> There was a big article about peer review 
> in Science magazine recently.   I wish I 
> could share it to the list, but all I can do 
> is give you a brief synopsis and the citation.

It would be stunningly counterproductive to their agenda if "Science" made
the error of paywalling their trumped-up "expose" of known-utterly bogus
journals in their attempt to discredit all open-access journals.  The
article is here:

http://sciencemag.org/content/342/6154/60.full
http://tinyurl.com/ojf9nwa

Moreso than any other institution, the print journal "Science" fears the new
open-access journals, mostly online, lower-overhead affairs set up by
researchers to bypass the paywalls of "Science", "Nature" and the others,
and make their work more widely available from day of publication

So it is no surprise that "Science" was able to "discover" what has been
already well-discussed for some time among the boutiques that produce fine
research, and the connoisseurs who consume it: a large number of Asian
journals that have no more peer review than the Ladies' Home Journal
(lhj.com), yet charge a steep fee to researcher-authors to cover
"publication costs".  "Science" deliberately neglected to mention the other
half of the equation, a thriving industry of ghost-writers to churn out fake
papers for (mostly) clients in China, where "publish or perish" has sparked
a "free-market solution", where bogus papers, published in bogus journals,
make for longer CVs, and thereby better-paid careers.

http://www.theworldofchinese.com/2013/09/exorcising-chinas-100-million-ghost
writing-industry/\
http://tinyurl.com/nktmhj2

I think it is safe to say that very very few who work the day shift at the
idea factories outside mainland China would be fooled - the scheme is
clearly intended as closed-loop system aimed at curriculum vitae expansion
for a price, rather than a trap for unwary researchers looking to publish
legitimate work, or a vehicle to get fraudulent or substandard work
published.  "Science" tries to paint a cautionary tale, and smear the
competition that will surely kill them in time, but anyone submitting a
paper for publication in a Journal without first checking its Thomson
Reuters Impact Factor gets exactly what they deserve.

But even "impact factor" is less authoritative than it might seem at first
glance:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC141186/
http://tinyurl.com/822h26l

I don't think anyone in the bee research community is at risk of falling
victim to a scam journal, as bee research is too small a field to make for a
profitable scam journal.  But this >>IS<< an elegant solution to the age-old
problem of where to publish all those toxicology studies!  They are required
by the EPA, but fewer and fewer legit journals want to publish such
mind-numbing stuff, due to a lack of interest anywhere outside the EPA.

Also, the "grain of salt" is that we should recall that "Science" published
the paper "A Metagenomic Survey of Microbes in Honey Bee Colony Collapse
Disorder" in Sept 2007 with great fanfare, only to have those conclusions
soundly and thoroughly refuted by "Historical presence of Israeli Acute
Paralysis Virus in the United States" (American Bee Journal, November 2007).
That must have stung a bit.






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