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Level 4

Predatory
This Assignment must be done one week from the date it is assigned.
Even if that means temporarily skipping the former assignments

Purpose:

  • To be aware of the intense prevalence of false journals
  • If you missed class--
    1. Scroll through Beall's lists
    2. Read the documents
    3. Glance/skim the Sokal articles
    4. Then, under "Assignment," download the documents and try to assess if the conferences/journals in the documents are legitimate or predatory. [** NOTE: just because there is a warning at the top of the email has no bearing on legitimacy; we get that warning in emails that are sent from one faculty at EFSC to another.]
    5. Email me a Word doc before Midnight Sunday June 16th that gives your reasoning concerning each journal/conference as to why or why not each is legitimate. Discuss how you assessed those findings for each one.
    6. Much of June 19th class time will be spent with you each discussing your findings.

Predatory Journals

Hoaxes

  • Sokal Affair
  • Sokal Squared
    • Article: "What an Audacious Hoax Reveals About Academia"

Wiley Shutdown (May 2024)

  • "Even a wine-soaked third year undergrad on work experience would surely have raised an eyebrow..." "So much for 'peer review' — Wiley shuts down 19 science journals and retracts 11,000 gobbledygook papers"

    Predatory Conferences?

    • Here's an article I only touched upon that covers Fake Conferences
    • Article: A List of Lists of predatory conferences
    • Article: A series of questions to determine validity

    The Assignment

    `
    • Each Word doc below has screen shots of emails I have received advertising academic conferences
    • Your task is to determine if the conferences are real or predatory
      • Predatory means they could be either completely fake (and the conference will never actually occur), or predatory could mean they are real conferences but they are not academic; the conference is in it to make money off of unsuspecting people
    • Do NOT be swayed by the caution at the top of the emails; we get that same caution when faculty sends emails to each other through our EFSC accounts.
    • Your "answers" should clearly state if the sample is predatory or not then provide your proofs/evidence:
      • See below for examples of the write-ups.
    • Do not use uyor assessement of the design or writing in the sample emails nor the organization's website as a way to try to determine if the sample is legitimate.
    • Put your responses in the Word documents right under the Example numbers and right above the example image. you'll see where it says [Delete this line; put your answer here].
    • Add your last name to the file names
    • Examples 1-4
    • Examples 5-8



    Example of write-up




    Example of write-up

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