Getting published in respectable academic journals—and the more the better—is an absolute must for obtaining rare tenure-track jobs in universities and colleges, but beginning academics so desperate to get in print could end up being scammed by peer-review fraud syndicates, academic journals, academic book mills, and pay-to-play conferences where everyone is “accepted” and whose “proceedings” just get stapled together into a glorified but practically useless pamphlet.
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Education columnist Rebecca Schuman made this warning in the November 24, 2014 issue of
Slate Magazine, recalling her own frustrating experience as a graduate student many years back to make exacting revisions to a journal article that she had hoped would see print. When she mentioned the stressful enterprise to an old friend, however, Schuman got floored by the friend’s response: “What does this article do for you? Like, will you get paid so much when it comes out that you can support yourself?”
Not at all, Schuman had to admit: “To the contrary: Not only would I be writing the article for free, I would also be paying the journal $5 for every copy of it I wanted. Further, I explained, some scholars regularly pay even more to have their work appear in print—from mandatory association membership fees to the $3,000 it takes to get your work out from behind a paywall so that more than three people can read it.” In short, she was about to fall for a scam and was glad that the conversation with the friend opened her eyes and prevented her from proceeding to become its victim.
“Happily, a counter-trend arose in resistance,” Schuman reports in retrospect. “Academics began submitting robotically-generated gibberish papers to these ‘conferences’ and ‘journals,’ and then blowing the whistle when they were ‘peer-reviewed’ and ‘accepted.’ It’s a great service and a hilarious distraction, and I hope that scholars everywhere keep doing it.”
Read Rebecca Schuman’s “The Bogus Academic Journal Racket Is Officially Out of Control” in Slate now!
