[Taxacom] Fwd: Zootaxa taken off of JCR

[Roland Bergman-Sun]

Dear Carlos,

I'm uninterested in your political conspiracy theories; I average
about 10–15 pages per review over the last few years regardless of
where the authors come from, and so far only one manuscript has been
by Chinese authors (which was rejected and to my knowledge never
resubmitted anywhere). Trying to get more publications out in less
time, and sending in shoddy work, is by no means limited to Chinese
authors. In my experience, the worst manuscripts I have reviewed (and
either rejected or recommended major revisions for) have been from
India, the Arab world, Germany, South Korea, and Singapore. However, I
am alone in studying my organism group in China, and if there had been
more people working with the group here, things may have been
different. I've also done a lot of work since I got here to review and
revise my colleagues' manuscripts *before* they are submitted, and
with few exceptions, they are indistinguishable in quality from those
I review or co-write with non-Chinese authors, with the main problem
usually being linguistic. Your anecdotal data is thus less meaningful
to me than you may think.

But yeah, the large number of entirely faked publications in medicine
(particularly TCM) and things like material science coming out of
China is horrible. There's no denying that, and it is remarkable how
poorly reviewed some of those subjects seem to be. This is entirely a
consequence of the Chinese reliance on the IF and their practice of
paying researchers for their publications based on IF.

Nevertheless, if people are at least partially dependent on a system
-- over which they have little or no control -- for their continued
career, and the system suddenly changed -- for reasons outside their
control -- I'm going to feel empathy for them regardless of if the
system itself is illogical or not. Changing administrative systems is
not why I got into taxonomy, and I suspect the same is true for most
taxonomists.

Don't get me wrong -- I have no particular love for IF, and in the
absence of externally imposed administrative systems that require me
to take them into account, I would never have given the IF of a
journal a second thought. In the absence of such systems, I would pay
more attention to the quality of the editor (stellar in Zootaxa for my
organism group, nonsensical in e.g. Folia Parasitologica), the contact
network of reviewers they have (insuperable in Zootaxa for my organism
group, bizarre in some other cases, but largely ameliorated by the
option to recommend suitable reviewers), and the final treatment and
layout of the published manuscript (for all practical purposes
adequate in Zootaxa, horrible in e.g. Acta Parasitologica). If I had
still worked in the west, where I was in a position similarly
privileged to yours so that I didn't have to take the IF into account,
I wouldn't (and didn't). Now I have to, and the options available to
me, in your outline, are:
- run and be a victim/coward (I assume this translates into leaving
China and trying to get a job elsewhere, which would definitely upset
my wife);
- be "brave and fight back", for which no applicable analogue
immediately suggests itself, other than doing exactly what has been
proposed and try to get Clarivate to reverse their decision, which you
somehow reject;
- be an "accomplice" by continuing to work with the things I love in
the one place in the world where I know for sure that I can continue
doing it (which in this case *is* making the choice that implies
personal sacrifice, so it seems your alternatives are not very well
thought through).
The choice, to me, is thus obvious: to be a "brave accomplice".

As I said, I am lucky enough that both my current grants have not
formally started yet, so I have the option to reroute the manuscripts
I have "promised" in my grant proposals to other journals than
Zootaxa, or accept that manuscripts I submit there will not be counted
and thus have to write more manuscripts that would, if accepted,
count. If I had been at the end of my grants, with lots of manuscripts
published in Zootaxa (currently 12 publications and a few more
submitted), only to suddenly have the rug pulled out from under my
feet like this, that would have been an entirely different matter. No
doubt there are many researchers here in China (and elsewhere) that
are in that situation at the moment. For these people, I feel empathy,
and maintain that the correct way to go about this is to first change
the systems they are "trapped in", and then dismantle or replace the
IF system. This is exactly why I agree with what Mike said (July 7th),
which I sought to exemplify with my original email.

Cheers,
Daniel



On Wed, Jul 8, 2020 at 7:09 PM Carlos Alberto Martínez Muñoz
<biotemail at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Roland Bergman-Sun (Daniel),
> I am from "the South" and I am by far not in a safe and secure position.
> About dismantling the JIF, you wrote: "Otherwise, you are very much favoring western systems of academia over non-western ones". For your information, the JIF is a western system of academia, which China happily imported. It is China's fault not assessing the system and using it in a disproportionate way to encourage its scientists to exert increased world impact by playing by its rules.
> Moreover, Clarivate was sold (Web of Science included) by Thomson Reuters to Onex Corporation and to Baring Private Equity Asia. The latter is based in Hong Kong, and it is very clear to me whose game is this now and to which interests the JIF and Clarivate currently serve.
> About the current self-destructive system that China has in place, you wrote: "... what so many people here do: cheat. The standard method seems to be to ask your colleagues to put your name on their almost-finished publications, even if these publications have nothing to do with your grant project. This thus inflates a person's number of publications, for no good reason."
> It is actually much worse than just inflating authorship. Chinese authors are also trying to get more publications out in less time. They are writing half-baked publications and sending it to the journals. That translates into an unfair workload being put on reviewers like me. This year I rejected one Chinese paper, with a two-page review. Other Chinese paper passed, with a 14-page review. Two papers in ZooKeys that were never sent to me were published with basic but fatal flaws. And so on.
> However, it is worse than that. Chinese authors in Medicine are buying papers from "paper mills" and publishing fake data on life-saving topics such as cancer research. That is plainly a crime.
>
> Now, I won't romaticize this "need for the JIF" and "empathy" as others have done here. There may be not many, but certainly there are a few scientists in this list that have endured overwhelming powers, like the power of a totalitarian government and its secret police. Scientists that know what is like to stand for a fair cause and to lose what they care about most. Those scientists know how to differentiate a victim from a coward and from an accomplice. When one is "trapped" (to use Michael Ivie's word) in a conflict situation, one always has choices at hand. One can be a coward and run away, effectively getting out of the conflict. That I would call a victim. One can be brave and fight back, whether one could win or not. Courageous, self-sacrificing people, setting examples for all of us. And one can stay in the conflict situation, playing a twisted game, profiting from it and harming colleagues close and far. People that are not willing to make any moral choice that implies personal sacrifice. That is not a victim, that is an accomplice, and I feel no empathy for those.
>
> You also wrote: "As stupid as the IF system may be, the sensible approach would be to *first* change the way funding grants, tenure track systems and so on be, and *then* dismantle the IF system, if that is the goal." The JIF is global and requires global commitment to be changed, or commitment of a few players that are powerful enough. Funding grants and tenure track systems are mostly national and require internal changes. If there is a perceived personal economic benefit from the national system in place, it is highly unlikely that any internal change will happen. In the overall scenario, you should expect the JIF system crashing globally first and then China catching up with new policies. During the transition period, you should expect Chinese scientists to suffer the consequences of previous bad national decisions and of their own personal choices of not fighting the system when they could. Of course, you may still be on time "...to *first* change the way funding grants, tenure track systems...", as you suggested yourself.
>
> Good luck,
> Carlos
>
> Carlos A. Martínez Muñoz
> Zoological Museum, Biodiversity Unit
> FI-20014 University of Turku
> Finland
> Myriatrix
> ResearchGate profile
> Myriapod Morphology and Evolution
>
>