Walt at Random

The September 2018 Cites & Insights (18:6) is now available for downloading at https://citesandinsights.info/civ18i6.pdf

The 70-page issue consists of one essay/roundup:

Intersections: Predator!  pp. 1-70

The lists have ended, but the malady lingers on… There seems to be a burgeoning industry of Pointing With Alarm at the (usually wildly overestimated) array of “predatory” journals (usually identified as predatory based on one librarian’s typically-unsupported claims).

This roundup began with more than 130 tagged articles, most quite recent; despite narrowing it down, it still includes more than 60–and there are many more not discussed.

Erratum: I am informed by a reader (Marc Couture–thanks!) that there is a probable error on page 15, where I say

“What I have not done, ever, is to submit an article to an outlet with being fairly comfortable with that outlet”

I meant “without being fairly comfortable,” to be sure.

Can I blame my six-fingered typing since suffering nerve damage? Nah, didn’t think so: blame sloppy proofreading. I would fire the proofreader, but that won’t work either…

I usually won’t fix an error in a published issue (unless there’s a legal or other problem, as opposed to a simple goof), but in this case, adding the three letters didn’t affect the rest of the layout at all–not even the line wrap–so I’ve updated it.