Thread by @tomkalei

Ever wondered what a fake journal in #mathematics looks like? Follow me down the rabbit hole. I'll show you one that slipped on the slippery slope of #goldOA. #openScience #math #fakeJournal #openAccess. 👇🧵

Let me introduce you to ejpam.com/index.php/ejpa…, the European Journal of Pure and Applied Mathematics (EJPAM).

It's run by a company in Maryland, USA called "New York Business Global". This is their homepage: nybusinessglobal.com

Let's look at some characteristics of EJPAM first. The title is quite generic because many people consider "pure" and "applied" to be a dichotomy. On the other hand, Elsevier publishes a credible journal called "Journal of pure and applied algebra".

According to the homepage, some keywords for this math journal are: "corona", "normal", "Clive Granger", "zeros" and "0".

The logo is a bit curious and the aim of the journal is "to provide a medium by which a wide range of experience can be exchanged among researchers from diverse fields such as engineering, natural sciences or social sciences."

The editors-in-chief are Eyüp Çetin and Baris Kiremitci. You can do your own Google search. Baris' LinkedIn profile shows a few interesting projects. Keep these in mind. Let's just note that they don't sport Oberwolfach pictures on their homepages. mfo.de/about-the-inst…

Let's check out the ADVISORY EDITORS. It’s a remarkable list which contains not 1 or 2, but 7 dead people (among them John F. Nash)! Well, I guess they cannot really ask for their names to be removed? ejpam.com/index.php/ejpa…

Among the people still alive are several Nobel Laureates like Paul Milgrom and Eric Maskin. The rest of the board contains high ranked mathematicians, all of whom (I suspect) don't know or don't care about being on this list.

Certainly, these people are NEVER bothered or involved at all with the business of running this thing.

Further down we find the AREA EDITORS. Now these must be the people actually doing editorial work, right? Well, no. This is another row of people who actually exist, have homepages, just not the Nobel laureates.

A few years ago, I emailed a couple of people on this list (who are not on it anymore). They were all very surprised. Some had no idea about this, some had been contacted by the editors-in-chief by mail long ago, said something like "maybe" and then never heard about it again.

None had ever done any business handling paper or had been in contact with the journal in the last years.

The deal seems to be that you get on this list somehow by drinking coffee in the same room as one of the editors-in-chief or what not. Then you never hear about this again. If you find out and ask to be removed, they remove you.

Now we get down to the ASSOCIATE EDITORS. This is the last list, so maybe these people actually do the business. I don't know. Most of these people seem to exist. Some of them have homepages, although some do research on knee surgery, it seems.

How do people end up on this list? I think most people are tricked into being on this list either because they are young, and it is the first time they are asked to join an editorial board. (What an honor!!!) or they are old, don’t care (academic cultures vary and don’t check.

From time to time, this Journal scores massive, like this one press release from 2017 that is still their number one news item: inet.ox.ac.uk/news/new-publi…. I think it is telling that this Oxford U news contains the word "inforamtion" and is copied from the journal homepage.

Now finally, let's look at the PAPERS! The journal publishes four numbers per year, with about 30 papers per issue for between 100 and 200 papers a year. This is #goldOA for $800 per paper (cheap!!) so you can compute the bottom line.

Fun fact: If you submit a paper and withdraw later, they will still charge you $400 fee for the valuable time of their editors and referees. You can also buy a service called "Fast track review" for an additional $400. I wonder what that entails… ?

Their peer-review process is described here:
ejpam.com/index.php/ejpa…
... and I screenshotted this page just to make sure:

How should we judge the quality of the papers in general? When I give you a hard legit math paper from Inventiones (a TOP math journal), one from EJPAM, and one from Mathgen, the random math paper generator, how long will it take you to find out which is which?

Well one curious thing is that some authors at least seem to like the journal A LOT and the journal also loves them (check out the titles !!):

Here are a few characteristics of fake journals to guide you: Completely unreasonable editorial board with Nobel laureates: ✅ Mostly unknown authorship: ✅. Language on the homepage targets authors, not readers: ✅.

Appearance of association with high profile institutions that is not real upon inspection✅: The journal is #goldOA, but requires a complete copyright transfer: ✅

A few more general remarks: The journal runs on the #openSource editorial system pkp.sfu.ca/ojs/ which makes it super easy for everyone to run their own journals. Seems like a dual use technology now, heh?

Indexing services are swamped with newly created journals. EJPAM claims to be indexed by Web of Science, Clarivate, SCOPUS, Math Reviews. The last one is run by the very reputable @amermathsoc and it's true that EJPAM is indexed.

At some point they were also indexed by our friends at @zbMATH, but fortunately they stopped in 2019: zbmath.org/serials/?q=eur…

My impression is that in 2008 when this journal started, the editors may have had good intentions and a credible vision for their endeavor. Still, they are complete outsiders to the math community, especially at this level. Business must be hard to impossible.

You can check out the evolution of the editorial board on the Wayback Machine ​​web.archive.org/web/2007110520….
I think it is telling a story.

More information about #fakeScience is in this talk (in German but with english subtitles) by the fabulous @sveckert and co
media.ccc.de/v/35c3-9744-in…

I'll stop here. Thanks for reading, and please stand up for the integrity of science! ✊

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