A copy of a copy – or plagiarism taken to the extreme
The journal 'Acta Scientific Pharmaceutical Sciences' is a research journal which describes itself as
"a scientific, multidisciplinary journal with 1.020 Impact factor, that strongly desires to disseminate knowledge in the field of Pharmaceutical Science and Technology"
The journal has been publishing since 2017 – one of a great number of new scientific journals competing for researchers' work. As well as the quite decent impact factor for such a new journal it also claims two other metrics – a 32% acceptance rate and period from acceptance to publication of 20-30 days.
Impact factor
The usual (that is, accepted, canonical) way of measuring impact factors is in terms of the average number of times articles in a journal are cited in other articles. Usually it is calculated over a set period (say within 5 years of publication) and based only on citations in articles in a database of journals that are considered to meet quality criteria. Some journal articles may never get cited, whilst others are cited a great deal, and the impact factor reflects an average for a journal.
However, I am wary of claims of impact factors unless I see how they are derived, as I have seen journals claiming 'impact factors' that are based on a completely different set of criteria – a bit like claiming the room temperature is 300K because the display of a chemical balance indicated '300'. (See 'Publish at speed, recant at leisure'.)
The timescale of review and publication
In the past some journals took months, even years to publish a submitted manuscript. Clearly for an author the quicker the time from submission to publication the better – at least all things being equal. They are not always equal however.
It is usually considered better to publish in a recognised high status journal where work is likely to get more attention from others working in a field, and where the publication brings more prestige to the authors and their institutions. So, an author may well feel that slow publication in a 'good' journal is preferable to quicker publication in a nondescript one.
However, time from acceptance to publication is perhaps not the most useful metric to guide authors. By the time I stepped down from editing the Royal Society of Chemistry's education journal, Chemistry Education Research and Practice, it was often publishing an advanced version of an accepted article on the day I accepted it (and the final version of record within about a week or so). Yet that ignores the time a submission spends in review.
That is the time it takes for an editor to
- screen the submission (make sure it is within the scope of the journal and includes sufficient detail for a careful evaluation),
- identify and invite expert reviewers,
- receive back their reports,
- consider these and reach a decision
- ask authors to make any revisions seen necessary
- receive back a corrected/revised submission
- decide whether this seems to meet the changes needed
- and whether the revised revisions also needs to go back to reviewers
- …
Sometimes this process can be quick – sometimes it may be drawn out with a number of cycles of revision before authors satisfy reviewers/editors and a manuscript is accepted. Expert reviewers who are highly respected in their fields are often very busy and get many request to review.
So, average time from submission to acceptance would seem to be a key metric both because it may help authors avoid journals where editors and reviewers are very slow to turn around work, and because if this period is very short then it may bring into question whether there is rigorous review.
Acceptance rate
In this regard, the journal's claimed acceptance rate, 32% looks healthy. Two thirds of material submitted to the journal is (by deduction) rejected as not suitable for publication. Assuming this figure is accurate, this does suggests that peer review is taken seriously. (One likes to trust in the honesty of others, but sadly there are many predatory journals not above being dishonest, as I have discussed in a range of postings.)
Peer review
The publisher's site certainly suggests that the publisher recognises the importance of careful peer review undertaken by "eminent reviewers", with guidance for reviewers.
"Acta Scientifica believes that, thorough peer review process is a critical factor to yield immense quality literature to be published in the journal."
https://www.actascientific.com/reviewer.php
Among the points made here, potential reviewers are guided that
"The study should possess novelty and should present the results of original research. It is required that the reported results are not published elsewhere."
The benefits of peer review are said to be
- "The author receives detailed and constructive feedback from experts in the field.
- The process can alert authors to errors or gaps in literature they may have overlooked.
- It can assist with making the paper more applicable to the journal readership.
- It may enable a discussion (between the author, reviewers, and editor) around a research field or topic.
- Readers can be assured that the research they are reading has been verified by subject experts." (https://www.actascientific.com/peerreview.php)
The peer review process is said to assure
- "Submitted article is original work which has not been previously published nor is under consideration by another journal, in part or whole;
- The article meets all applicable standards of ethics;
- The paper is relevant to the journal's aims, scope, and readership;
- A submitted article presents original research findings;
- A submitted article offers a comprehensive critical review and evaluation of key literature sources for a given topic; and
- The article is methodologically and technically sound"(https://www.actascientific.com/peerreview.php)
The publisher offers a flow chart showing the stages of the editorial and review process. The publisher also explains the advantages of the double blind peer review process (the reviewers are not told who wrote the submission, and the author is not told who reviewed their work) they operate in order to ensure "evaluation of work in the manuscripts by peers who have an expertise in the relevant field."
Checking for plagiarism
The flow chart shows that before submission are sent for review there is a screening to ensure that at least 80% of the manuscript is 'unique content' – that is, that material has not just been copied from the author's previous publications – or even someone else's
All of this seems encouraging. The impression is that Acta Scientific are genuine in their aspiration to publish quality work, and to use a rigorous peer review process to ensure this quality. This is despite the reason why I came TO be looking into their processes.
Which came first…
I recently posted in this blog about a short article in the Journal of Chemistry: Education and Research (not to be confused with the journal Chemistry Education Research and Practice) that I found to be incoherent and filled with mistakes.
When I was evaluating that article I came across another article with the same title, by the same author, in Acta Scientific Pharmaceutical Sciences. It soon became clear that these were (this was?) the same short article, published in both journals. Both articles have the same muddled language and the same errors (running words together and the like – for more details see 'Can deforestation stop indigenous groups starving?')
The chronology seems to be:
| 16th May 2019 – da Silva sends the same manuscript to Journal of Chemistry: Education and Research | |
| 20th May 2019 – Journal of Chemistry: Education and Research accepts the article for publication (4 days after submission!) | |
| 28th May 2019 – Journal of Chemistry: Education and Research publishes the article | |
| 7th June 2019 – Acta Scientific Pharmaceutical Sciences publishes paper |
So, the article was submitted first to Acta Scientific Pharmaceutical Sciences, but had already been published in Journal of Chemistry: Education and Research by the time it was published in Acta Scientific Pharmaceutical Sciences. Given that authors are not supposed to publish the same material in several journals, this might raise the interesting question of which journal should require the work to be retracted, and which should allow it to stand.
A copy of a copy
However this would be a rather pointless question, as neither of the articles can claim to be original. As I discuss in 'Can deforestation stop indigenous groups starving?', virtually the entire text is simply lifted from three prior, unacknowledged publications written by other authors – odd paragraphs have been taken from parts of more detailed papers on the topic and simply collated (in a somewhat incoherent manner) into da Silva's manuscript. Any reputable journal that spotted this would require retraction because the work is not original but is plagiarised – it is the intellectual property of other scholars.
Why was this not spotted?
Although the opening of the article is simply copied word for word from the abstract of a published work (which is likely to be spotted by the tool used to screen to check for 'unique content') the rest of the material (that is, more than the critical 80%) is translated from texts which are in Portuguese.
When an expert translator produces a new version of a work in a different language, and this is done with permission, the translator is entitled to credit and the translation is considered to be a work (albeit a derivative work) in its own right. Good translations are more than mechanical substitutions, and skillful translators are much appreciated.
However, here we have works translated, without expertise (the English is full of mistakes), presumably without permission and certainly without attribution to the original authors. The software will not have recognised the translated text as not being 'unique content'.
However, the process of peer review is supposed to evaluate the quality of the work, and identify areas for improvement. It is difficult to believe anyone who read this very short article carefully (for either journal) could have thought it was making a coherent argument, or that it did not at least need restructuring, clarifications and corrections.
"We ensure that all the articles published in Acta Scientific undergo integrated peer review by peers and consequent revision by authors when required."
https://www.actascientific.com/peerreview.php
So, despite Acta Scientific's efforts to claim careful peer review processes, and what seems a genuine aspiration to ensure article originality and quality through peer review by those with expertise in the field, somehow the journal published the copy-and-paste job that is 'The Chemistry of Indigenous Peoples'.
Of course, for peer review to work, those asked to review have to take the role seriously.
"Acta Scientific trusts the genuine peer review process that the reviewers carry out so that it helps us to publish the content with good essence."
https://www.actascientific.com/reviewer.php
I would like to believe that Acta Scientific's fine claims about peer review ARE sincere, and perhaps in this case it was just that their trust was betrayed by sloppy reviewers.
Work cited:
- da Silva, M. A. l. G. (2019). The Chemistry of Indigenous Peoples. Acta Scientific Phamaceutical Sciences, 3 (7), 20-21.
- da Silva, M. A. G. (2019) The Chemistry of Indigenous Peoples. Journal of Chemistry: Education Research and Practice, 3 (1), 1-2
