The Beauty and Importance of Scientific Journals

<p indent="0mm">With the rapid growth of scientific research input and output in China, academic journals have attracted increasing attention as the records and communication of scientific research achievements. Combining literature research and discussion from the forum sponsored by the academic divisions of Chinese Academy of Sciences on Frontiers in Science and Technology with the theme of “scientific publishing in the new era”, this paper analyzes the current situation of China’s scientific journal publishing and the opportunities and challenges it faces, and puts forward suggestions and solutions for scientific journal development in China. Based on the analysis of the current situation and development trend of international scientific publishing, this paper reviews the scientific journal publishing in the open science environment from aspects of open access publishing of journals and papers, open peer review, open data, preprint platforms, and journal business models. It also discusses how new technologies promote the innovation and development of scientific publishing from aspects of digital publishing and communication, big data, blockchain technology, artificial intelligence, and interaction and integration based on various new technologies and media. In addition, this paper also briefly introduces the prediction by the International Association of Scientific, Technical and Medical Publishers for the development trend of academic publishing industry in the next <sc>3–5 years</sc> with the themes of “trust &amp; integrity”, “entering the AI era—creative humans &amp; smart machines”, “diversity in a multi-user environment”, “focus on the user—connect the dots”, and “let’s go upstream—seeking the source of trust and truth” from 2017 to 2021. This paper holds that compared with world-class scientific journals, China’s scientific journals lag behind in the ability to attract high-level research results, prevention and treatment of academic misconduct, brand reputation, and international influence. To rank among the world’s first-class scientific journals, China’s scientific journals must be in line with international standards in dealing with scientific research integrity, comply with the norms of international journals on academic integrity and publishing ethics, and improve their ability to deal with academic misconduct. Journal publishers should cooperate with the management department and the academic community to form an organic whole and jointly build a healthy academic ecosystem. With the rapid development of scientific research in China and a friendly publishing environment supported by policies to promote world-class journals, China’s scientific journals are facing unprecedented development opportunities. This paper puts forward suggestions and solutions for the development of China’s scientific journals in the new era as follows: (1) Pay attention to the development trend of open science and integrate into the development environment of open science; (2) strengthen international cooperation and seek continuous development in the cooperation; (3) innovate the concept of scientific publishing service and expand new publishing technologies and methods; (4) perfect the standards for publishing ethics and enhance the ability to deal with academic misconduct; (5) build high-level talent teams for scientific publishing and improve the scientific literacy of science communicators; (6) seek win-win social and market benefits and explore the sustainable model for scientific journal publishing in China.

Traditionally, there have been two important media of academic publishing: scholarly journals and scholarly books. The first scholarly journal, the Journal des Sçavans, was founded by Denis de Sallo, appeared already in January 1665 in Paris, reappeared after the French Revolution as the Journal des Savants, and still exists as a leading journal in the humanities. Only a few weeks later, Henry Oldenbourg, the first secretary of the Royal Society of London, established a second scholarly journal, the Philosophical Transactions, with a focus on science. The purpose of these journals was to formalize the extensive correspondence between philosophers and scientists.1 In the 18th and the 19th century, more specialized journals gained in importance, most of which were published by learned societies. At the end of the 19th century, university presses too began to publish scholarly journals. Another traditional means of academic publishing are the various types of scholarly books, in particular monographs, edited volumes, reference works (specialist dictionaries, encyclopedias, and specialty reference manuals), and technical handbooks.2 A narrow definition of academic works would exclude textbooks and books for the broader public. Shavell (2010, 337–39) employs four criteria to determine whether a journal or book is academic in nature: (1) the authors and/or the publisher are usually academics; (2) the readers are mainly academics; (3) the content is academic in character; (4) only low royalties are paid, if any. As of today, scholarly journals are the preferred mode of academic publishing in particular in the sciences and some social sciences (e.g., economics), whereas scholarly books still play an important role in the arts, the humanities, and part of the social sciences. Whereas scholarly books are published by a large number of small national publishers in a multitude of languages, the most important scholarly journals are typically in English language and published by a few large commercial publishers. Until the mid-20th century, the most important journals were published by learned societies, before commercial publishers began to enter the academic publishing market in the 1960s and 1970s by launching new titles or acquiring existing ones. This development has led to a significant concentration of (commercial) publishers in the academic journal market.3 It is difficult to say for sure how many scholarly journals are available around the world. Some sources speak of more than 100,000, others of 87,000 or 73,000.4 In August 2018, Ulrich's Web Directory listed 33,119 active scholarly peer-reviewed English-language journals with about 3 million articles a year, complemented by an additional 9,372 journals in other languages. As an important subset, 11,655 journals with 2.2 million articles were included in the Clarivate Analytics' Journal Citation Reports (STM, 2018, 25–26). The Web of Science (WoS) database counted almost 12,500 journals in 2019 (see below, Section 2.2.1). With the mass expansion of academic education and the increasing size of faculty after World War II, publications in peer-reviewed, highly ranked journals have become an important precondition for academic careers in many disciplines, in particular in the sciences, economics, and partly in the other social sciences. In 1964, Eugene Garfield launched the Science Citation Index to calculate the impact factors of journals in science, medicine, and technology. This index was later followed by the Social Sciences Citation Index in 1973, the Arts & Humanities Citation Index in 1978 (Regazzi, 2015, 86–88), and the Emerging Sources Citation Index in 2015. These indices led to the development of the Journal Impact Factor (JIF), a metric that serves to rank a scholarly journal based on the number of citations to articles in that journal by articles in other indexed journals within a certain time period. During the same time, commercial publishers have increased their market shares to the detriment of non-for-profit publishers, such as learned societies and universities, becoming the dominant players in the market for scholarly journals. Today, the "big five" commercial academic publishers—Elsevier, Springer, Wiley, Taylor & Francis, and Sage—cover more than half of the market for scholarly journals. Since the 1980s, we have seen a sharp increase not just in the number of journals but in particular also in journal subscription prices, forcing many academic libraries to cancel serials subscriptions and to cut back on new monographs (the so-called serials crisis, cf. Eger & Scheufen, 2018, 23–29). These developments induced an increasing number of scholars, initially in the United States, to promote open access (OA) to scholarly articles as a replacement of or an addendum to the subscription model. After some individual initiatives in the late 1980s, the early 2000s saw the emergence of a global movement by scholars, librarians, and research sponsors, resulting in the "Budapest Open Access Initiative" (February 2002), the "Bethesda Statement on Open Access Publishing" (June 2003) and the "Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities" (October 2003).7 Two roads to OA can be distinguished8: First, gold OA refers to electronic journals with OA for all readers, often based on creative commons licenses. The publishers' costs are covered not by subscription fees but from other sources, such as article-processing charges (APCs)9 paid by authors, libraries, learned societies, or research sponsors, or subsidies from learned societies and other sources. Hybrid OA journals, whose numbers are rising fast, allow the authors to choose between paying an APC, thereby granting the reader OA, or not paying an APC and requiring the reader to pay for access to the article.10 A special branch of gold OA is mega-journals, the first one of which, PLOS One, was first published in 2006. In these journals, the peer review is restricted to examining only the soundness of the submitted articles but not their broader interest or impact. Also, mega-journals are not oriented towards a specific subject matter. The second road, green OA, refers to authors self-archiving pre-prints or post-prints of their papers on so-called OA repositories, potentially in addition to publication in traditional subscription-based journals. OpenDOAR listed 5,713 repositories in July 2021, of which 5,073 were classified as institutional repositories managed by universities, faculties, or other academic institutions, 364 as disciplinary (subject) repositories which aggregate research papers in specific disciplines (e.g., PubMed Central, arXiv, SSRN, and RepEc), 138 as aggregating repositories (including Academia and Scielo), and 139 as governmental repositories.11 Whereas institutional and disciplinary repositories generally respect the authors' or publishers' copyright, so-called Robin Hood or Pirate OA repositories do not. The most prominent example is Sci-Hub, founded in 2011 by Alexandra Elbakyan, a young scholar from Kazakhstan, which made over 60 million journal articles publicly available. Due to complaints by academic publishers, Sci-Hub had to switch domains several times.12 Recent years have seen the emergence of academic social networks such as Research Gate and Mendeley, as well as a stream of new forms of disseminating scientific content, including blogs, podcasts, and Facebook posts by prominent scholars. Regarding OA books, the Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB) in June 2021 listed 43,036 academic peer-reviewed books from 621 publishers.13 The number of academic journals, as listed in the WoS database, has been growing steadily over the past two decades, from around 5,000 in 2000 to almost 12,500 in 2019 (Figure 1).14 Source: Author's calculations based on data from Web of Science (2021) The academic journal market is dominated by a few large commercial publishers, with the "big five" accounting for more than half of the academic journals listed by the WoS in 2019: Elsevier (1,754 journals), Springer (1,406), Wiley Blackwell (1,242), Taylor & Francis (1,199), and Sage (642).15 However, due to a downturn by Elsevier that began around 2006, this dominance has declined from around 60% in 2000 to around 51.7% in 2019 (Figure 2). Source: Author's calculations based on data from Web of Science (2021) Coupled with the advent of the internet and the concurrent increasing digitization of academic works, which through the bundling of different journals and/or formats ("big deals") facilitated second-degree price discrimination, this dominance has led to a drastic increase in subscription prices since the early 1990s (Bergstrom, 2013; Eger & Scheufen, 2018; Ramello, 2010). The resulting serials crisis—with academic libraries having to cut their journal portfolio—gave rise to a new publishing regime that offers OA to journal content. The share of pure (i.e., non-hybrid) OA journals as listed by the Directory of Open Access Journals (2021) has been increasing steadily, from around 3% of all WoS-listed journals in 2000 to more than 10% in 2019 (Figure 3). Source: Author's calculations based on data from Web of Science (2021) and DOAJ (2021) Interestingly, pure OA journals also gained ground in terms of quality. Figure 4 shows boxplots of the impact factors16 of closed access (CA) versus OA journals over time. While CA journals enjoyed an impact factor advantage over OA journals for a long time—all location scales of the impact factor for CA journals being above the ones for OA journals—OA journals are nowadays of the same quality, notwithstanding considerable differences between disciplines (see the contribution by Eger et al. to this issue). In 2019, impact factor distributions of both OA and CA journals are at the same level. Thus, advancing both in quantity and in quality, OA journals are becoming ever more relevant. The literature has identified the following advantages of an OA regime for academic works: (1) OA publications are likely read and therefore (2) cited more widely,17 which in turn (3) raises the incentives for academic authors to publish their research results as citations increase their reputation. These observations led to a broad discussion in academia as to whether the copyright regime may impede the evolution towards a universal OA regime, with very different conclusions being drawn regarding the impact of OA from a social welfare perspective (Scheufen, 2015; Shavell, 2010). Source: Author's calculations based on data from Web of Science (2021) and DOAJ (2021) The growing relevance of academic OA publishing warrants a closer look at the development of pure OA journals as the gold road towards OA. Figure 5 shows the number of newly launched OA journals from 2002 to 2020. Following relatively slow growth from 2002 to 2014, with fewer than 500 new OA journals per year (except 2013), the number has exceeded 1,000 in every year since, peaking in 2017, when more than 2,000 new OA journals were added to the DOAJ database. Today, the DOAJ database counts more than 16,000 OA journals in many different fields of research, published in 80 languages by publishers from 126 countries.18 Source: Author's calculations based on data from DOAJ (2021) Notwithstanding this impressive development, the relevance of OA journals varies substantially across academic disciplines (Figure 6).19 The research field with the largest attributed number of OA journals is Social Sciences (3,817), followed by Health Sciences (2,785), Technology and Engineering (1,416), and Language and Literature (1,153). By contrast, the natural science fields of Mathematics & Statistics (341), Physics & Astronomy (274), and Chemistry (181) feature only few OA journals.20 Source: Author's calculations based on data from DOAJ (2021) Remarkable differences also exist regarding a variety of OA journal characteristics (Table 1).21 Most (52%) OA journals leave the copyright of published works with the author, whereas the traditional CA regime demands that the exploitation rights are transferred to the publisher. Moreover, only around 28% of all OA journals charge APCs—a remarkable finding, as the OA regime implies the transition from a "reader pays" to an "author pays" model. Other fees (e.g., a submission fee to cover the review process) are charged by only around 2% of all OA journals. Nevertheless, author fees may constitute a significant obstacle for authors to publish in an OA venue, especially for non-tenured researchers seeking to publish in highly ranked journals, which are most likely to charge APCs (Budzinski et al., 2020). This obstacle also applies in particular to many researchers from developing countries, whose institutions rarely cover such costs. Yet 18% of OA journals provide for the possibility to waive such author fees. OA publishing may indeed be considered a form of development aid, for two reasons: First, few institutions in the developing world have so far been able to subscribe to academic journals. The OA regime can thus promote scientific participation and thereby foster the global evolution of science as a "trial and error" process. Free or cheaper access to literature for researchers in the developing world tends to increase both their output (number of publications) and input (number of references) (Mueller-Langer et al., 2020). Second, an OA regime grants access to the latest results in science for groups who were previously excluded because they are not "club" members of a university library. This includes, e.g., corporate researchers, physicians, or farmers. Notwithstanding all the changes discussed above, scholarly journals remain the most important medium of communication in many disciplines. For more than 300 years, they have been fulfilling the four key functions of registration (attribution), certification of articles (peer review), dissemination (distribution, access), and preservation (scholarly memory and permanent archiving). In recent decades, a fifth function must be added: the evaluation of researchers and their institutions.22 The increasing importance of OA articles in scholarly journals has triggered some controversial discussions, in particular regarding the questions as to whether OA negatively affects the quality of journal articles, whether OA improves the dissemination of research results, and how OA affects the competition between academic publishers as well as the distribution between academics and non-academics, between poor and rich universities, and between poor and rich countries. We shall discuss each of these questions and some related points in more detail below. In times when "alternative facts" tend to trump sound research results, academia must provide the public with reliable information. The users of this information should be sufficiently certain that the results are based on proper methods, reflect the state of science in the specific field, and were obtained independently, e.g., of any political or commercial interests.23 For that reason, strict and continuous quality control of research results is a "conditio sine qua non" for academic publishing. Facilitating the communication of content from authors to readers, the academic journal market may be characterized as a two-sided market (Rochet & Tirole, 2003). While readers look for the most important research results in their fields by top authors, the latter are interested in the journal's reputation, in wide readership, and in citations. Thus, journals with high impact factors hold the greatest attraction to both sides. With this in mind, the crucial question arises what effect, if any, OA is likely to have on the quality of academic articles. Jeffrey Beall, a librarian at the University of Colorado in Denver, is very skeptical regarding the quality of OA articles, especially those that are financed by APCs: "By adding a financial component to the front end of the scholarly publishing process, the open-access movement will ultimately corrupt scholarly publishing and hurt the communication and sharing of novel knowledge" (Beall, 2013, 590). A weak form of "corruption" would to OA publishers' incentives to peer review and to more submitted papers in to increase from However, the commercial publishers' incentives to increase the number of articles to the detriment of the journal's quality at the the quality the APCs that the journal is able to as well as A form of "corruption" refers to the of some OA journal publishers have been to in particular young and who on publications for their or to allow authors to publish articles in OA journals, by articles with or peer academics on their the or of journals, and so In established a of publishers, which was in January in to not only from the publishers but also from OA who that the to to OA. this quality to be a one which exists only in some disciplines (e.g., economics), whereas in other disciplines, such as some OA journals are the ranked journals and there is of a quality researchers their and if academic institutions and research to the APCs for articles by journals, this is to A by is that OA may new and will new and of their will remain (Beall, 2013, 590). 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As a researcher, it is important to plan how you are going to disseminate and share newly created knowledge by research at the initial stage of your research project. There will be no use or value of your research project, even though it is a very prominent one scientifically, if you fail to disseminate and share the newly created knowledge properly. Therefore, any researcher must pay high attention and give priority to the way of dissemination of newly created knowledge through a research project. According to the Canadian Institutions of Health Research, dissemination processes and approaches should be informed by high-quality context of specific evidence, user driven knowledge, ways to measure success and plan to evaluate the impact of the chosen approach. Also it is important to consider what the message is about, who the audience is, who the messenger is, what the best dissemination method is and what the expected outcome is. Knowledge transfer (KT) is to comprehend a very broad range of activities therefore, to support mutually beneficial collaborations between universities and research institutes, business world and the people of the communities. Further, KT is all about the transfer of tangible and intellectual property, expertise, learning and skills between academia and rest of the community. Therefore, knowledge dissemination means to make the knowledge accessible and usable. In such context, the importance of research journals is towards its major role of knowledge dissemination, especially among the academia, research personals, and in some occasions, the business community and policy makers. The Journal of Agricultural Sciences has been popular among the academia and research personal during the past decade and it has fulfilled its major role of knowledge dissemination. Further, knowledge diffusion can be defined as the adaptation and application of knowledge documented in scientific publications such as science journals, conference proceedings, monographs, etc and patents. It is apparent that this kind of knowledge diffusion is mainly done by research and academic journals. At present, the JAS has been included in more than 35 journal databases including AGRICOLA, AGORA, Cabi Abstracts, TEEL and DOAJ. It shows a wider acceptance of JAS by international citations and journal databases. This is an indicator for our progress in journal quality during past years. Many personages have stood behind this success. The honour must be extended therefore, to Dr. Chandrika Dissanayake - Coordinating Editor of JAS, Mr Prasad C. Iddamalgoda, Ms Sioux Cumming and Andy Nobes of SLJOL, all the authors, reviewers and members of the editorial committee.

Editorial

Dear readers!&#x0D; At the editorial board of the journal LES/WOOD, we are aware that two conditions are important for the success of every scientific journal: that it publishes high-quality scientific articles that show the advancement of the profession in fundamental and frontier areas, and that they reach as wide range of readers as possible, and thus disseminate new knowledge. If the first condition is fulfilled, then fulfilment of the second is easier, because with good articles the journal becomes more recognizable and is sought by more readers. Conversely, more scientific and professional readers also create a larger pool of potential authors for new scientific publications. The two are therefore interconnected. Bibliographic databases also play a key role in fulfilling these two conditions and promoting the scientific journal. Namely, by joining the databases, the journal gains reputation and visibility, while increasing search engine accessibility and readability, and the articles it publishes are cited more. This again attracts new authors and encourages them to publish better articles, which in turn enhances the reputation of the journal. In this issue of LES/WOOD, it is with the pleasure and pride that we take a look at the path of the journal’s development and highlight some turning points over the years:&#x0D; Since 1997, LES/WOOD has been listed in the CAB Abstracts database (https://www.cabi.org/publishing-products/cab-abstracts/), which is “the leading English-language bibliographic information service providing access to the world’s applied life sciences literature, giving users access to over 480,000 journal articles, conference papers and reports”. Being involved in this database has been crucial to the development of the journal, as it makes it one of the most important publications in the life sciences.&#x0D; Today, it is crucial that the journal is being digitized. Until 2012, LES/WOOD was published in printed form only. With its revival in 2017, in addition to the printed version, we introduced an electronic version and offered it to readers via web services. The ISSN number for the electronic version of the journal was obtained, and at the same time a website was set up (http://www.les-wood.si). For greater visibility, the journal was incorporated into the Digital Object Identifier (DOI) system in 2017. Since then, each article in LES/WOOD has been signed with its own Digital Object Identifier (DOI) name, while the publisher has become a member of the CrossRef organization.&#x0D; Different formal, technical, substantive and design amendments are required before the journal is published in international bibliographic databases, as different bibliographic databases set clear (minimum) technical and content requirements. Of particular importance is regular publication, a clear editorial policy, the redesign (and digitization) of the editorial process, and the online publication of articles in a readable form. Especially in recent years, ethical rules of operation, a plagiarism prevention policy and clear rules on the management of intellectual property are also important, which mainly apply to the electronic version of the journal. To this end, the website of LES/WOOD journal was completely updated in the first half of 2019.&#x0D; The last important turning point happened during the summer of 2019 when LES/WOOD was included in the DOAJ database (the Directory of Open Access Journals). DOAJ is a white list of open access journals and aims to be the starting point for all information searches for quality, peer reviewed open access material. Being included in DOAJ also increases the visibility and ease of use of articles, and that of LES/WOOD as a whole. The DOAJ aims to be comprehensive and cover all open access scientific and scholarly journals that use a quality control system to guarantee the content that they publish meets high standards (https://doaj.org/).&#x0D; Further development of LES/WOOD will move in the direction of indexing in the Scopus database, which will hopefully increase international visibility, widen the readership and increase the interest of authors in publishing in the journal. In this process, collaboration, the creative exchange of knowledge, new ideas and initiatives, are crucial, which will lead all the journal’s contributors to new successes. Therefore, I warmly invite you to contribute to the promotion of the journal and its development. Thanks in advance for your support!

About Our Authors

Journal ranking is a widely used tool in universities to evaluate the academic journal's impact and quality. Journal rankings should indicate the journal place within its field and reflect its prestige. These rankings are used as official research evaluation tools in numerous countries. The performance of a scientific journal can be evaluated with its impact factor, a metric introduced by E. Garfield in 1972, which is calculated yearly starting from 1975 for journals listed in Journal Citation Reports by the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI), now owned by Clarivate Analytics. The impact factor is found as the number of citations received by the journal in a year by the articles published in the last two years, counted in ISI, divided by the number of the journal’s articles published in these two years. Nowadays, there are many organizations calculating the impact factor in various ways, but the relevant impact factor remains that determined by ISI. To achieve a high impact factor and in consequence a good ranking, journals publish mainly original papers and reviews. Regarding case reports, only the exceptional one are published, in order to get the denominator for calculating the impact factor as small as possible. Obviously, publishing high quality articles is the best way to increase the journal’s impact factor. Many researchers are nowadays evaluated by the quality of their publications and the number of citations received by these publications. Wide exposure of the research articles and reaching the largest possible addressees is the key factor to increase citations of the article. Therefore, the open access articles are advantaged compared with those requiring subscription. In the past, numerous scientific publications took measures to increase their impact factors. These measures can sometimes appeal to the use of dubious means, such as self-citations or convincing the authors to cite the journal, selective publication of highly cited authors etc. The Romanian Journal of Acoustics and Vibration discourage such measures to increase citation and impact factor of the journal. The editorial team thanks all authors for submitting articles of high quality to our journal and for their contributions in improving the quality of the journal. The Romanian Journal of Acoustics and Vibration offer to all authors open access publication of their articles without asking for publication fees. Thus, the high quality original articles and reviews submitted by the authors will get an increased number of citations and help the journal achieving even higher standards.

In October this year, Science published a journalistic investigation into quality of peer review in open access journals [1]. The results were sobering. Around 60% of all journals accepted to publish a research paper with most obvious and basic mistakes - in fact the whole paper, its data, authors and their affiliations were entirely made up by the journalist, John Bohannon, to expose poor peer review. The article has provoked a lot of media attention as well as a backlash from open-access publishers and supporters, who called it unethical, unsound and even accused the journalist of being racist (for making up authors with African names). But regardless of the criticisms, the paper’s surprising findings stand and should be a cause of grave concern for science and science publishing: it shows that many - if not most - open access journals do not have a strict enough editorial and peer review process to catch poor research and flawed papers. The article intrigued me especially, as I commissioned a similar feature article for the website where I edit new and feature, SciDev.Net, which we published earlier this year [2]. I also had the idea of sending out fake and flawed papers to catch ’bad journals’ who accept it, but the time and money needed to do this meant we ended up skipping the investigative part, and we based our article only on reporting interviews with people affected. The key findings were that this is a global problem with some journals prey on researchers going for their money but not providing proper peer review, and that pressure to publish draws scientists, especially in developing countries, to publish in such journals. Experts suggested investigation and regulation is needed to ensure proper peer review, but there was little indication that this regulation will happen any time soon. Another key reason for not sending out fake papers were concerns over how to do this ethically and legally - in fact, the prospects of being sued by journals or their publishers for even talking about this issue meant that we had to be extra careful and run the article by media lawyers, as well as amend some sections and still accept some risk of being sued. Bohannon, in his recent interview with The Scholarly Kitchen blog, says his investigation, too, was initially held back by an editor who feared a lawsuit [3]. And here’s the thing: there is a huge number of journals and publishers out there doing a poor job indeed, publishing suspect science and some charging scientists money for it, and yet this is not illegal - and there is no national or international body that can order such journals to shut down. What they do is bad for science, good for publishers who make money off it and even good for some scientists who choose to publish there simply not to perish - rather than having any significant findings to communicate, and yet it is not against any law to do so. Yet journalists wanting to report on this issue fear being sued and are being held back from even investigating the issue. This is why I think Science’s article is so important: it was brave enough to investigate this issue and expose bad practice even though the prospect of a lawsuit was very real along the way [3]. This is what real journalism is about: telling stories that someone somewhere does not want you to tell; and seeing it done in science, where we rarely have investigative stories is especially satisfying. And even after this expose there may be no consequences for most of the journals and publishers. Indeed, apart form InTech’s (Rijeka-based publisher) International Journal of Integrative Medicine, which closed down as I reported at Retraction Watch blog [4], Bohannon says he is not aware of any other closures [3]. In the legal void in which anyone can set up a ’scientific journal’ online and start charging scientists for ’publishing’ there it is up to national and international grant giving bodies and funders to act to exclude journals with poor peer review from being accepted in scientists grant, job and promotion applications. Science’s investigation included most - or all, as Bohannon claims - of open access publishers that publish in English and in sciences (such as biology, medicine, chemistry), targeting 304 journals many of which were listed in Directory of Open Access Journals, and some, tellingly, in Beall’s List of predatory publishers. This left out thousands of journals that publish in local languages, including many in our region of South-East Europe. Croatia alone, has 343 academic journals listed on the central portal of Croatian scientific journals - Hrčak [5]. Most of these are open access and funded by the government, yet scientists often criticise many of them for being a waste of public money and dumps for bad science that cannot be published in better international journals [6]. Quality of peer review, especially in domestic language is also brought into question [6]. Similarly, in Serbia, SCIndeks lists 411 academic journals [7]. Yet, Centre for Evaluation in Education and Science, which runs the index together with National Library of Serbia, found recently that up to 11% of all articles published there contained some sort of plagiarism [8]. The centre itself admitted later that “after about one-year time we have to admit that the expected response by journal editors is still missing” and itself it only excluded two of the biggest culprits out of SCIndeks [9]. Similarly, my own journalistic investigation into what how, if at all, plagiarised papers are then retracted from journals in Serbia [10] and Croatia [11] shows a lack of standard practices and wide variation in retraction practices - often not following internationally accepted guidance, such as those set by COPE. If journals fail to detect plagiarism, which is a routine procedure these days, one wonders what the state of peer review and detection of other forms of misconduct may be. Indeed, a more recent study by the same centre found what is calls”a citation cartel created for manipulative purposes by two predatory journals” published by a publisher based in Bosnia and Herzegovina, but where many Serbian researchers regularly publish, in what the study called a cartel (i.e. scientists know they are doing a bad thing, paying public money to publish in their friends’ journals, and citing other studies in those journals to artificially boost their impact factors) [12]. What these examples highlight is that by no means has the publishing misconduct - or at least suspect practices - bypassed our region. In fact, small scientific communities, peer review in local languages, and lack of publishing and scientific expertise are all likely to exacerbate the problems in conducting proper peer review in small and local journals. Indeed, out of five journals in the former Yugoslavia, which Bohannon targeted, only one - the journal you are reading - has recognized the problems with the fake paper and decided to reject it. The other four: International Journal of Integrative Medicine (In Tech, Croatia), Journal of Plant Biology Research (International Network for Applied Sciences and Technology, B&amp;H), Acta Facultatis Medicae Naisensis (Medical Faculty of University of Niš, Serbia), and Macedonian Journal of Medical Sciences (Institute of Immunobiology and Human Genetics in Skopje, Macedonia) all accepted it and if this was not a journalistic investigation they could have all be by now had published similar fake papers. When asked about this case, the editorial offices of the Journal of Plant Biology Research and Acta Facultatis Medicae Naisensis did not reply to my e-mails, which is discouraging. It shows how little transparency some journals are prepared to have in their work, and to what extent they can simply ignore such exposes by even the venerable Science magazine. The answers I received from the other three journals’ editorial offices shine some light on the issues in the region [13]. Editor of the Macedonian Journal of Medical Sciences, Professor Mirko Spiroski, PhD, MD, told me his editorial team and peer reviewers did not have expertise in the field the fake article was in, and after seeking ten peer reviews and only receiving one back (a single line review), they decided to accept the paper nevertheless. InTech basically said they gave their appointed scientific editors, who were not part of the firm, full freedom in peer review and then blamed the mistake on them. This shows a lack of in-house expertise in some journals and a worrying degree of relying on outside editors or peer reviewers with little oversight to make the decisions on whether to publish a paper or not. In contrast, the editors of this journal, Professor Bakir Mehić, PhD, MD and AminaValjevac, PhD, MD highlighted the value of in-house pre-review check of papers, before sending them out to peer reviewers. As the world continues to debate the merits of, and potentially better ways of doing, peer review (e.g. post-publication peer review, Peerage of Science’s or LIBRE’s community peer review before it reaches journals), we should take care to ensure proper peer review in our journal now. It is not rocket science and it has worked for centuries now. And national bodies and funders should recognise good practice and reward hard-working and ethical editorial offices to stimulate excellence and better peer review, while at the same time punishing the misconduct and being quicker and more proactive in striking off known offenders off citation indices and lists of journals accepted for official grants and job promotions.

The article is devoted to an urgent pedagogical problem – the influence of the Internet on the socialization of student youth in modern conditions, which determined the purpose and objectives of the article: to characterize the role of the Internet in the formation of values and attitudes of student youth, the development of Internet-dependent behavior. To achieve the goal, the following research methods were used: literature analysis on the problem under study, express survey and testing, comparative analysis of the results. This problem is considered taking into account the increasing importance of electronic resources in the context of digitalization of modern society. The characteristics of the main concepts of the problem under study are given: socialization, student youth, the Internet, etc. The approaches to defining the place of the Internet as the main means of communication and information for young people are reflected. The authors present the results of a comprehensive monitoring study conducted in recent years among the students of the Dorzhi Banzarov Buryat State University. On the basis of the primary data of the study the actual characteristics of the problem under study are highlighted: the goals and reasons for visiting the Internet (communication in social networks, information search, entertainment, studies), the respondents’ evaluation of the impact of the Internet as more positive than negative. The study of the value orientations of modern student youth showed that the respondents choose the main traditional values: family, health, love, self-development. Thus, the peculiarities of the influence of the Internet on the socialization of student youth are presented as follows: the main purpose of visiting the Internet is to communicate in social networks; young people are quite aware of the role of Internet influence; the main life values of the young generation retain a traditional character; a significant proportion of respondents have formed and stable Internet addictive behavior. The analysis of the results obtained shows that the use of the Internet as the main means of communication and information does not, in general, have a negative impact on the formation of values and attitudes of student youth, but contributes to the development of Internet-dependent behavior. Keywords: socialization, student youth, the Internet, value orientations, Internet-dependent behavior

This essay argues that a religious perspective on South African writing (the term is defined as including any cultural artefact, spoken or written, which uses language(s) as its main means of communication) is both fruitful and long overdue. The essay traces or outlines, the general situation and lists some areas in which religious concerns, such as transformation, suffering and hope, poverty and marginality, can contribute to debates on South African writing. Some of these are further discussed.

The paper considers the issues of creating smart cities from the point of view of sustainable development of subjects, the role of the internet of things for a modern understanding of the development of smart communities, when the Internet has become the main means of communication not only for people, but also for subjects. The world experience of creation of normative base by technical Committee ISO/TC268 Sustainable development of communities is analyzed. The role of the internet of things (STK 1/ WG 10) is noted as an important part of the identified problem and for a understanding of the development of smart communities, when the internet has become the main means of communication not only for people but also for subjects. Particular attention is paid to the state of affairs in the standardization of requirements for «subjects of sustainable development» in theRussian Federation. Proposals have been developed for work in the establishment of common rules, regulations for such an urgent and multifunctional object of standardization, as the subject of sustainable development or a smart city.

&lt;p style="text-align: justify;"&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Objectives. &lt;/strong&gt;Conducting diagnostic assessment of people with mental disorders who do not use speech as the main mean of communication is closely related to evaluating their abilities (communicative, social, cognitive) for participating in an interview, including their readiness to use augmentative and alternative communication (AAC). To evaluate these capabilities and form the communicative involvement of respondents, research was carried out on the selection of AAC tools at the preparatory stage of the diagnostic interview to determine their degree of independence and required assistance.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p style="text-align: justify;"&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Methods&lt;/strong&gt;. The study involved 50 respondents aged 17 to 58 years with intellectual disabilities, autism and schizophrenia spectrum disorders, living in psycho-neurological residential facilities. Their mental states and specifics of speech disorders varied. To achieve the research objectives, the case method was chosen. In addition to AAC tools and visual aids, directed observation, a learning game situation, and implementation of practical tasks were used. The results were recorded as case study.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p style="text-align: justify;"&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Results.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/strong&gt;The necessary materials for the successful conduct of the interview&amp;rsquo;s preparatory stage were selected: objects, im ages, and symbols. The tasks of the preparatory stage were formulated: explaining the purposes of the interview, obtaining consent, identifying available methods of communication, providing communicative support, and training to use communi cative symbols. It was revealed that, due to an individual differentiated approach, the case method is effective in achieving the goals of the interview&amp;rsquo;s preparatory stage and ensuring the direct participation of respondents in the interview.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p style="text-align: justify;"&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Conclusions.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/strong&gt;Direct participation in a diagnostic interview of respondents with mental disorders who do not use speech as the main means of communication can be ensured by organizing the preparatory stage of the interview. During this stage, the optimal AAC and visual aids for each respondent were selected, and additional training opportunities for new AAC tools were used. As a result, recommendations were prepared for the residential facilities on their further work with respondents, the success of which needs to be verified.&lt;/p&gt;

Report from the Working Group of the Molecular Biology Society of Japan for the investigation of fraud in research papers

When biij came into being in early 2005, it was envisioned as a tool for the dissemination of scientific knowledge. Today, biij continues to fulfill this role, having gone through a process of evolution and growth. In the early days [1], the email system was the main means of communication. All manuscript submissions, including its figures and images, were sent as email attachments to the managing editor. The subsequent reviewing stages were also done via email. To simplify the tracking process, the managing editor developed an in-house software to view and update the status of each of the submitted manuscripts. It was developed using the Active Server Pages (ASP) programming language and a Microsoft Access database, and is only viewable by the editors. Although the software served its purpose well, the journal has grown so much so that its requirements for additional features far outweigh the resources that were currently available. From January 2007, biij gradually implemented the open source Open Journal Systems (OJS) software for online manuscript submission, tracking and management. The software was developed as part of the Public Knowledge Project, managed in partnership between the Faculty of Education at the University of British Columbia, the Simon Fraser University Library, the School of Education at Stanford University, and the Canadian Centre for Studies in Publishing at Simon Fraser University [2]. From the outset of biij's birth, the publishers have always emphasised the searchability and availability of biij’s contents. In October 2005, biij became a member of CrossRef [3] and provided a unique Digital Object Identifier (DOI) for each of the published manuscripts, including the abstracts from selected meetings and conferences. This ensures that biij’s contents remain available in the future, even if there are changes to the structure of its website. Biij is now indexed in a number of indexing databases, including Scopus, Embase, and Compendex (since January 2008); Chemical Abstracts Service (CAS) (since April 2006); INSPEC (since March 2006); Index Copernicus International (since April 2006); Google Scholar (since December 2005); and Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) (since September 2005). In November 2008, Elsevier also agreed to include all manuscripts prior to 2008 in its Scopus and EMBASE database. biij contents are currently being submitted to Pubmed Central [4], the online repository for biomedical and life sciences journal literature at the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) [5]. This process is part of the requirements for the application of evaluation for the Pubmed/Medline database, to be initiated sometime in 2009.

The fear of scientific publishing