Want to Get Published in a Science Journal? Just Dole out Some Cash
December 7, 2016
A Canadian, Tom Spears has managed to publish a heavily plagiarized paper in a science journal by paying some cash. Getting published in a scientific and medical journal helps in advancing the career. ‘
In an article published by SlashDot titled Science Journals Caught Publishing Fake Research For Cash, the author says:
In 2014, journalist Tom Spears intentionally wrote “the world’s worst science research paper…a mess of plagiarism and meaningless garble” — then got it accepted by eight different journals. He did it to expose journals which follow the publish-for-a-fee model, “a fast-growing business that sucks money out of research, undermines genuine scientific knowledge, and provides fake credentials for the desperate.
This is akin to students enlisting services of hackers over Dark Web to manipulate their grades and attendance records. However, in this case, there is no need of Dark Web or Tor browser. Paying some cash is sufficient.
The root of the problem can be traced to OMICS International, an India-based publishing firm that is buying publication companies of these medical journals and publishing whatever is sent to them for cash. In standard practice, the paper needs to be peer-reviewed and also checked for plagiarism before it is published. As written earlier, the separation line between the Dark and Open web seems to be thinning and one day will disappear altogether.
Vishal Ingole, December 7, 2016
Half of Online News Produced by Just Ten Publishers
May 19, 2016
The wide-open Internet was supposed to be a counterweight to the consolidation of news media into fewer and fewer hands. Now, though, PublishersDaily reports that “10 Publishers Account for Half of All Online News.” The article cites a recent study from SimilarWeb, which examined 2015’s top online news publishers, on both mobile and desktop platforms. Writer Erik Sass summarizes:
“Overall, the top 10 publishers — together owning around 60 news sites — account for 47% of total online traffic to news content last year, with the next-biggest 140 publishers accounting for most of the other half, SimilarWeb found.
“The biggest online news publisher for the U.S. audience was MSN, owner of MSN.com, with just over 27 billion combined page views across mobile and desktop, followed by Disney Media Networks, owner of ESPN and ABC News, with 25.9 billion.
“Time Warner, owner of CNN and Bleacher Report, had 14.8 billion, followed by Yahoo with 10.3 billion, and Time, Inc. with 10.2 billion.
“A bit further down the totem poll were CBS Corp., owner of Cnet.com, with 9.9 billion combined page views; NBC Universal, with 9.5 billion; Matt Drudge, with 8.5 billion; Advance Publications, with 8 billion; and Fox Entertainment Group, owner of Fox News, with 7.9 billion.”
Sass goes on to cover page views for specific publications and outlines which outfits are leading in mobile. Interestingly, it seems smaller publishers are doing especially well on mobile platforms. See the write-up for more details.
Cynthia Murrell, May 19, 2016
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Google Books Is Not Violating Copyright
November 12, 2015
Google Books was controversial the moment it was conceived. The concept is simple and effective though: books in academic libraries are scanned and snippets are made available online. People have the ability to search Google Books for specific words or phrases, then they are shown where it is contained within a book. The Atlantic wrote, “After Ten Years, Google Books Is Legal” about how a Second Circuit judge panel ruled in favor of Google Books against the Authors Guild.
The panel ruled that Google Books fell under the terms of “Fair Use,” which as most YouTubers know, is the ability to use a piece of copyrighted content within a strict set of rules. Fair usage includes works of parody, academic works, quotations, criticism, or summarization.
The Authors Guild argued that Google Books was infringing upon its members copyrights and stealing potential profits, but anyone knows that too much of a copyright is a bad thing. It places too many limitations on how the work can be used, harming the dissemination of creative and intellectual thought.
“’It gives us a better senses of where fair use lies,” says Dan Cohen, the executive director of the Digital Public Library of America. They “give a firmer foundation and certainty for non-profits…Of all the parts of Judge Leval’s decision, many people I talked to were happiest to see that it stressed that fair use’s importance went beyond any tool, company, or institution. ‘To me, I think a muscular fair use is an overall benefit to society, and I think it helps both authors and readers,’ said Cohen.”
Authors do have the right to have their work copyright and make a profit off it, which should be encouraged and a person’s work should not be given away for free. There is a wealth of information out there, however, that is kept under lock and key and otherwise would not be accessed with a digital form. Google Books only extends a book’s reach, speaking from one who has relied on it for research.
Whitney Grace, November 12, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Predictive Search Tries to Work with Videos
October 14, 2015
Predictive search is a common feature in search engines such as Google. It is more well-known as auto-complete, where based on spelling and keyword content the search engine predicts what a user is searching for. Predictive search speeds up the act of searching, but ever since YouTube became the second biggest search engine after Google one has to wonder if “Does Video Enhance Predictive Search?” asks Search Engine Watch.
Search engine and publisher of travel deals Travelzoo created a video series called “#zootips” that was designed to answer travel questions people might search for on Google. The idea behind the video series was that the videos would act as a type of predictive feature anticipating a traveler’s needs.
“‘There’s always push and pull with information,’ says Justin Soffer, vice president of marketing at Travelzoo. ‘A lot of what search is, is people pulling – meaning they’re looking for something specific. What videos are doing is more of a push, telling people what to look for and showing them things.’ ”
Along with Travelzoo, representatives from SEO-PR and Imagination Publishing also agree that video will enhance video search. Travelzoo says that video makes Web content more personal, because an actual person is delivering it. SEO-PR recommends researching keywords with Google Trends and creating videos centered on those words. Imagination Publishing believes that video content will increase a Web site’s Google ranking as it ranks media rich pages higher and there is an increase in voice search and demand for how-to videos.
It is predicted that YouTube’s demand as a search engine will increase more content will be created for video. If you understand how video and predictive analytics work, you will have an edge in future Google rankings.
Whitney Grace, October 14, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Monopoly On Scientific Papers
August 31, 2015
If you work in the academic community this headline from Your News Wire shouldn’t come as a surprise: “Nearly All Scientific Papers Controlled By Same Six Corporations.” A group of researchers studied scientific papers published between 1973-2013 and discovered that six major publishers ruled the industry: Wiley-Blackwell, Springer, Taylor & Francis, Sage, Reed Elsevier, and ACS. During the specified time period, it was found that the larger ones absorbed smaller publishers. Another, more startling, fact came to light as well: academic research groups must rely more and more on the main six publishers’ interests if they want to get their research published.
“Much of the independence that was once cherished within the scientific community, in other words, has gone by the wayside as these major publishers have taken control and now dictate what types of content get published. The result is a publishing oligopoly in which scientists are muzzled by and overarching trend toward politically correct, and industry-favoring, ‘science.’”
The six publishers publish subjects that benefit their profit margin and as a direct result they influence major scientific fields. Fields concerning chemistry, social sciences, and psychology are the most influenced by the publishers. This leads to corruption in the above disciplines and researchers are limited by studies that will deliver the most profits to the publishers. The main six publishers can also publish the papers digitally for a 40% profit margin.
There is good news. The study did find that publishing a paper via a smaller venue does not affect its reach. It also has the added benefit of the smaller venue not pushing a special interest agenda. The real question is are big publishers even needed in a digital age anymore?
Whitney Grace, August 31, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
The Girl with the Advert Tattoo
August 10, 2015
It looks like real publishing companies are now into tattoos or, at least, into leveraging ink’s growing popularity. The Verge reports, “The Desperate Book Industry and ‘Tatvertising’ are a Perfect, Tragic Match.” Reporter Kaitlyn Tiffany tells us that Hachette Austrailia put out the call for a model willing to be tattooed and photographed as part of a promotion for the next Steig Larsson book, “The Girl in the Spider’s Web.” Tiffany likens the effort to a practice, widely considered predatory, that was common just after the turn of the millennium: websites paying those desperate for cash to have ads tattooed on them, (sometimes on their faces!) But, hey, at least those people were paid good money; apparently the reward for this scheme was meant to be the tattoo itself. The article elaborates:
“But why the [heck] does it need to be a real tattoo? When reached for comment, a representative from Razor & JOY, the advertising agency in charge of the campaign, told me, ‘The character of Lisbeth doesn’t do things in half measures — and so we wanted our marketing to capture this passion.’ The representative also explained that the compensation for the woman who is cast would be something… less than monetary: ‘This campaign is an opportunity to give a truly passionate fan a free tattoo that is unique to a strong literary character.’ And a new type of degrading, unpaid labor in the publishing industry was born.”
I’m not sure I’d personally consider this scheme “predatory,” but apparently Tiffany was not alone in her outrage. I visited the link she supplies in her article, and was greeted with a take-back notice; it reads, in part, “The campaign was conceived with good intentions … but some people have been offended. As this was never our intention, we have listened and we have decided we will not continue with the tattoo element of the campaign.” At least the company was wise enough to make a change in response to criticism. I wonder, though, what they will come up with next.
Cynthia Murrell, August 10, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
IT Architecture Needs to Be More Seamless
August 7, 2015
IT architecture might appear to be the same across the board, but depending on the industry the standards change. Rupert Brown wrote “From BCBS To TOGAF: The Need For A Semantically Rigorous Business Architecture” for Bob’s Guide and he discusses how TOGAF is the defacto standard for global enterprise architecture. He explains that while TOGAF does have its strengths, it supports many weaknesses are its reliance on diagrams and using PowerPoint to make them.
Brown spends a large portion of the article stressing that information content and model are more important and a diagramed should only be rendered later. He goes on that as industries have advanced the tools have become more complex and it is very important for there to be a more universal approach IT architecture.
What is Brown’s supposed solution? Semantics!
“The mechanism used to join the dots is Semantics: all the documents that are the key artifacts that capture how a business operates and evolves are nowadays stored by default in Microsoft or Open Office equivalents as XML and can have semantic linkages embedded within them. The result is that no business document can be considered an island any more – everything must have a reason to exist.”
The reason that TOGAF has not been standardized using semantics is the lack of something to connect various architecture models together. A standardized XBRL language for financial and regulatory reporting would help get the process started, but the biggest problem will be people who make a decent living using PowerPoint (so he claims).
Brown calls for a global reporting standard for all industries, but that is a pie in the sky hope unless the government imposes regulations or all industries have a meeting of the minds. Why? The different industries do not always mesh, think engineering firms vs. a publishing house, and each has their own list of needs and concerns. Why not focus on getting industry standards for one industry rather than across the board?
Whitney Grace, August 7, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Yahoo News Off the Rails
April 21, 2015
The article titled Purple Reign on The Baffler tells the story of the derailment of Yahoo News. The author, Chris Lehmann, exerts all of his rhetorical powers to convey his own autobiography of having served as a Yahoo News editor after being downsized from a more reputable publication, along with any number of journalists and editors. The main draw was that Yahoo News was one of the few news organizations that were not bankrupt. In spite of being able to produce some high-caliber news, writers and editors at Yahoo were up against a massive bureaucracy that at its best didn’t understand the news and at its worst didn’t trust the news. For example, the author relays the story of one piece he posted on militia tactics of ambushing police by breaking the law,
“Before the post went live, I fielded an anxious phone call from a senior manager in Santa Monica. He was alarmed… for a simple reason: “I haven’t heard of this before.” I struggled to find a diplomatic way to explain that publishing things that readers hadn’t heard before was something that a news organization should be doing a whole lot more of: it was, in fact, the definition of “news.”
One of the saddest aspects of the corporate-controlled news outreach was the attempt to harness the power of the traffic on Yahoo’s site by making all internet users reporters. Obvious to anyone who has ever read a comment section online, web users range from the rational to the bizarrely enraged to the racist/sexist/horrifying. Not long after this Ask America initiative tanked, Lehmann’s job description was “overhauled” and he resigned.
Chelsea Kerwin, April 21, 2014
Stephen E Arnold, Publisher of CyberOSINT at www.xenky.com
Assessing SharePoint Content Security
March 17, 2015
With the volume of content housed in SharePoint implementations constantly growing, security threats are becoming an increasingly large problem as well. For organizations that are not sure how to measure the security of their SharePoint infrastructure, Metalogix may have a solution. CMS Wire covers the news in their article, “9 Metrics To Assess SharePoint Content Security.”
The article begins:
“Is your SharePoint content secure? More importantly, do you know how to assess your content security? Given the number of SharePoint environments, it’s likely that a lot of people would answer ‘no.’ Metalogix, however, has just released a new tool it claims will help. The new Insider Threat Index (ITI) offers SharePoint managers insight into their content security based on nine metrics.”
A lot of resources are devoted to helping organizations make the most of their SharePoint solution. Security is not the only concern, but also efficiency, structure, and user experience. To keep up with these and other topics, consider the SharePoint feed on ArnoldIT.com. Stephen E. Arnold has spent his career following all things search, including SharePoint. His expert-run Web site allows users to find lots of tips, tricks, and news pertaining to the enterprise.
Emily Rae Aldridge, March 17, 2015
Stephen E Arnold, Publisher of CyberOSINT at www.xenky.com
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