Dave Bacon is a theoretical ski bum who is also an 
Nature article on El Naschie. (See also The Case of M.S. El Naschie, Continued.)
Opening scene from the Nature article, the greatest of all euphemisms, "retirement" starts off the show
The editor of a theoretical-physics journal, who was facing growing criticism that he used its pages to publish numerous papers written by himself, is set to retire early next year.Scene two, the story so far:
Five of the 36 papers in the December issue of Chaos, Solitons and Fractals alone were written by its editor-in-chief, Mohamed El Naschie. And the year to date has seen nearly 60 papers written by him appear in the journal.Scene three: tensions rise. Peer reviewed or not peer reviewed, that is the question:
Most scientists contacted by Nature comment that El Naschie's papers tend to be of poor quality. Peter Woit, a mathematical physicist at Columbia University in New York, says he thinks that "it's plain obvious that there was either zero, or at best very poor, peer review, of his own papers". There is, however, little evidence that they have harmed the field as a whole.And then, my very favorite, scene four, a defense and a skeptical Nature reporter:
El Naschie, who was born in Cairo and now splits his time between England and Germany, rejects any charges of sloppy peer review. "Our papers are reviewed in the normal way expected from a scientific international journal published by a reputable international publisher," he told Nature in an e-mail signed by P. Cooper, who claimed to be a spokesperson for the editorial board of Chaos, Solitons and Fractals. Elsevier, which publishes the journal, is a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics, which holds that good editors "ensure that all published reports of research have been reviewed by suitably qualified reviewers"."in an e-mail signed by P. Cooper"? Priceless. But the villain, the villain, what does it have to say for itself:
On 25 November, Elsevier's director of corporate relations, Shira Tabachnikoff, wrote an e-mail to Nature saying: "Dr El Naschie's retirement as Editor-in-Chief of Chaos, Solitons and Fractals will be announced to readers in the first issue of 2009. Elsevier and Dr El Naschie have been in discussion for quite some time about the details of his retirement and the transitional arrangement for papers under review."No mention of what these actual procedures are. Maybe the procedures involve monitoring blogs for signs of abuse. That would be cost effective, if maybe a bad way to interact with your free laborers. Do the procedures perhaps involve having editors threaten legal action? Hm, I would think that a corporation which is a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics might want to begin by apologizing for the behavior of one of its editors, no? But maybe that's just me.In a separate e-mail Tabachnikoff wrote: "[We are] committed to supporting our editors in maintaining high standards for both the editorial and peer-review process. At times there may be discussions about particular scientific issues and fields, even at the level of individual editorial decisions. That is a part of the normal process of scientific publishing."
In other related news, amazingly the journal "Chaos, Solitons, and Self-publishing Editors Fractals", has a higher impact factor than all mathematics journals. We can therefore declare, with absolute definitive authority, that all of the mathematics is of less quality that "Chaos, Solitons and Fractals."
Comments
Honestly I have a problem with journals published by a for-profit corporation to begin with unless it's something like "IBM Technical Notes" or something like that. I tend to think non-profit societies are the better place for journals, but I also think peer review in general is in a very slow decline, particularly with the advent of the arXiv. Some string theorists were supposedly publishing exclusively on the arXiv over a decade ago.
Posted by: Ian Durham | December 2, 2008 9:31 PM
Perhaps this is a good place to mention that Springer deleted the arxiv references from a paper Sean and I recently published in ICALP. I corrected this on the proofs and they neither replied nor made the changes.
It made me realize that referencing journals at all is just a polite fiction that most of us subscribe to. Really we should only reference the arxiv, since that's what we actually read.
Posted by: aram | December 3, 2008 11:56 AM
Aram,
Good grief. That's ridiculous. And unethical. I wonder if Springer is a member of "Committee on Publication Ethics"?
Posted by: Dave Bacon | December 3, 2008 6:42 PM
Oops - I spoke too soon. After I complained a third time, cc'ing a random senior editor, I got a reply saying that it was not their policy, but a technical error and that they'd be happy to print an erratum for our article.
Posted by: Aram | December 4, 2008 9:28 AM
Aram you should make them print the erratum. I mean sure you won't make any friends at Springer, but still that would be one awesome erraturm. One you could show the grandkids :)
Posted by: Dave Bacon | December 4, 2008 11:40 AM