User talk:Yilloslime/Questionable Sources

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I'd be inclined to omit Regulation . The title isn't misleading, since the journal is mainly about (criticism of) regulation. Of course it follows the Cato line, but there isn't any effort to pretend otherwiseJQ (talk) 07:33, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

I see your point.Yilloslime (t) 15:05, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

Antelan started WP:NOTRS a couple months back, but appears not to have had a chance to flesh out the essay. May I inform them of this page, or is it intended as a limited project for at least the nonce? - Eldereft ~(s)talk~ 18:45, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

At this point I'm not thinking of this as anything more than an informal list of suspect sources that should only be used very carefully, if at all. If it grows into something more (e.g. an essay), I'd be OK with that, but that's not my intention. So sure, go ahead and tell them about this page and encourage them to add other journals, but please don't make it sound like anything more than it is. Yilloslime (t) 18:56, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] PLoS ONE?

Anyone have any thoughts on PLoS ONE? My preliminary research leads me to question its reliability: authors must pay to have their work published, there is only one referee per article (two is standard) and s/he isn't necessarily even an expert in the field, and the journal seems to be dumping ground for papers rejected from other PLoS journals: “Authors may request that papers…rejected from one PLoS journal be transferred to PLoS ONE, for further consideration there...Also, if an academic editor on another PLoS journal sponsors a paper, rejected from that journal, for publication in PLoS ONE, we will respect that sponsorship.”[1] Finally, without going into the details, the only two papers from the journal I've looked at closely ([2] and [3]) have, IMHO, some serious methodological problems.

But all this is WP:OR, and I could have the journal pegged completely wrongly. It certainly doesn't seem to be "captured" by industry the same way that Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology or Indoor and Built Environment are, or totally WP:FRINGE like JPANDS or 21st century. It just seems, to me, that the bar for publication is incredibly low. Anyone have any thoughts or know of criticisms from reliable sources? Yilloslime (t)

The pay-to-publish thing isn't necessarily a disqualifier by itself; there's a move toward open access, and many journals have at least the option for the authors to pay to make their articles open access. Certainly PLoS Medicine is a reasonably good journal (the only PLoS one I've looked at). But it appears that all of the PLoS journals are independent, so the fact that one or two are reliable doesn't mean they all are. In fact, PLoS ONE draws a distinction between PLoS Medicine, which has a professional peer-review/editorial process, and PLoS ONE, which has a "community-based editorial board", whatever that means. Dunno. MastCell ^Talk 18:13, 23 May 2008 (UTC)