Ketan Joshi: This entire fiasco has been deeply wounding to those who care about facts. Not only was the B&L “hoax” (which “L” is now calling a “joke paper”) riddled with factual errors that neither B&L nor Skeptic have publicly corrected (because doing so would be ideologically inconvenient, of course), but I’ve been asking Stephen for several days to remove my name from this blog post: as a matter of verifiable fact, I have never once paid to be published, and I even attached screen shots of and forwarded editor emails from both Metaphilosophy and Foresight confirming that, contra the claims of this article, which people are still reading, they *do not* charge authors. A correction needs to be made fast because misinformation is spreading — but if there’s one thing this “hoax” reveals it’s that misinformation is, well, kinda okay if it suits your narrative.

Sure, I haven’t paid but a fee was paid for that article I was a co-author on, for publication. It’s a grey area I know, but in essence, it was paid on my behalf.

Again, I’m having trouble understanding how that makes the claims drawn from the hoax article any less irrational, but I’d be keen to read some further explanation.

If the argument is essentially that I’m a hypocrite for criticising pay-to-publish journals whilst having had co-authored work published in them, I hope you can understand how that doesn’t quite work when you think about it for a bit. My arguments in the piece I wrote were specifically about the claims behind the hoax, rather than a wholesale dismissal or approval of a specific model of publication. Cogent was obviously dodgy af, and a lowly-ranked journal didn’t even accept their paper for publication.

This isn’t about an industry or publishing model, it’s about a specific journal, a specific paper and the claims made in the article and by those who shared it.

It might be worth focusing on the original claims, and the specifics of the critiques, rather than generalisations that weren’t made in the first place.

Hi Joshi,

Thank you for your comment. Apologies for my error. I have now noted the mistake and corrected it.

Would it be possible to confirm whether you’ve ever paid fees to publish?

Many thanks

Um, second, I would have been six when I was publishing on fructose, and fifteen when I shifted gear into publishing on chemistry.

Maybe a little cursory fact-checking on those authors would have revealed that they’re not me?

Anyway; I actually have co-authored work in an open-access journal, Frontiers in Public Health: http://journal.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fpubh.2014.00279/full

Frontiers and open access aren’t exactly perfect, each with their fair share of controversies and issues (Frontiers once published a HIV denialist article!!), but of course, my blog post wasn’t intended as a criticism of open-access pay-to-publish, nor as a defence of them. My blog post was specifically about the hoax, and the conclusions drawn from it. Diverting attention away from the claims and logic of the piece and somehow using the publication history of critics as a defence is pretty illogical – I think there’s basic consensus on the fact that there are pointed issues around publication and peer review, but that doesn’t take away from the fact that this weakness was exploited and bad conclusions were drawn from it.

Again, there’s a useful and interesting conversation to be had around the issues underpinning publication and peer review, but turning this into tribal warfare is boring and definitely seems to discourage cursory skepticism and fact-checking.

I’m also not sure why you didn’t link to my article but if your readers want to assess my claims for logic and fact-checking, they can do so here: https://ketanjoshi.co/2017/05/20/the-engine-of-irrationality-inside-the-rationalists/

The fact that Cogent charges authors should immediately make is suspect …

Given that Cogent is an “imprint” name for a whole slew of journals, across many areas of academia, then no, it doesn’t make it suspect. Yes, Open Access pay-to-publish is a relatively new business model, and not (yet) common in the humanities, but again, that alone does not make is suspect. (see here for an intro to the Cogent series of journals)

… and not a *single* senior editor has a background in gender studies. Their expertise lies in (I kid you not) tourism, criminology, development planning, geography, sport management and communication sciences. Does that sound legit to you?

Well it is “Cogent Social Sciences” (which sounds fairly broad) rather than specifically a gender-studies journal.

Submitting an article on gender studies to that particular journal and then claiming that its publication proves that gender studies is idiotic …

You’re right that this one hoax along doesn’t prove much (any more than the Sokal Hoax did), but then it’s not the only relevant piece of evidence. People have been criticising postmodernist-style “gender studies” for ages, and there are plenty of intended-seriously papers that one could point to

I disagree with “From the mere fact that they charge article fees one cannot tell one way or the other. That’s why the critics are wrong to make an issue of it.” The reason is that a mere 4% of humanities journals require authors to pay for publication. In other words, it is *not* common for humanistic scholars to pay journals, whereas it is not *uncommon* for scientists to pay. The fact that Cogent charges authors should immediately make is suspect to anyone willing to think critically for a moment.

Second, Cogent has almost *nothing* to do with gender studies at all. It was recommended to the gullible authors of the “hoax” by Taylor&Francis, not NORMA, which itself is not a particularly reputable journal. At least one person on the editorial board of Cogent recently said she had no idea she was part of the Cogent team (i.e., they added her without her knowledge), and not a *single* senior editor has a background in gender studies. Their expertise lies in (I kid you not) tourism, criminology, development planning, geography, sport management and communication sciences. Does that sound legit to you? (Pause! Give yourself at least .4 nanoseconds to reflect on this.)

As I wrote in my article, “Submitting an article on gender studies to that particular journal and then claiming that its publication proves that gender studies is idiotic is tantamount to a creationist writing a fake article about evolutionary biology, publishing it in an unknown pay-to-publish non-biology journal (whose editorial board includes no one with expertise in evolutionary biology), and then exclaiming, “See! The entire field of evolutionary biology is complete nonsense.”” Not a single heavy-handed “skeptic” like Jerry Coyne has offered a good response to this, because frankly there isn’t one.

Yes, there are plenty of “scam” open access journals that only exist to make money. And there are lots of open-access journals that charge fees that are legitimate and reputable and have proper peer review. From the mere fact that they charge article fees one cannot tell one way or the other. That’s why the critics are wrong to make an issue of it.

Now, given that, what is your argument that “Cogent Social Sciences” is a scam journal, as opposed to one by a reputable publisher that is attempting to build a genuine reputation?