Dark matter.
Progress in Physics is an open-access journal that publishes articles unsuitable for mainstream physics journals. Among other roles, it provides desperate authors, some of whom have been blacklisted from arXiv, a place to publish their work.
At least this journal — which should not be confused with the respected journals Progress of Theoretical Physics and Reports on Progress in Physics — does not spam. That’s probably why I only heard about it recently.
I learned about the journal from a physics researcher whose colleague furtively submitted a co-authored manuscript to the journal, a submission that the co-authors were unaware of until it was accepted by the journal, an acceptance that happened fast and without the journal asking for any revisions.
My correspondent expressed these concerns about the journal:
- The journal has been in press for nearly 10 years, and does not appear to have any impact factor to speak of.
- The journal’s name bears a striking resemblance to a highly-reputable journal Reports on Progress in Physics, with a very respectable following and impact factor, so I felt an attempt at name recognition was at play.
- The journal bills itself as being peer-reviewed; however, the editor who notified us of our article’s acceptance said that his “associate editor” read it and had positive things to say, and thus accepted it. There were no content-based comments, suggestions, or any sort of input on what should be done, aside from basic formatting, to ensure quality in their journal.
- The article was accepted a mere three (3) days after being submitted for review. This seems exceedingly fast to me.
- There are submission/publication charges (clearly listed on their website), that allow it to be open-access.
- Upon reading multiple articles, I found that, overall, there are a few number of authors who publish there, but publish there often, rather than several authors who publish there sporadically.
- These authors often (but not always) have no institutional affiliation, they merely list their home address and personal (not professional) email and contact info (@yahoo.com).
- The required the manuscript to be submitted in LaTex format, which allowed them to made modifications, and introduced multiple errors in our manuscript between what was submitted and what they sent back.
- I won’t lend credibility to Wikipedia as a source of info, but I was pretty surprised in how much it read like an indictment. Feel free to check it out for yourself: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progress_in_Physics
I agree. I’ve added this journal to my list in hopes that I can warn others to avoid it. Even the Wikipedia article about the journal calls it an “alternative science journal.” The encyclopedia also says “The journal has published papers by several authors, who, along with some of the editors, claim to have been blacklisted by the Cornell University arXiv as proponents of fringe scientific theories.”
Apparently arXiv does its peer review at the researcher level, rather than at the article level.
The visible light portion of the chromium spectrum.
This Southern Methodist University website, http://www.physics.smu.edu/pseudo/websites.html, criticizes the journal, saying
Featuring, among other gems, A New Form of Matter — Unmatter, Composed of Particles and Anti-Particles by Florentin Smarandache, one of the “journal’s” associate editors, tenured professor of mathematics at the University of New Mexico Gallup campus, and professional crackpot.
The internet has given new life to far-fetched scientific theories, and open-access journals like Progress in Physics gild these ideas with a counterfeit imprimatur of science.
I strongly recommend that all honest researchers avoid submitting their work to this highly questionable journal.
