It’s time for universities to crack down on fake science publishers and the academics who use them, legal experts say.
David Sweanor, a teacher at the Centre for Health Law, Policy and Ethics at the University of Ottawa, says he hopes there will soon be software to detect articles published in fake journals, just as programs today can detect plagiarism.
“If the presence of such journals/conferences on a CV were treated akin to plagiarism, and it was known that (like plagiarism) they were easily detected, much of the viability of this business would likely disappear,” he said.
He said the rule should also apply to conferences run by fly-by-night publishers, which sell their service to anyone who wants to acquire black-market academic credentials.
“Basically this is just a matter of preventing something fraudulent. People are deceived. We would not be fine with that in consumer representations and certainly should not countenance it in science.”
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