Comments on: New Open Access Paleontology Journal

By: Richard Parker

Richard Parker — Sat, 05 Jan 2008 09:06:34 +0000

Anonymous – You’ve confirmed what I suspected, they’re a fly-by-night attempt at being scientific vanity publishers.All these shysters adopt ‘respectable names’ – think Franklin Mint, Linkin Park, Harper Adams University College, Roosevelt Hotel New York, etc.If poor old Jeremy Bentham had a grave, he’d be turning in it.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Sat, 05 Jan 2008 03:18:00 +0000

I’d be curious to know what paleontologists think of this journal. I’m familiar with the publisher’s “Open Mathematics Journal” and think it is complete garbage. A vast editorial board, of whom I only recognized one name. Policies that are radically different from any other math journal I’ve ever seen (such as a preference for Word format). “Publication fees” that are totally out of the norm in mathematics. As far as I can tell, no actual published articles although they have been spamming me about the journal for some time. As an extra tacky touch, they proudly mention “Indexed in Google, Google Scholar” as if this were a mark of distinction; it makes me suspect that they are not indexed by the mathematics review journals (Math Reviews or Zentralblatt) although I haven’t worked up the energy to check.As far as I can tell, Bentham is mass producing Open X Journals for all fields X. What I’d like to know is whether they are all junk (as I suspect) or if sometimes they actually get a good editor in chief who manages to create a real journal. Perhaps in a field that is used to “publication fees”…

By: Richard Parker

Richard Parker — Sat, 05 Jan 2008 00:17:26 +0000

Thank God you didn’t do it. You can’t spell maths or encyclopaedia properly!And I’m not sure ‘The People’ would take kindly to such an enterprise. If they can’t tell the difference between liberty, freedom, democracy and the lack or losing of them, do you really think they’ve been encouraged or educated to have respect, or the desire to learn much about maths and physics?What percentage is it of the American people who think the sun goes round the earth?

By: Blake Stacey

Blake Stacey — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 23:48:08 +0000

Back in 2006, some frustrated Wikipedians and I were going to start “The People’s Encyclopedia of Math and Physics”.

By: Laelaps

Laelaps — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 23:12:17 +0000

Cool!

By: Richard Parker

Richard Parker — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 23:11:35 +0000

It’s no people’s journal; more a vanity publisher (you pay to publish). The link on their homepage doesn’t work, so it looks as if they have nothing to publish yet. Looks like a hopper onto the PloS bandwagon.And they can’t spell palaeontology correctly, either. They probably even pronounce it paley-ontology.Still, I’ll try them out with my hypothesis that Jurassic and Cretaceous ammonites are really the remains of small mammmoths with very curly tusks- if I can still find the paper under overlying strata of even more junk.They probably have to pay peer-reviewers, handsomely, but I’ll slip mine past by getting a couple of my creationist paley-o mates to review it for free.