I recently learned of another junk-science article published by China-based Scientific Research Publishing (SCIRP). The article, “Three Principles of Akkie Management,” was published in SCIRP’s American Journal of Industrial and Business Management in 2013. The article makes outlandish statements such as “The human population lived in MARS planet in prehistoric time shall be called SUPER MANAGERS with super wisdom” (p. 453).
“Akkie” refers to the civilization that supposedly inhabited Mars. This is not the first time I have learned of junk science articles published in SCIRP journals. Its journal editors and editorial board members in most cases have no role in running the firm’s journals and play only an honorary role. Like many open-access publishers, SCIRP wants to accept and publish as many papers as possible so it can earn money from the author fees.
That the crazy article has been published and openly available for two years with little or no notice speaks to the low impact of SCIRP as a publisher. Anyone who pays to publish in SCIRP journals with the goal of communicating research findings is wasting his or her money.
The pseudo-science article is indexed in DOAJ, the Directory of Open Access Journals, and Google Scholar, of course, the world’s largest index of junk science.
I found one later article that cites the Akkie article: “Universe is Like Space Ship” [sic], published in volume 2, issue 10 (2013) of the American Journal of Engineering Research, a journal included on my list. This later article has the same two authors as the earlier one, so it’s a self-citation.
The American Journal of Engineering Research purports to be published in the American state of Connecticut, but I think this is a lie, and the journal is probably really based in India.
The Authors
The authors are Manuel Arulmani and Victor Ranjitham Hema Latha, and Victor appears to be female. They claim to work for the BSNL, a government-owned telephone company in India.
They apparently have a lot of free time in their jobs, the time they use to write fantasy fiction they then arrange to be published as scholarly articles.
One of the functions of peer review is to ensure demarcation, or the identification of junk science, and to ensure fringe science does not become a part of the scholarly record. SCIRP is failing in this crucial task and is betraying scientists and science itself.
Notes:
1. A PDF of the SCIRP article is here.
2. A PDF of the American Journal of Engineering Research article is here.
3. The photo of the authors is from here.
