I would be astonished to discover that self-citation is restricted to OA publications, so Kevin and I find ourselves in the unfamiliar situation of agreeing with one another. But there is a different question buried here: is the problem self-citation or the inclusion of self-citation in measuring impact? I would think that self-citation is a natural act, like admiring your own children, but there is no reason to include these citations in measuring impact. Joe Esposito On Sun, Jun 23, 2013 at 4:54 PM, LIBLICENSE <[log in to unmask]> wrote: > From: Kevin Smith <[log in to unmask]> > Date: Fri, 21 Jun 2013 15:04:03 +0000 > > This blog post made me curious. Surely gaming the impact factor is a > practice we should be made aware of in the academic library world, > since impact is a selling point for subscriptions. So are there > subscription journals on this list, or are such "predatory practices" > really confined to open access publishing? > > The Nature blog post initially led me to think that, regardless of > business model, these were very obscure journals. They cite two > specific titles, and it is probably fair to call the Iranian Journal > of Fuzzy Systems obscure, at least to Western academics. It is > apparently published by an Iranian university. But the other one > named, the International Journal of Crashworthiness, is published by > Taylor and Francis, so is likely part of a journal package sold to > many universities. Knowing that made me more curious. > > I selected a random sample of fifteen of these titles to see who > published them. While it would be unfair to blame the publishers for > all of the practices that caused Thomson Reuters to ban these titles, > knowing their sources can at least give us a better idea of the scope > of the problem of dubious publishing practices. So from my random > sample of fifteen titles, here is a breakdown of who the publishers of > these banned titles are: > > * Only one of the fifteen is a purely open access journal, published > by an association and not on Beall's list of predatory OA > publications. The remainder appear to be subscription journals, most > with a "hybrid" paid OA option. > > * One other, in addition to the OA title mentioned above, is published > by an association. > > * Four are published by small presses of which I have not heard before > (a subjective classification, I know). > > * The remaining nine titles from my sample are published by four of > the large commercial academic publishers: Taylor and Francis (2), Sage > (3), Elsevier (2), and Springer (2). > > This breakdown confirms my impression that we need to have a broader > discussion about publishing ethics and good stewardship of academic > resources rather than focusing our attention only on misbehaving open > access publishers. > > Kevin L. Smith, M.L.S., J.D. > Director, Copyright and Scholarly Communication > Duke University Libraries > P.O. Box 90193 > Durham, NC 27708 > [log in to unmask] > > > -----Original Message----- > From: Pamela Puryear <[log in to unmask]> > Date: Thu, 20 Jun 2013 10:35:14 -0400 > > > http://blogs.nature.com/news/2013/06/new-record-66-journals-banned-for-boosting-impact-factor-with-self-citations.html > > Pamela E. Puryear, MA, MLS, CCRM > NCARS Resource Manager > North Carolina Agricultural Research Service (NCARS) > -- Joseph J. Esposito Processed Media [log in to unmask] @josephjesposito +Joseph Esposito