A reader writes:
Publishing in an ethical and reputable peer-reviewed journal is like coloring inside the lines. Claiming that an article you wrote is peer-reviewed in Academic Journals’ “Scientific Research and Essays” is like showing your friends that first attempt your mom hung on the refrigerator door. (emphasis mine)
The reader, concerned that so many “shroudie” papers appear in this journal, sent along some links:
A New York Times article: Scientific Articles Accepted (Personal Checks, Too)
Beall’s List of Potential, possible, or probable predatory scholarly open-access publishers listing Academic Journals
A Review by Jeffrey Beall, Auraria Library, University of Colorado that was published by The Charleston Advisor:
Academic Journals Academic Journals publishes 106 Open-Access, peer-reviewed, online journals. Their journals are separated into several categories, including medical sciences, social sciences, biological sciences, physical sciences, arts and education, legal studies, and “other.” The “contact us” page lists Nairobi (Kenya) and Lagos (Nigeria) addresses, but a search of the domain name registration retrieves a Decatur, Illinois, address. Many of the journals listed have little or no content and do not list an editor or editorial board. On many of the editorial board pages, it says, “The complete list of editors will be published shortly.” Every journal page has a link that says, “Call for paper [sic].” Each journal page also lists professional organizations and upcoming conferences that match the subject matter of the journal, perhaps an attempt to make the site appear more scholarly. For the journals that do have content, it is not uncommon to have only two or three articles per issue. The journals have ISSN numbers, but they do not have DOIs. The site states that all works it publishes fall under the Creative Commons attribution license. This site was down for several days in early 2010 as we were researching this review; it had been hacked and its content replaced by political and other content. The site uses Google Custom Search as its search mechanism, and the journals are listed in an A to Z list. At least some of the articles are indexed in Google Scholar.
Let’s stop pretending. If nobody is really going to believe the paper is really peer-reviewed (does anyone?), why not publish it at academia.edu or at shroud.com. The paper will probably get more attention and the author won’t need to pay a vanity fee of upwards of $550.
Perhaps we should stop boasting with the term peer reviewed. We cause people to laugh at shroud science. .
Peer reviewed means the paper can be accepted for consideration, not that what is proposed is gospel truth and Shroudies have had problems with peer-reviewed Shroud papers, Shroud books and so on. One can be sure that the ecclesiastical authorities in Turin and Rome know about this and now more care has to be taken with what is published in Shroud newsletters and websites. Why? Because it seems that in these cases the left hand there does not know what the right hand is doing. This is not conducive to producing reliable Shroud studies, to attracting academics and to winning the confidence of those who decide in Rome.