Elsevier retracting 16 papers for faked peer review
retractionwatch.com
retractionwatch.com
As part of their value add, journals don't seek out additional referees. Don't check that the contact information of suggested referees is correct. And no paid editor checks the manuscript has plausibly passed review. It just gets thrown through their automated system until they hit "accept with minor revision" or reject.
This is of course in addition to the following non-services:
* Requiring the authors to perform all typesetting. * No copyediting * No paid referees
For which they charge in general several thousand USD for an open access publication or extortionate subscription fees.
Actually a hands-off approach would be excusable if a) the technology systems they provide weren't truly awful and b) they charged significantly less.
Things like 'for example' being replaced with 'e.g.' even at the end of a sentence. Or citations beginning a sentence getting parenthesised — giving "(Smith 2003) states that ...".
I re-corrected it all through gritted teeth, but I still haven't brought myself to read what they finally published.
Yes they mangle it again after that, but they still put a huge amount of initial work on the author. I don't know of any journal that will for example, go through the references and put them in journal style for example. They'll just tell you to do it.
[1] http://retractionwatch.com/2014/12/19/companies-selling-fake...
In the world of profit and prestige, the "publish or perish" rule tends to make matters worse in numerous ways. Pressuring people to get published in prestigious journals, along with all of the associated profit motives and rewards, makes the entire system fragile and a vulnerable target for abuse.
The entire situation reminds me of the infamous American bank robber, Willie Sutton, who supposedly said that he robbed banks because that's where the money is [1,2].