https://arxiv.org/abs/2009.05392 n scholarly publishing, blacklists aim to register fraudulent or deceptive journals and publishers, also known as "predatory", to minimise the spread of unreliable research and the growing of fake publishing outlets. However, blacklisting remains a very controversial activity for several reasons: there is no consensus regarding the criteria used to determine fraudulent journals, the criteria used may not always be transparent or relevant, and blacklists are rarely updated regularly. Cabell's paywalled blacklist service attempts to overcome some of these issues in reviewing fraudulent journals on the basis of transparent criteria and in providing allegedly up-to-date information at the journal entry level. We tested Cabell's blacklist to analyse whether or not it could be adopted as a reliable tool by stakeholders in scholarly communication, including our own academic library.
The Name of the arXiv: when too much zeal is an obstacle to science
Tommasos blog 2009. This is an old problem.
https://www.science20.com/quantum_diaries_survivor/does_arxiv_blacklist_authors_help_finding_out
Christian Corda
I well understand and I send you my apologies.
Christian Corda
I well understand and I send you my apologies
sure dear administrator, It is better like this, sorry to have been off topic , my apologies, regards
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I'm not sure I got your point right. Certainly, if you want to be funded, don't criticize arXiv and keep well away from the censorship danger zone by proposing ideas that might annoy some academic interests. On the contrary, to obtain funding easily, you have to try to ride the highest wave of the latest mainstream topic, trying to accommodate the ideas of those who could grant you the funds.
In fact, you are writing on the FQxI website which would have no reason to exist if innovative ideas brought secure funds :"FQxI catalyzes research and outreach primarily on questions at the foundations of physics and cosmology. FQxI supports high-risk, high-reward science—in particular new frontiers and innovative ideas integral to a deep understanding of physical reality that lie beyond the remit of conventional institutional support and funding. FQxI strives to make science more effective and equitable in all its efforts."
I am raising a problem which, as far as I have been able to ascertain, is blocking the free development of the scientific debate, of policies that are in open contrast with the basic aspect of the scientific method according to which "“the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual” [Galileo (1610)]." This means that the validity of a scientific idea is not unequivocally established by an authority without providing motivations or simply ignored altogether, but it is established with a debate in which the author must be put in the conditions to defend the thesis with reasoning and facts.
Science is above all an exercise of freedom. I think it is clear that there can be no scientific progress if there is no freedom of thought. It is no coincidence that the great scientific revolutions took place in the countries with the most advanced civil rights of that historical period (or which had previously had advanced civil rights). This is because science evolves by revolutions and revolutions can only happen in societies flexible enough to assimilate them. The word revolution itself, understood as the subversion of established ideas in general, comes from science where it originally indicated the movement of the planets (Maybe there would not have been the French Revolution, with the principle of equality among all people, if it hadn't been for the discovery that the earth has a "revolution" motion as all the other planets and it is not placed at the center of the universe just like the King is not placed at the center of the universe by divine right).
In conclusion, scientific progress can only blossom in soil fertilized by freedom of thought and debate.
Tejinder Singh
I have a similar problem, with the difference that some papers of mine have been rejected by arXiv even after their publication in mainstream high impact factor journals. Not even sent to gen/ph, but completely rejected.
Donatello Dolce
I’ll put it another way:
Isn’t it true that the overwhelming majority of arXiv papers sing from the same songbook? The papers pretty much all tell a story of a type of world where people, and everything about the world, are merely the outcomes of automatic processes: laws and/or randomness.
The arXiv papers tell a story of a type of world where the pilots who flew the planes into the twin towers in New York were just as much victims of the automatic processes as were the thousands of people killed or injured when the twin towers collapsed. All people, and indeed the whole world with its natural environment and weather, are just outcomes of automatic processes.
The arXiv papers tell a story of a type of world where no one, including the pilots, could ever be responsible for their own physical outcomes, no one could ever be responsible for flying planes into towers, because every aspect of the world is entirely equally just an outcome of underlying automatic processes.
That is why it is so surprising that arXiv paper writers would complain if the underlying automatic processes, that they so fervently believe in, led to their papers being rejected. Considering the songbook that the majority of the arXiv writers are singing from, shouldn’t they be raging against the laws of nature and randomness?
Lorraine Ford
I find a weakness in your thinking. It is the point that the arXiv Autors fervently believe in the underlying automatic processes. For example, I do not believe in it.
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Christian Corda
Perhaps you are not in the majority.
Are you saying, for example, that the pilots who flew the planes into the twin towers jumped some of their own numbers, making them genuinely personally responsible for the outcome, as opposed to laws of nature and/or randomness moving/ jumping 100% of the numbers? Are you saying that we live in a type of world where actual people working for arXiv could be genuinely responsible for their own physical outcomes (e.g. rejecting papers), as opposed to the underlying laws of nature and/or randomness being 100% responsible for all outcomes?
Paper writers could have nothing to complain about if we lived in a type of world where the underlying laws of nature and randomness were totally responsible for all outcomes, e.g. rejecting arXiv papers.
Admin Comment: Your reference to the attack on the Twin Towers attack is insensitive, inappropriate, and in poor taste as an example to use to highlight your point.
people are responsible for their actions and this is not the place to talk about free will or similar concepts.
Anyone making the decision to accept, reject or reclassify papers should only do so on scientific grounds. The point is that sometimes it's done for other reasons that have little to do with science. This is happening in arXiv, but unfortunately some journals also adopt this behavior.
Making decisions about the fate of a paper without going into the scientific merits and without allowing the author to respond is a deplorable practice, especially if the paper has already passed a peer-review. In this case we get the paradox that the result described by the paper has acquired a certification of scientific validity but, if correct, it will not be noticed and will not contribute to scientific progress, if wrong, nobody will falsify it and the author can claim a false result.
Donatello Dolce
You and others are complaining about arXiv, or more correctly, people at arXiv who have rejected your papers for some ostensible but unstated reason.
If the world is indeed like most arXiv papers say it is like, then your complaints should be directed to the laws of nature and randomness, which, according to your papers, are the only elements of the world responsible for the numbers (that apply to categories like position, momentum or energy) that describe physical outcomes.
Donatello Dolce
MauvePanther,
On the one hand, you and others are complaining about physical outcomes (i.e. your papers being rejected by people working for arXiv).
On the other hand, the majority of arXiv papers (presumably including yours) are in effect saying that 100% of physical outcomes are 100% due to laws of nature and randomness.
So, while you and others might interpret the unpalatable outcomes as “deplorable practices”, “decisions” being made, reasoning occurring, and “not contribut[ing] to scientific progress”, in reality it is just the inevitable unfolding of the impersonal laws of nature and randomness occurring, because seemingly there are no other possible causes of outcomes.
So, can you please clarify whether you think that there are ANY other possible causes of outcomes (palatable or unpalatable) other than the types of things we might describe as physics’ “laws of nature” and “randomness”?
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Lorraine Ford 100% of physical outcomes are 100% due to laws of nature and randomness.
In your deterministic view, you are assuming that we humans know exactly the initial condition of the physical systems that affect decisions, but real life is a very very complex system and, fortunately, unexpected things happen in our life. If future facts are already written in the solutions of the physics laws we have no access to that information (except for very simple and controllable elementary systems). But I don't want to discuss these things here.
Lorraine Ford in reality it is just the inevitable unfolding of the impersonal laws of nature and randomness occurring, because seemingly there are no other possible causes of outcomes.
If you believe this then you should not complain to me, should you go complain to the laws of nature.
Lorraine Ford So, can you please clarify whether you think that there are ANY other possible causes of outcomes (palatable or unpalatable) other than the types of things we might describe as physics’ “laws of nature” and “randomness”?
Dear CornflowerCicada, try this little experiment yourself: convince yourself that you don't want to continue this discussion here, if you really try this you can get this outcome regardless "the types of things we might describe as physics’ “laws of nature” and “randomness”". I hope this little experiment will be successful.
Admin Comment: Users please refrain from making personal attacks on other users. Such behaviour is not tolerated here. Things are boiling over and getting very heated again.
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OK, sorry. I would just like to clarify that censorship, like any other injustice, or the tragic episodes like those mentioned by CornflowerCicada, cannot be blamed on the “laws of nature” and “randomness”, or on "the outcomes of automatic processes" whatever that means. On the contrary, we must always act to avoid injustice as we must always try to create the most favorable conditions for the development of science. From my essay: "Freedom of scientific thought, like freedom of thought in general, will always be under a threat that will take ever new forms in every age. For this reason, each of us must always be aware, especially in less suspicious eras, that freedom is precious and must always be preserved".
Coming back to the main topic "science in the internet era", what just happened in this thread could be indicative of what is reported in my essay: "It is easy to give some predictions about the future of science by observing the evolution of threads in web forums or other social networks in general. One of the effects of the internet [discussions] will be a flattening downward of the scientific debate with an ever greater shortage of new challenging ideas and an increasing self-celebration of old super-inflated concepts [...] ".
What happens in arXiv or in similar institutions with obscure policies typical of social media, could have similar dynamics (but much more veiled) to what typically happens in forums and social media, where it is easy, without a rigid application of the scientific method, to divert the discussion onto redundant tracks and sterile ideas. The scientific method is the only weapon we have to discriminate between fringe science and challenging new ideas.
Donatello Dolce
MauvePanther,
What I am trying to get at is that you and others are blaming unpalatable outcomes (the rejection of papers) on people who work for arXiv, and yet the very papers that were rejected tell a story of a world where all outcomes are fully accounted for by laws of nature and randomness. The papers tell a story of a fully self-sufficient world that doesn't need any decisions to be made, or any reasoning to occur, by people who work for arXiv.
Re "... what just happened in this thread could be indicative of what is reported in my essay: "It is easy to give some predictions about the future of science by observing the evolution of threads in web forums or other social networks in general. One of the effects of the internet [discussions] will be a flattening downward of the scientific debate...":
You are seemingly in effect claiming that I am hijacking debate on your essay. But from my point of view, I am merely pointing out what I would claim are obvious inconsistencies in a philosophical approach or a way of seeing the world. These inconsistencies relate to your “unspeakable hypotheses and established truths that cannot be questioned”, where the “unspeakable hypotheses” is the idea that people, as opposed to laws and randomness, could actually have a physical effect on the world; where people working for arXiv could actually, literally, be physically responsible for rejecting a paper.
arXiv told me that I should publish first in a recognised review after this I can submit my preprint!.
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Don't be so sure about that. Among the many stories that I can extensively testify, besides those of papers reclassified or rejected even if published in highly ranked journals at submission, is one story of a paper reclassified with the advice "we will reclassify the paper as requested by the author when the article is published" or something like that (about 2010). This would have been fine, except that the article was already published at that time and the author specified the journal-ref data at submission. OK, it was a conference paper (but peer-reviewed if I well remember). But what did they want the author to do? Did they want a conference paper published in a peer-reviewed journal? Or is this simply one of several episodes showing the deep contradictions of the arXiv moderation system?
Alaya Kouki
I have been (and still am) in the same situation over the last few years. Many of my articles have had to wait for acceptance by mainstream journals before they can be listed on the arXiv. One, the one on the precession of the perihelion of planets in Newtonian physics, was rejected even after being published in a mainstream journal with an impact factor greater than 4... Yet I have over 120 articles included in the archive.
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Donatello Dolce
This is actually a big problem, also the fact that the business industry have began to rule in academia.
"Certainly, if you want to be funded, don't criticize arXiv and keep well away from the censorship danger zone by proposing ideas that might annoy some academic interests. On the contrary, to obtain funding easily, you have to try to ride the highest wave of the latest mainstream topic, trying to accommodate the ideas of those who could grant you the funds."
This makes the scientist to prostitutes. No good...
Admin comment: While I see your point, likening scientists to prostitutes comes across as vulgar and in poor taste. As such this is not acceptable.