Earlier articles cite articles published later.
Some articles in volume 17, issue 5 (2013) of the Latvian journal Computer Modelling and New Technologies have references at the end dated 2014. Here’s how it happened.
I wrote earlier about the two different versions of the journal Computer Modelling and New Technologies, one for regular submissions, and the second — likely associated with a Chinese article broker — with submissions chiefly from Chinese scholars.
Because it was indexed in Engineering Index (EI, also known as Compendex), the journal was popular with researchers in China, many of whom need publications in EI-indexed journals to meet graduation or university promotion requirements.
However, the journal was dropped from Engineering Index at the end of 2014.
This was a problem for the journal’s publisher, because —I theorize — it had agreed to accept and publish papers from the Chinese article broker in an Engineering Index journal. It was a problem for the article broker, because —I theorize — it had agreed to provide their customers publication in an EI journal.
The solution? Add a new issue to the 2013 volume. The 2013 volume is before the indexing was cut off, but a new issue 5 was retrospectively added and not published until 2015.
Have a look: volume 17, issue 5 (2013).
It contains dozens of articles, including some that contain 2014 references at the end of them, despite the volume’s 2013 date. The publisher created this issue 5 of a then-quarterly journal to “back-date” the articles.
Here are three examples:
- Fault diagnosis for wind power generation system based on association rule mining
- Study on the energy storage of super capacitor
- Agricultural drought disaster risk evaluation in Guizhou
This 2014 article is cited in an article “published” in 2013.
This same situation is occurring with the Turkish journal Energy Education Science and Technology Part A, a subscription journal published by Sila Science.
Have a look at this journal’s Volume 32 (6) November 2014, with 548 articles, many out of the journal’s scope. When the publisher learned its coverage in EI was going to be cancelled, it crammed all these pending articles into its last 2014 issue. New articles continued to appear there even in 2015.
Be prepared for more of this. Chinese (and Russian, and Iranian) article brokers are making deals with indexed journals — both open access and subscription — and arranging the publishing of hundreds of ghostwritten and low-quality articles for their customers, customers who appear as authors on the published papers.
The age of the article broker, a multi-billion dollar business, is here. Article brokers are flourishing.
