Thursday, April 19, 2012

Elsevier Pranked


Elsevier is a very large publisher of scientific and medical journals.  It has been boycotted recently by a number of high-profile scientists due to its high subscription prices for individual journals, bundling subscriptions to journals of different value and importance, and Elsevier's support for SOPA, PIPA, and the Research Works Act.[44][45][46]  A couple of years back, this paper  appeared in one of its journals.

Note the emails of the corresponding authors:
Now the paper has been retracted because it “contains no scientific content".   Obviously something the editors should have picked up, though some see a deeper significance to the debate over Elsevier's business model in the fact that Elsevier is charging $39.95 to let you read the retraction notice to a paper that it has acknowledged to be worthless.

2 comments:

Dr.Dawg said...

Makes me feel a lot better about the Sokal affair.

bigcitylib said...

Very good point.