I’m not a researcher, and I don’t claim that I closely follow the rankings of the different peer reviewed academic journals, see ranking here https://www.scimagojr.com/journalrank.php
but…
I do come across articles about the growth in the US and elsewhere of the “pay to play” academic research journals (where the academics have to pay the journal thousands of dollars per paper to have it published) and the related issue with some of the less rigorous of them that detractors call “paper mills”, predatory publishers and junk journals.
So, US-based, or Russia based, or China-based, or otherwise, you have to be somewhat skeptical at all times. Peer reviewed doesn’t automatically mean quality, no matter what country its published in. I don’t put much time into looking into this issue but I have seen the news coverage of the issue increasing in the past decade, identifying it as a growing problem.
If I was a scammy businessman it seems it would be pretty easy to have a PHD candidate at some backwater university write up a few nice (fake) studies of my new miracle drug or nutritional supplement, pay $5,000 to have them published in these academic journals, and then use that published research as promotional literature to drive sales of my new product.
And since its relevant to this current discussion, I have to say I’ve seen that Blagosklonny’s journals (Aging, Ongotarget) are sometimes cited as problematic. I don’t have an opinion one way or another, but wanted people to be aware of the controversy:
Smut namely discovered that the journal Aging (impact factor 4.8) has published several utterly fake products from paper mills. Which is funny, because Aging has a very fancy editorial board, a who-is-who of American and European science elites. You know, the kind of which you, dear failed scientist reader, were supposed to emulate.
The US-based journal Aging is run by Mikhail Blagosklonny, a Soviet-born US researcher with a hefty PubPeer record, whom my readers will recall as chief editor of another outlet: Oncotarget, which also seems to be the go-to journal for every fraudulent cancer researcher. Blagosklonny’s main scholarly interest is however in achieving eternal life, and how to get there using rapamycin and its molecular target, mTOR. While Oncotarget is there for phony cancer research, Aging covers the other field of biomedical bullshittery, the anti-aging. In theory, at least. In reality, Aging accepts any trash in biomedicine, the fake papermill products Smut Clyde exposed are about cancer and nanotechnology.
In 2013, Science correspondent John Bohannon submitted 304 fake scientific articles to various open access journals, many of which were published by publishers on Beall’s List. Among these publishers that completed the review process, 82% accepted the paper. Bohannon stated “the results show that Beall is good at spotting publishers with poor quality control”. Beall stated that the results support his claim to be identifying “predatory” publishers.[16]However, the remaining 18% of publishers identified by Beall as predatory rejected the fake paper, leading science communicator Phil Davis to state “That means that Beall is falsely accusing nearly one in five”.[17]
Notable publishing groups to pass this sting operation include PLoS One, Hindawi, and Frontiers Media.[16][18] Frontiers Media would later be added to Beall’s list in 2015, sparking a controversy that is credited as a major reason for Beall eventually retracting his list.[3][19]
