From Ivan Oransky at Retraction Watch:
“Common wisdom,” according to the authors of a new piece in Nature, “assumes that the hazard of predatory publishing is restricted mainly to the developing world.” But the authors of the new paper, led by David Moher of the Ottawa Hospital Research Institute, found that more than half — 57% — of the 2,000 articles published in journals they determined were predatory were from high-income countries. In fact, the U.S. was second only to India in number of articles published in such journals. We asked Moher, who founded Ottawa Hospital’s Centre for Journalology in 2015, a few questions about the new work. More.
An interview with Dr. Moher follows.
It’s not fair to developing countries to pretend that corruption in science today magically settles on them. It builds up in technologically more advanced nations, possibly just as quickly and with the same results, and can only be resolved by a change in how credibility is created.
Note: “Your fake Facebook friends and their likes probably grew up on a click farm” discusses a type of fakery that is more likely to stem from low-wage environments but is likely a marginal issue in science.
See also: One way to boost your uni’s ranking: Ask faculty to cite each other This is elsewhere called a citation ring.