Our method is to listen to researchers with special expertise

●Discussion Working Committee of the National Publishing Committee

The National Publication Committee takes all reports of concern seriously. Then we listen to researchers with special expertise. If there is new information, we can evaluate it again.

Per Revseth and Morton Oxvold In Khrono addresses important concerns about – Lack of quality assurance in some magazines. It also provides new information about a specific journal that will be re-evaluated by the Publications Committee. At the same time, it is not the case that every interest in the magazine's liquidation ends up in the channel register.

Morten Oxwald He sent a large number of comments to the channel log about journals where he was concerned about quality and quality control procedures. The Publication Committee took these matters seriously and evaluated these journals in line with our routine procedures. We were also really interested in the methods Oxwald uses and invited him to meetings to learn more about them.

The publishing committee collects Always seek advice from our specialist committees when we receive messages of concern. When we involved expert committees in assessing Oxwald's concerns, we revealed weaknesses in the method he uses to identify lack of quality in journals.

Oksvold uses, among others Searching for phrases in journal databases to detect suspicious practices. The majority of Oxwald's concerns can be linked to a phrase search that yields results on the following metadata: “Research data is not shared” and “No data was used for the research described in the article.”

This is the standard response in the drop-down menu in Elsevier's submission portal, and is used by many of their journals. In an inquiry to the Publications Committee, Elsevier wrote:

Data statement “No data were used for the research described in the article” is a standard answer available from the drop-down menu in our Editorial Manager (EM) manuscript submission system and should not be interpreted as a sign of problematic behavior or poor quality. The author must select one of the options available in EM regarding research data/code in order to complete their submission.”

Used by other publishers The corresponding solution for its magazines. There may be errors in the articles that mentioned this, but there is nothing in itself to indicate that the magazine is not serious. There are also a number of journals that publish general articles where it is not appropriate to share data.

The Oxfold method has No major weaknesses. The method casts a fairly large net. It captures bad journals, but also a number of journals that are assessed by our expert panels as good. Professional evaluation becomes important here.

The publishing committee We discussed the experiences we gained in a meeting with Morten Oxwald (November 2023). At this meeting, we provided feedback that we greatly value the commitment, but we see weaknesses in the method with the main problem being the criteria it uses to identify problematic conditions. We have emphasized our routines, which include listening to professionally close panels of journals when we get advice. We challenged him to test his methods in industry journals, so that together we could gain some experience and improve the method until it was more accurate. This invitation is still open.

It's demanding a statement Junk magazines. We in the publishing committee are happy to provide advice and develop better methods for detecting lack of quality. We also have a dialogue with publishers on this topic. At the same time, in the future we will also involve thematic committees in the evaluation work, as they know better the subject and botanical journal traditions in the respective subject areas.

As for the magazine fuel We note that there is new information that makes us want to look into this issue again. Evaluating journals is an ongoing activity. The journal may change its character, or new information may become available. They will then be taken for a new evaluation.