They lost the Loon at “think.”
The newest contender in the race to manage the scam-journal problem is “Think Check Submit,” an initiative with an impressive pedigree. Unfortunately—whether this is a design-by-committee compromise or someone got the bit in their teeth; there could be many reasons for this and none of them is malice—its execution leaves a great deal to be desired.
Just the tagline is unappealing enough; “think” is emphatically not what a harried academic looking for a likely journal wants to do, and “check” is even worse! (“Submit” has somewhat less-than-savory overtones, but the Loon supposes this was not easily avoidable, as for good or ill that is the standard verb.)
What harried academics (who are not cynically using scam journals to feed wrongheaded evaluation mechanisms) want is to avoid being snookered. Moreover, they want that to happen with the least possible thought or effort on their part. If academics felt wholly confident in their ability to avoid scam journals, they would not incessantly demand that such journals be shut down, to the point of pitching a giant moral panic about the phenomenon. If they did not mind thinking a little harder about their journal choices, a certain list would not have nearly the notoriety it does.
It is precisely the “don’t make me think!” problem that dooms the current “Check” checklist. It is immensely too onerous, too nitpicky, too sterile, and too hard to remember for the standard-issue harried academic to do anything but click immediately away from.
The Loon is sorry, because (perhaps to everyone’s surprise) she unquestioningly believes this effort well-intentioned, but she cannot find anything to praise in its current form… other than perhaps its existence, and the cooperation implied by that. They lost the Loon at “think.”
What might be the fix, then?
First, the Loon might try to boost the emotional appeal of the central message. What does someone who has avoided being snookered feel? Self-righteousness and schadenfreude aimed at the scammer, typically. The tagline could tap into that feeling: “Starve the Predators!” perhaps (the Loon is not a marketing professional). Gamification seems a not-unlikely design option as well, perhaps as a teaching tool slightly separate from the actual decide-about-a-journal page.
Second, turn the checklist into a series of questions that turn up a reliable answer regarding a given journal or publisher as quickly and easily as possible. The site should not force harried academics through an entire list! Get them the answer they want and let them go.
For example, the Loon’s first question might well be “Is the journal on this list?” A “yes” answer would (in an ideal world where defamation lawsuits never happen) receive the response “These are lying liars who lie. They are not reputable. Find another journal.” One and done!
Did they spam your email? Not reputable. Two and done!
Have they published nothing or almost nothing, but don’t say anything about an inaugural issue? Not reputable. Three and done!
Do they claim to be “indexed in Ulrich’s or Google Scholar”? Not reputable. Four and done! Note well, the harried academic does not know or care why. It’s easy to find and it works. That’s enough.
(Though it probably does make sense to offer a “why does this work?” link after the answer, leading to an explanation. At least a few academics will be curious and learn something, and that’s delightful.)
The list of questions in this Loonish scheme will be somewhat perishable; even the dimmest scammers (and some of them are indeed exceedingly dim) can work out how to remove an Ulrich’s claim from their website. Consider this a call for ongoing observation (not to say research) regarding scammer tactics and useful distinguishing heuristics.
The Loon’s main point remains: design the site to get to an answer, fast, unless it is preferable to be the little-known eat-your-broccoli alternative to a certain list.
I like the idea of something that gives you quick results. While researching tutorial authoring software, I ran across this interesting use of Qualtrics to do a “is this thing I found scholarly or not” tutorial. I’m thinking it might be a good model for the checklist you are suggesting.
I profoundly disagree. I think Think-Check-Submit is just fine, and all that is needed. You say ““think” is emphatically not what a harried academic looking for a likely journal wants to do”. I say that is pathetic a so-called academic who doesn’t want to think should be working at McDonalds, not at a university.
The idea that someone would invest a year of their lives into researching a problem and writing it up, but not be able or willing to spend ten minutes checking up on a journal before submitting to it is unsupportable. Anyone who won’t do this is not a researcher whose work I am interested in reading — their paper might just as well go in a scam journal, since they’ve demonstrated no ability to think critically.
The Loon is pleased that you have such a high opinion of your colleagues, but she cannot share it… nor does she have any particular desire to waste those colleagues’ time.
Unless there’s something seriously wrong with my computer (and both Internet Explorer and Firefox–no wait, the same is true for Chrome), there’s an even more fundamental problem: Two full weeks after the publicity about TCS began (at the scholarly kitchen, at least), there is no there there: the website at that link is a 1&1 parking page full of links to sets of ads.
Which, to my mind, is an immediate sign of an “entity”–i.e., a “journal” or a “publisher” that can’t even be bothered to populate a domain before publicizing it.
(Nothing against 1&1: they’re my domain register and I sort-of appreciate the effort to avoid 404s. But it wouldn’t take much Thinking to Check to be sure there was actual content on the site before Submitting publicity articles.)