[Taxacom] Fwd: Zootaxa taken off of JCR

[Carlos Alberto Martínez Muñoz]

Dear Daniel,
I am also uninterested in conspiracy theories and more interested into real
conspiracies:
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/06/fifty-four-scientists-have-lost-their-jobs-result-nih-probe-foreign-ties
And you can keep calling me privileged to try to demerit my stand while
having zero knowledge of my personal situation. That I certainly don't
care. Still, maybe you are right and I am more privileged now than five
years ago. For your information, my position on the JIF hasn't changed
since 2011, nine years ago, when I was certainly not privileged at all. But
of course, you also don't care about that. It seems that you are the only
oppressed person around.
Cheers,
Carlos


Carlos A. Martínez Muñoz
Zoological Museum, Biodiversity Unit
FI-20014 University of Turku
Finland
Myriatrix <http://myriatrix.myspecies.info/>
ResearchGate profile
<https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Carlos_Martinez-Munoz>
Myriapod Morphology and Evolution
<https://www.facebook.com/groups/205802113162102/>




El mié., 8 jul. 2020 a las 15:08, Roland Bergman-Sun (<
kotatsu.no.leo at gmail.com>) escribió:

> 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
> >
> >
>