A Poll for OA Readers: Intechweb vs. Chinese Medicine
The point of having a blog is to write musings that do not get pre-publication peer review, but court public opinion in the form of comments. This week, I offer you a poll. First, an explanation.
I just read “Chinese Medicine simply does not belong in the company of respectable scientific journals” in a recent Forbes Science Business blog post, which concludes “BMC should be embarrassed to be publishing journals that promote anti-scientific theories and otherwise muddy the literature. By supporting these journals, they undermine the credibility of many excellent BMC journals.”
Apparently, herbal medicine, health food, clinical nutrition, acupuncture, Tui-na, Qi-qong, Tai Chi Quan, and energy research are not everyone’s acceptable biomedical research topics. Still, Chinese Medicine has a clearly identified editorial board and states a commitment to peer review:
Only manuscripts of high relevance and suitability will enter into the peer review process, which will be conducted by at least two internationally known experts in the field, and will aim to ensure that all published manuscripts provide new scientific knowledge.
I contrast this questionable science with credible editorial support and a peer review process with my favorite target of late, the publisher InTech or IntechWeb.
As I have stated in my my past postings about InTech, without consistent and credible peer review and lacking careful editorial oversight, their publishing house is hollow, little more than a quickie pay-for-quick-turn-around operation wrapped in the noble cloak of open access. Last fall their blog spun quite a tale of few if any reasons to trust peer reviewing and even question its necessity.
So which is more embarrassing: questionable science with credible editing and peer review, or vanity publishing with predator tendencies? Please vote. The results will be published in two weeks.
