[GOAL] Re: Still on the scientific open access journals in Brazil - response to Mister Jeffrey Beall

Sun Mar 29 20:15:26 BST 2015

Dear Mr. Guédon,

Thank you for your theme suggestion for an article, but now it would
certainly be disregarded by the general public in Brazil. Especially with
the country's economy in crisis.

Remove from Qualis the journals of dubious reputation would be an obvious
solution. As all these journals are Open Access, this removal would also be
required to preserve and enhance this publishing model. I have also shown
other distortions, such as various cases of huge discrepancies in the
classification of the same title.

But few academics in Brazil dare to comment on these matters. And I believe
that the main reason for this silence is not the interest of protecting
those who publish in predatory journals.

Whatever the distortions of Qualis, for the Brazilian academic community
this database has become too large to be replaced or rearranged. Careers
and reputations were already built on these foundations. And that's why the
silence has been the attitude of the Brazilian academia.

A new minister has just been appointed by the president. He has been
director of evaluation at Capes during the Lula government. Surely it can
promote changes in Qualis. But be sure that "plus ça change, c'est la meme
chose."

Thus, the priority of a journalist writing for the general public is to
show what does not work. Later, if readers are aware of the issue, I will
have satisfaction to publicize suggestions.

Bon voyage!

***************************
*Maurício Tuffani*
*J**ournalist, science writer*
*São Paulo, SP, Brazil*
*Mobile: +55 11 99164-8443 <%2B55%2011%2099164-8443>*
*Phone: +55 11 2366-9949 <%2B55%2011%202366-9949>*
*http://folha.com/mauriciotuffani <http://folha.com/mauriciotuffani>*
*mauricio at tuffani.net <mauricio at tuffani.net>*
***************************

2015-03-28 16:10 GMT-03:00 Guédon Jean-Claude <
> jean.claude.guedon at umontreal.ca>:
>
> Responding to Mr Tuffani's interesting comments (and it happens that I do
>> so from ... Brazil where I am at this very moment), I believe he confirms
>> that his articles, in reality, were about problems with the Qualis list
>> that is used to "vet" journals, order them by levels of quality, and which
>> is used for various evaluation purposes in the country, and not about open
>> access generally as Beall's title seemed to indicate.
>>
>> To repeat myself, the issue is not open access, as Beall's header would
>> lead us to believe; the issue is the process used to include (or not) a
>> title in the Qualis list. The Qualis list is not just about OA journals; it
>> is about all reputable journals. If as many as 200 predatory journals can
>> be shown to be in the Qualis list, this is a serious problem. It undermines
>> the whole evaluation system of Brazilian scholarship. It may even intimate
>> suspicions of corruption, this at a time when the word "corruption" is
>> strongly present in Brazilian daily news (albeit in other contexts, such as
>> Petrobras). The academic communities of Brazil, as well as the researchers
>> of this extraoedinary country deserve much better.
>>
>> Let me make a suggestion to my Brazilian friends: why not have the people
>> in charge of managing the Qualis list join forces with the Directory of
>> Open Access Journals (DOAJ), including providing some support - both money
>> and manpower - to erect the DOAJ as the tool of choice and the reference to
>> build a credible list of OA journals. Already, DOAJ is moving strongly in
>> this direction and a bit of support would help everyone. Furthermore, this
>> collaboration would bring a great deal of transparency into the whole
>> selection process, and this would be very healthy.
>>
>> Also, any title placed in the Qualis list is there on account of the
>> opinion of a few people. Why niot maintain an open database of the people
>> who stood behind such and such a journal and signed off on its being good
>> enough to be in Qualis. This would create an atmosphere of individual
>> responsibility that could be very helpful. In open source software, bits of
>> code are always attributed to someone. Why not adopt this healthy practise
>> and accompany it with a periodic review of the results every so often (2-3
>> years, for example), and with different people. Also, people whio have
>> published in a journal should not be allowed to vet that journal: their
>> inherent bias creates an unacceptable risk.
>>
>> CLACSO and Redalyc also have resources and experience to vet journals,
>> and so does Scielo. Why not use these groups as other support groups and
>> sources of advice. I know that Qualis uses Scielo as a list of reliable
>> journals, but it could also use Scielo as the fount of methods to vet
>> journals. One of the sorry problems everywhere, but perhaps even more so in
>> Latin America, is the constant reinventing of the wheel, sometimes
>> bolstered by the "not invented here" syndrome. However, internationalizing
>> efforts at evaluating quality generally improves the very quality of the
>> effort.
>>
>> Finally, library associations could easily band together to build a
>> distributed, vetting system that, again, could help build the DOAJ list as
>> the white list of choice everywhere. If we all knew  that, as a matter of
>> course, it is enough to check the basic integrity of an OA journals by
>> looking it up in DOAJ, life would be easier for everybody, including
>> researchers.
>>
>> And perhaps Mr. Tuffani could, in yet another article, elaborate on
>> suggestions of this kind to nudge a number of small reforms in the Qualis
>> list that clearly need to be implemented. He enjoys a wide audience in his
>> tribune, and this is a precious trump card to make organizations such as
>> CAPES move.
>>
>> Jean-Claude Guédon
>> ________________________________
>> De : goal-bounces at eprints.org [goal-bounces at eprints.org] de la part de
>> Mauricio Tuffani [mauricio at tuffani.net]
>> Envoyé : samedi 28 mars 2015 11:37
>> À : goal at eprints.org
>> Objet : [GOAL] Re: Still on the scientific open access journals in Brazil
>> - response to Mister Jeffrey Beall
>>
>> Dear GOAL members,
>>
>> Let me please introduce myself. I am the journalist Mauricio Tuffani<
>> http://mauriciotuffani.blogfolha.uol.com.br/perfil/>, quoted by Mr.
>> Jeffrey Beall and Mrs. Bianca Amaro. I am a science writer and collaborator
>> of "Folha de S. Paulo"<http://www.folha.com.br>, the largest Brazilian
>> daily newspaper. I have a blog<http://folha.com/mauriciotuffani> hosted
>> by this newspaper.
>>
>> It is not for me to say on behalf of Mr. Beall, but I must clarify
>> misconceptions related to my posts and articles.
>>
>> I am not a researcher, as correctly said Mrs. Amaro and she is not the
>> first person to highlight this fact. The same thing was said by the board
>> of directors of the National Institute for Space Research (INPE), which in
>> 1989 I accused of defrauding the Amazon deforestation estimates. In the
>> following year, the institute recognized its "small error" of about 50% and
>> fired the coordinator of that work.
>>
>> And so it has been all these years.
>>
>> I would like to clarify that I have admiration for the O
>> pen 
>> A
>> ccess
>> . However,
>> I am
>>  a
>>  
>> journalist,
>> and 
>> it is my duty to point out distortions that are of public interest.
>>
>> And there have been many distortions in the Brazilian academic production
>> in recent years. While the number of published articles nearly <
>> http://www1.folha.uol.com.br/ciencia/2014/10/1531461-producao-cientifica-no-brasil-fica-menos-concentrada-em-sao-paulo.shtml
>> >
>> quadru
>> pled since 200
>> 0<
>> http://www1.folha.uol.com.br/ciencia/2014/10/1531461-producao-cientifica-no-brasil-fica-menos-concentrada-em-sao-paulo.shtml
>> >
>> , their relative impact to the world stagnated in the same period<
>> http://mauriciotuffani.blogfolha.uol.com.br/2014/10/15/a-pesquisa-no-brasil-e-em-sp-parte-3/
>> >.
>>
>> Here in Brazil is very common to opt for quantitative growth believing
>> that later will be possible to increase the quality. Because of this
>> frequent illusion the country has mountains of waste in its economy,
>> education, culture and other fields such as science.
>>
>> In Brazilian science and graduate education this quantitative growth
>> without attention to quality involves several activities. Academic
>> publishing is one of them, and within there is Open Access.
>>
>> The common point of all my posts indicated by Mr. Beall is the fact that
>> poor quality journals have been accepted in the
>> Qualis<http://qualis.capes.gov.br>
>> database, of CAPES (Coordination for the Improvement of Higher Education
>> Personnel), of the Ministry of Education.
>>
>> Unlike what said Mrs. Bianca Amaro, I do not criticize "the use of this
>> database for evaluation of Brazilian science in graduate programs." I just
>> reported that the Q <
>> http://mauriciotuffani.blogfolha.uol.com.br/brazilian-graduate-programs-accept-201-predatory-journals/
>> >
>> ualis
>> database accepts
>> predatory journals
>> .
>>
>> And I have reported this in all my posts highlighting clarifications as
>> follows:
>>
>> "Both in the online open access, with fees paid by authors, as in the
>> traditional model maintained by annual subscriptions or fees per article
>> download from the Internet, the reputable journals take months or even over
>> a year to review and accept articles, or rejected Them. Accused of
>> prioritizing minimizing costs and maximizing profits, the "predatory
>> publishers" not only reduce to a few weeks the acceptance of articles, but
>> are less selective and rigorous in this process."
>>
>> Mr. Jeffrey Beall's message header "Open Access in Brazil" was in fact
>> too generic, but made no mistake. I have often received information that
>> good Brazilian OA journals —which really want to build the golden road
>> quoted by Mrs. Amaro— are losing the preference of researchers to predatory
>> journals.
>>
>> I do not have metrics to show this preference for predatory journals, but
>> I could show that more than 200 of them were accepted by Q
>> ualis
>> , bringing consequences that come to be
>> ridiculous<
>> http://mauriciotuffani.blogfolha.uol.com.br/fake-professor-edits-journal-selected-by-capes/>
>> or 
>> anecdotal<
>> http://mauriciotuffani.blogfolha.uol.com.br/fasten-your-seat-belts-the-editor-is-gone/
>> >.
>>
>> Perhaps M
>> r
>> s. Amaro does not know this situation —and I do not know if she ought to
>> know it— but those who should know it act like they did not know: CAPES, CNP
>> q
>> (National Council for Scientific and Technological Development), state
>> funding agencies and universities.
>>
>> I am very glad that this issue has been brought to this discussion group.
>> Sometimes problems of Brazilian science have been resolved
>> "
>> with a little help 
>> from
>> "
>> its
>> friends
>>  outside Brazil. It happened, for example, with the fraudulent estimate
>> of Amazon deforestation to which I referred at the beginning of this
>> message.
>>
>> If the growing garbage from predatory journals in Brazil continue to be
>> ignored, it will become much larger than the bucolic "golden road in the
>> country" glorified by Mrs. Amaro.
>>
>> With my due respect for her opinion, I think her overreaction to the
>> generic header of Mr. Beall's message is actually a disregard of a serious
>> threat to the Open Access in Brazil. This threat is the inclusion of
>> predatory journals in Q
>> ualis
>> supported by the code of silence around this issue in the Brazilian
>> academia.
>>
>> (
>> I know that I stretched too much what I had to say, but I ca
>> n
>> not resist sharing the following. I received right now a message sent by
>> a full professor. He criticizes me for the inclusion of a journal on my
>> list of "predatory Q
>> ualis
>> ". And this journal says on its website: "21 <
>> http://omicsonline.org/submitmanuscript-clinical-experimental-cardiology-open-access.php
>> >
>>  
>> day rapid review process with international peer-review standards".)
>>
>> Thank you for your attention.
>>
>> ***************************
>> Maurício Tuffani
>> Journalist, science writer
>> São Paulo, SP, Brazil
>> Mobile: +55 11 99164-8443<tel:%2B55%2011%2099164-8443>
>> Phone: +55 11 2366-9949<tel:%2B55%2011%202366-9949>
>> http://folha.com/mauriciotuffani
>> mauricio at tuffani.net<mailto:mauricio at tuffani.net>
>> ***************************
>>
>>
>>
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>>
>
>
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