Re: [tlug] Open Access Journals

[Raymond Wan <rwan.kyoto@example.com>]

On Sat, Mar 22, 2014 at 1:35 AM, Stephen J. Turnbull <stephen@example.com> wrote:
> Raymond Wan writes:
>
>  > Yes, but it is really difficult to control since IEEE is based in the
>  > USA and this conference in question is based in China.
>
> Are you talking about ICNC-FSKD?


I'm talking about the "2013 International Conference on Quality,
Reliability, Risk, Maintenance, and Safety Engineering" which was
mentioned in the Nature article Simon pointed out.  Of course, the
article says only one paper from that conference was a problem --
nevertheless, it uses it as an example so I've done the same.

Nothing special about China; only that it is physically far from IEEE HQ.


>  > Has IEEE in the USA met the conference organizers in China?
>  > Probably not.
>
> What makes you think that?  Certainly in economics when an
> international association delegates to a local affiliate (and allows
> them to use the association name) the association officers do know the
> various chairs and co-chairs (conference, program, local arrangements,
> total of 5-10 individuals in most cases).  I would be surprised if it
> were different for the IEEE, but I have no direct information so you
> tell me.


A bit different, then.  Perhaps IEEE supports just too many
conferences; enough to create that web site I sent out.

Again it isn't a matter of them not knowing each other but that they
know each other through a (potentially) long chain of people.  Not as
close as what you say.

For example, see http://www.ieee.org/documents/30012586.pdf .  At the
bottom of page 1, it asks the conference organizers to contact the
local IEEE Section 2 years in advance.  This implies (1) that they
don't need to contact IEEE HQ directly (except via documents and
contracts that are mentioned elsewhere in this timeline) and (2) the
organizers of the conference may not overlap with the local Section.
One thing that caught my attention is that the timeline doesn't seem
to explicitly indicate that they have to involve the local affiliate;
"making contact" could range from a lot of involvement to a simple
e-mail.

Again, it is very easy to pick one IEEE conference and highlight that
as an example of IEEE being bad.  Some IEEE conferences are very good
and the work published is equally good.  If I got something into one
of those, I'd be very happy.  But there are some not so good ones,
too.

There are some organizations in other fields whose equivalent to IEEE
(i.e., professional organization) might have much fewer conferences
and thus can exercise more control.  Economics might be one of them.
It does vary greatly with area and we really can't categorize
conferences, journals, and publishers all in the same way across all
fields...


> I wouldn't think of them as "publisher" in the same sense that
> Springer is.  The IEEE's publishing activity is a natural outgrowth of
> its activities as a professional association, combined with the size
> that makes it practical to self-publish.  But it's a professional
> association that happens to publish, not a publisher that happens to
> have membership of tens of thousands of professionals.


Yes, I agree with this completely.


> What we mean by "publisher" here is a business model, ie, an entity
> providing printing and distribution services as a business, *separate*
> from the professional organizations that provide editors and content
> to the journal.  Those are the folks who no longer seem to have a
> raison d'etre in academic journal publishing.


Yes, fair enough.  Returning to the Nature article with the title of
"Publishers withdraw more than 120 gibberish papers", it is probably
unfair to lump Springer and IEEE into the word "Publisher"...

Ray