Fallout from the Hoax Article: Editor Resigns, OA Publishers Respond

Bentham Science is not a member of the OASPA, however

Norman Oder -- Library Journal, 6/15/2009

• OASPA reminds publishers of ethics
• Directory of journals still includes Bentham
• Davis: accountability still needed

News last week that a hoax article was accepted by a purportedly peer-reviewed Open Access journal published by Bentham Science has led to a resignation by the journal’s editor-in-chief as well as a call for ethical practices by the Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association (OASPA), which does not count Bentham as a member.

Cornell University librarian and graduate student Phil Davis successfully submitted a manuscript full of nonsense and credited to pseudonymous authors at The Center for Research in Applied Phrenology to The Open Information Science Journal (TOISCIJ). He chose the journal “[a]fter being spammed with invitations to publish in Bentham Science journals earlier this year.”

Editor's resignation
After Davis announced the hoax via the Scholarly Kitchen blog and others picked it up, Bambang Parmanto, editor-in-chief of the TOISCIJ, resigned, telling The Scientist he hadn’t seen the manuscript and he didn’t want to be taken advantage of.

He also asserted that Davis and fellow hoaxer Kent Anderson were not innocent, having contributed to the breakdown of trust. 

OASPA comments
Similarly, in a blog post titled Publishing ethics, open access, and OASPA, the organization called the submission a prank. 

The OASPA said, “We encourage all responsible open access publishers to participate in these organizations, to enforce their recommendations with respect to editorial good practice, and to apply for membership of OASPA.”  

What about the DOAJ?
Deborah Malone, Periodicals Librarian at the University of San Francisco, commented that, while Bentham Science is not a member of OASPA, its journals are listed in the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ). 

“Librarians look to “providers” such as the DOAJ to ensure the quality and trustworthiness of electronic content, as specified in the OASPA code of conduct and especially in open access journals,” she wrote. “As an academic librarian who is always ranting to students that the library is the place to find quality, authoritative, peer-reviewed journal content, how can I now trust that the journals in the DOAJ fulfill that criteria?”

Davis responds
For his part, Davis, writing on Yale University’s Liblicense-l electronic discussion list, criticized the OASPA for trying to reframe the story as a “prank.” He added, “There needs to be accountability in the system, especially if libraries and grant-funding agencies are so willing to provide publishing fees for open access ventures.”

Commenting on the original Scholarly Kitchen post, Gunther Eysenbach, editor-in-chief and publisher of the Journal of Medical Internet Research and writer of the Gunther Eysenbach Random Research Rants Blog, pointed to a March 2008 post Black sheep among Open Access Journals and Publishers, which included Bentham.

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