and @VictoriaCoren, so thought we would set our own wall. Here are sixteen papers. Can you split them into four categories, each with four entries, and say why you have grouped them in that way? Answer soon. #PredatoryPublishing“

 

If you are interested, you can see the tweet here.

We posted this wall on Twitter on 08 Feb 2023 and let it run for a couple of days. We pinned it to the top of of profile, so that it got as much exposure as possible.

Only Connect Wall from Predatory Publishing
Our first Only Connect wall from Predatory Publishing

The answer

We posted the answer on the 10 Feb 2023, by presenting the same wall, but color coded to show which of the papers are connected to which others.

The connections

This is how the papers are connected to each other.

Our first Only Connect wall from Predatory Publishing (the answer)

These papers were all written by Jeffrey Beall.We have discussed Beall in (at least) two of our other articles (see here and here). The second link talks about the first paper in the images above, that is the paper titled Bentham Open.

These papers all addressed predatory publishing in the context of nursing. We will provide more details in a later article.

These papers are all spoof papers, or sting papers if you prefer that phrase. We have touched on these papers in one of our other articles. We will discuss the papers presented here, in more detail, in a future article.

These papers were all published in Learned Publishing, which is one of the leading journals with respect to publishing papers that address predatory publishing. We will provide more details in a future paper.

Final comments

The aim of this wall (and we hope future walls) is primarily educational. It is a way of presenting information, we hope, in a fun way that draws people in and wanting to know more.

 

We know that the 4×4 wall may not be the best way to present the information, as it may not be easy to see the individual elements. We are considering a 3×3 wall (three categories, with three entries each) to try and make them easier to see.

 

Using Only Connect walls as a way to present information also enables us to write follow up articles, which provides more details about each wall. We could do this in this article, but it could make the article too long and readers may only be interested in one element of the wall’s categories.

 

Let us know in the comments any views/thoughts you have.

Posted on

Only Connect: Monkeys and Big Bird

Predatory Publishing Only Connect Post (6 Feb 2023, 20:24)

We recently stated our intention to use the BBC quiz show as a way of presenting material in order to provide a way to inform/educate people about predatory publishing.

 

This article relates the first set of posts we did. We would really be interested in any feedback you have, as well as any advice/ideas you have.

The idea

For our first post, we decided to align it with when Only Connect was broadcast. The idea being that there might be people following the Only Connect Twitter feed at this time.

 

The program we followed was broadcast on 6 February at 20:00 (to 20:30) – UK time. We timed out posts at 20:00, 20:08, 20:16, 20:24 and 20:30. We made five posts to mirror the four clues that contestants get, followed by the answer (at 20:30).

 

We are also aware that Only Connect has (at the time of writing) 33.3K followers and the show’s presenter (Victoria Coren Mitchell) has 685.3K followers and, although they may not directly interact with us, it could help us reach a wider audience if we tag these two accounts.

The quiz

The following images are the clues we posted, starting at 20:00, through till 20:24. You can see the Twitter post by clicking on the link below each image and you can enlarge the image by clicking on it.

Predatory Publishing Only Connect Post (6 Feb 2023, 20:00)
Twitter Post (6 Feb 2023, 20:00)
Predatory Publishing Only Connect Post (6 Feb 2023, 20:08)
Twitter Post (6 Feb 2023, 20:08)
Predatory Publishing Only Connect Post (6 Feb 2023, 20:16)
Twitter Post (6 Feb 2023, 20:16)
Predatory Publishing Only Connect Post (6 Feb 2023, 20:24)
Twitter Post (6 Feb 2023, 20:24)

The challenge for you is to try and work out the relationship between these four images, or just keep reading :-).

The connection

The four images show:

  1. A scientific journal, called Scientific Journal of Research & Reviews
  2. A picture of a bird flying
  3. An image of a monkey at a typewriter
  4. A picture of Big Bird from Sesame Street

So, what does this refer to? It is actually a spoof paper that was submitted, accepted and published, although it has since been removed.

The paper was accepted by Scientific Journal of Research & Reviews (thus the first image).

The paper was entitled “What’s the Deal with Birds” (thus the second image).

For us, the highlight of this paper were the acknowledgements, which read “We thank Big Bird from Sesame Street for comments on the manuscript. Several trained monkeys transcribed videos” (thus the final two images).

If you want to see the paper, we have made it available here and we have spoken more about this spoof paper, along with a few others in one of our previous articles.

Our final tweet

You might also want to see the final tweet we sent (on 6 February at 20:30). Here it is.

Predatory Publishing Only Connect Post (6 Feb 2023, 20:30)
Twitter Post (6 Feb 2023, 20:30)

Final comments

The serious part of this article is to highlight that peer review was non-existent in this case. It is not just the acknowledgments, take a look at the abstract of the paper. It will raise a smile but the serious message is that, the paper cannot have been through peer review.

 

Scientific Journal of Research & Reviews is still an active journal. Its current issue is Volume 3, Issue 4 (as at 9 Feb 2023). The journal started publishing in October 2018. At the time of writing they had published 61 articles.

 

The journal is published by Iris Publishers. At the time of writing they are publishing 53 journals. This publisher is one that we plan to take a look at sometime in the future.

 

Posted on

Drawing inspiration from Only Connect

Only Connect Logo and BBC Screenshot

We are big fans of Only Connect and are thinking of drawing inspiration from this TV quiz show to help present some of our content and use this as a way to educate those who may not be familiar with predatory publishing and fake journals.

Only Connect

For those of you that are not familiar with Only Connect, it is a BBC UK quiz show. It is split over four rounds, and asks two competing teams to find connections between what, at first might appear, totally unrelated terms, pictures or music. The show is currently up to Series 18, so it is a long running (and popular) show.

If you want to know more about the program, take a look at Only Connect on Wikipedia.

As well as being broadcast on BBC, Only Connect is also available on You Tube. The video below is just one of the many episodes that are available.

What rounds are we interested in?

As we said above, Only Connect is split into four rounds. The first round presents four clues and asks the teams to guess the connection between them. The second round presents three clues and asks what might be the fourth clue. The third round presents sixteen clues on a wall, the challenge being to put those sixteen clues into four categories with a reason for doing so. The final round presents a series of clues, with the vowels missing and the contestants have to work out what the phrase is.

 

The rounds we are drawing inspiration from are those highlighted above (rounds one and three). If you want to watch these, take a look at 2′ 5” (Round 1) and 19′ 10” (Round 3) in the above video.

Finding the posts on Twitter

In addition to presenting the various Only Connect material here, we will also post about these on our Twitter feed. Specifically, we will use the hashtag #PPOnlyConnect, which you can access by following this link.

 

We have a confession to make. We did not use this hashtag for our first few posts, but we have added it as a comment (as you are unable to edit tweets). So, for those first few tweets, you will need to look at the thread to see the post. Sorry.

Ideas welcome

If you are familiar with Only Connect and have any ideas for material we can use for rounds one and three, please let us know in the comments below.