Engineering dean’s journal serves as a supply chain for ‘bizarre’ articles

Erick Jones, the dean of the College of Engineering at the University of Nevada in Reno, is under fire for publishing a journal filled with what one academic called “bizarre” and “incoherent” articles.

Jones founded the International Supply Chain Technology Journal in 2015 and served as the publication’s editor-in-chief until September 2022, when he handed off the reins to a former member of his lab. The journal notes that it requires authors to pay an “honorary” charge of $199 to publish their manuscripts.

Jones’s ORCID profile lists 71 articles published in the journal, although an accurate count is difficult because of discrepancies in the journal’s database and the title’s PDF files. The pages of the journal were also filled with articles from his wife, his son, his students and the current editor-in-chief, along with the occasional outside submission.

One of Jones’s papers, published in 2022, is titled “Using Science to Minimize Sleep Deprivation that May Reduce Train Accidents.” In the two-paragraph article, Jones and his coauthors note that “both humans and flies sleep during the night and are awake during the day, and both species require a significant amount of sleep.” After a description of an unrelated study on fly lifespans, they conclude:

It is probable that the incorporation the findings of age-related health factors and increased sleep may lead to less train accidents. of these age factors when considering these options supply chain procedure for maintaining will be beneficial.”

Jones’s other papers in the journal are also difficult to interpret. One is a statistical analysis of the arrival times of planes to Dallas Fort Worth Airport on a single day, September 12, 2022, which finds that planes arrive quickly in the morning and more slowly later in the day. Another tries to link Jones’s expertise in supply chain management and radio frequency identification tags (RFID) to “Beauty Sleep.”

The journal is not indexed by SCOPUS or Web of Science, though the articles do appear on Google Scholar. They are also tallied on Jones’s LinkedIn profile and in press releases about his record. Several of them have been cited in final reports submitted to the National Science Foundation and other agencies that have funded his research. Jones, a former NSF program director, currently serves on the advisory committee for NSF’s Directorate for STEM Education, and has received more than $700,000 in grant funding from the agency. Jones’s professional bio notes that he has “garnered more than $9 million in grants and contracts.”

Questions about the journal were first raised this week on the blog of statistician Andrew Gelman, and the controversy was covered by the student paper, The Nevada Sagebrush, and a local news site, This is Reno. 

“This is not a good look for the university,” says Ron Lembke, a supply chain expert at UNR’s College of Business, who was unaware of the journal’s existence until last week.

Jones did not respond to a request for an interview from Retraction Watch, but he defended the journal in an online comment, by stating that he does not list those publications on his resume and that he started the journal only after receiving tenure.

“When I started I did not expect to be an administrator just a faculty member who tried to make a difference and provide access to more applied supply chain engineering technology ideas, projects and research,” he wrote. “I standby [sic] having public access to new thought.”

The current editor-in-chief, Md. Mamun Habib, also failed to respond to a request for an interview but has recently taken down the train accident article and published a statement about the criticism on the journal’s website, where he took full responsibility for the journal’s shortcomings.

“While you can argue on the merits, quality, or impact of the work it is all original and we vehemently disagree with anyone who says otherwise,” he wrote. Habib also noted that many authors have only paid just $9.99 or nothing to publish their articles and that authors are required to disclose whether they used Chat-GPT or other artificial intelligence software to help them craft their manuscripts.

The journal is just one piece of Jones’s educational mini empire, which includes  a self-published book and a supply chain certification program.

The university says it is investigating the journal. “We are taking the claim seriously,” says Jessica Lozada, a spokesperson for UNR. “It is standard practice for the university to review and investigate, which we are currently in the process of doing.”

Jones’s son, Erick Jones Jr., who is also a prolific author in the journal and a member of the editorial board, calls the controversy “growing pains.”

“You can criticize the science, you can say this paper is shit, but, you know, a year from now, the papers are going to get better, and, hopefully, we can actually be a legitimate journal,” he told Retraction Watch.

The elder Jones always had one foot in academics and one foot in business. “He takes risks, and that seems to have worked out well in his life,” says his son.

While working towards his PhD in industrial engineering at the University of Houston in the early 2000s, he supported himself with a job at Arthur Andersen, the accounting firm best known for its role in the Enron scandal.

After the firm’s collapse in 2002, Jones entered the real estate business, obtaining a realtor’s license and a mortgage broker’s license, and founding his first company, PWD Groups Inc., which would morph into the publisher of his future journal.

At the same time, he was moving up the ranks in academia.

He obtained his PhD in 2003 and spent eight years as a faculty member at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, where he worked with NASA to evaluate the feasibility of using radio frequency identification tags (RFID) to keep track of supplies on the international space station.

In 2011, he joined the faculty at the University of Texas at Arlington, where he founded the RFID, Artificial Intelligence, and Data Science (RAID) Laboratories, attracting significant funding from the National Science Foundation and the Department of Transportation over the next decade.

Five years later, he was named Associate Dean of Graduate Affairs for the College of Engineering.

Then, in July 2022, he accepted the dean’s job at UNR, which came with a $330,000 salary.

“What is exciting about having Jones as our new dean for the College of Engineering is how he clearly understands the current landscape for what it means to be a Carnegie R1 ‘Very High Research’ institution,” the provost said at the time. “He very clearly understands how we can amplify every aspect of our College of Engineering, so that we can continue to build transcendent programs for engineering education and research.”

By then, Jones had been running the International Supply Chain Technology Journal for nearly seven years.

Jones has stated that his reason for starting his own journal was that publishing in top journals took too long and that “many in the field were not able to publish applied papers in this field in a timely fashion.”

In the first issue, he was a coauthor on two out of the four articles the journal published. In the second issue, he was the primary author of all three articles.

One of his later articles, which is listed as one of the “main products” of a $199,993 NSF grant, purports to use artificial intelligence to optimize the distribution of COVID-19 vaccines and medicines to vulnerable communities.

That paper was edited and peer reviewed by three former members of Jones’s laboratory at UTA, and it was accepted two days after submission. 

His work on the pandemic supply chain led the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine Jones to select Jones to serve as a Jefferson Science Fellow, advising the chief economist of the U.S. State Department in 2021 and 2022.

After moving to UNR, Jones led a “competitive search” to find a new editor-in-chief for the journal, considering candidates across industry and academics before settling on Mamum Habib, a former visiting scientist in his own lab, according to a press release from the journal. (Jones and Habib also worked together on the International Journal of Supply Chain Management, which is published by a company that was listed on Beall’s list of potential, possible, or probable predatory publishers.)

Jones’s wife, Felicia Jefferson, who recently joined UNR’s Department of Biochemistry and Biology, has also published articles connecting supply chain management to “Deer Season,” “Healthy Hair,” and “Dragon Fly Research,” which consists of seven sentences about fruit fly sleep. 

She has recently been awarded $299,323 from NSF to use artificial intelligence to conduct research on sleep in rural communities, following a theme she has developed  in various papers she coauthored with Jones, including those about beauty sleep and train accidents.

“The lab, PI, Dr. Jefferson sees her lab as a smaller more focused version of a NSF scaled ERC center, which focuses on heart disease research through tissue regeneration,” she and Jones write in another recent article. “Jefferson lab is more focused on AI models in biology that simulate sensor stimulation of brain cells.”

Jefferson did not respond to a request for comment.

Erick Jones Jr., who was hired as an assistant professor at the University of Texas at Arlington just as his father was departing, argues that the journal is a valid avenue to get new ideas out and to help students publish.

“It’s helped me in my career, not for building up my publication record, but just starting conversations,” he says.

It’s undoubtedly a valued part of his father’s business portfolio. 

The journal is one of two affiliated with the International Supply Chain Education Alliance, an Ohio corporation which was founded in 2003 and bills itself as “the first organization certifying supply chain professionals around the globe” with thousands of members.

Jones has been involved with the organization for many years and was elected president of the company’s standards board in 2020, when the journal first appeared on the company’s website.

Students who spend $1,499 for Jones’s three-hour RFID certification course receive a free copy of his book, which is published by the PWD Group.

While working at the University of Texas at Arlington, he even touted ISCEA certifications to his students.

Paul Pittman, a supply chain management expert at Indiana University Southeast in New Albany, says that he has never heard of the ISCEA or the journal. He is the chair-elect of the Association for Supply Chain Management, which also offers certifications and publishes two journals.

“You can claim anything you want, but the ASCM was established in 1957,” he says.

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