Category: philosophy

How a widely used ranking system ended up with three fake journals in its top 10 philosophy list

Tomasz Żuradzki

Recently our philosophy faculty at Jagiellonian University in Kraków, like many institutions around the world, introduced a ranking of journals based on Elsevier’s Scopus database to evaluate the research output of its employees for awards and promotions. This database is also used by our institution in the hiring process. 

The database provides three main measures: CiteScore, SJR, and SNIP. CiteScore counts the citations received in four-year periods (e.g. 2020-2023) by texts published in this span and divides this figure by the number of papers published in the same interval. SJR and SNIP – which our institution uses to rank journals – are more complicated, with their full algorithms not publicly available.

We checked the Scopus philosophy list and discovered three journals published by Addleton Academic Publishers – which we had never heard of – are in the top 10 of the 2023 CiteScore ranking: Linguistic and Philosophical Investigations (3rd on the list of 806 philosophy journals indexed by Scopus in 2023), Review of Contemporary Philosophy (5/806), and Analysis and Metaphysics (6/806). All three also are in the top 100 of the 2023 SJR ranking. 

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Publisher pulls books about philosophers Žižek and Venn over citation issues

Eliran Bar-El

A large U.S. university press has stopped selling two scholarly books about the philosophers Slavoj Žižek and John Venn due to problems with how the authors cited – or didn’t cite – source material. 

In both cases, the University of Chicago Press stated on its website that the titles, released in 2023 and 2022, respectively, were “no longer available for sale.” But only “John Venn: A Life in Logic” by Lukas M. Verburgt was “retracted,” according to the publisher.

The author of the other publication – “How Slavoj Became Žižek: The Digital Making of a Public Intellectual” – told us he had been afforded a chance to fix his mistakes. These included “several insufficient, missing, or erroneous citations of source material upon which the author builds his argument,” the University of Chicago Press stated.

“The publisher has given me the opportunity to correct the book and resubmit it for review,” said Eliran Bar-El, a sociologist at the University of York, in England. “In light of it being an ongoing process, I cannot provide further details until there is a review outcome, which will be reflected appropriately in my publication list. At this time, I would like to genuinely thank the observant readers who have brought this to my attention.”

Verburgt, whose work contains “numerous instances of insufficiently cited source material,” does not appear to have been quite as lucky. 

Continue reading Publisher pulls books about philosophers Žižek and Venn over citation issues

Did David Hume retract 2 essays on immorality to avoid religious controversy?

David Hume via Wikimedia

We may never identify the earliest retracted paper. For the time being, this 1756 article about Benjamin Franklin is the earliest one in our database. And here might be a runner-up, of a sort, from a friend of Franklin’s the following year. 

David Hume is widely regarded as one of the most influential philosophers of his or any age. His writings on causality, reason, and empiricism, as well as his history of England, were considered masterpieces when they appeared in the 18th century. 

In 1757, Hume published a collection of previously released works under the title “Four Dissertations,” which helped – if that’s the right word – cement his reputation as one of the age’s leading skeptics about religion. 

Continue reading Did David Hume retract 2 essays on immorality to avoid religious controversy?

‘A fig leaf that doesn’t quite cover up’: Commission says philosopher engaged in ‘unacknowledged borrowings’ but not plagiarism

A philosopher with a double-digit retraction count did not commit plagiarism, according to a report released this weekend by France’s Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), where the researcher is employed.

Magali Roques has had 11 papers retracted from seven different journals, most of which referred to plagiarism in their notices. But as Daily Nous, which was first to report on the CNRS findings and which has been writing about the case for some months, notes, the commission says Roques’ “writings contain ‘neither academic fraud nor plagiarism properly so called.’” The report differentiates “plagiarism properly so called” from “unacknowledged borrowings,” evidence of which the commission found.

According to the report commissioned by CNRS:

Continue reading ‘A fig leaf that doesn’t quite cover up’: Commission says philosopher engaged in ‘unacknowledged borrowings’ but not plagiarism

Caught Our Notice: A nearly unreadable paper criticizing 2017 Nobel pick

Via Wikimedia

Title: Nobel Prize Physiology 2017 (for their discoveries of molecular mechanisms controlling the circadian rhythm) is On Fiction as There Is No Molecular Mechanisms of Biological Clock Controlling the Circadian Rhythm. Circadian Rhythm Is Triggered and Controlled By Divine Mechanism (CCP – Time Mindness (TM) Real Biological Clock) in Life Sciences 

What Caught Our Attention: This isn’t a retraction — rather, it’s a puzzling paper that we couldn’t help flagging for readers. From the title, to the affiliation (Das Nursing Home, India University Of God), to the reference list with only 11 entries — eight of which are written by the author himself — this is a paper that got our notice.

Continue reading Caught Our Notice: A nearly unreadable paper criticizing 2017 Nobel pick

An accomplished philosopher invented a pseudonym. Why?

Amélie Rorty

In 1980, Leila Tov-Ruach published a book chapter in which she thanked the editor of the book, Amélie Oksenberg Rorty, “for the hospitality that made the writing of this paper possible.”

Normally, such an acknowledgement wouldn’t raise eyebrows. But, the trouble is, Tov-Ruach and Rorty are the same person:  Leila Tov-Ruach is a pseudonym for Rorty, an accomplished philosopher. The University of California Press (UC Press) officially outed Rorty as Leila Tov-Ruach when it issued corrections for two chapters she published decades ago under the pseudonym (1, 2).

The corrections explain the author of the chapters is Rorty, who also edited the two books in which the chapters appear. Although Rorty didn’t note in the original versions of the books that she is Tov-Ruach, she has not tried to hide her pseudonym either.  She has acknowledged she is Tov-Ruach in her CV, and at least some philosophers know about the pseudonym (1, 2).

Why would a philosopher—who has an impressive publishing record that spans 50 years and, at 85 years old, is still a lecturer at Harvard—choose to write under a fake name?

Continue reading An accomplished philosopher invented a pseudonym. Why?

After 35 years, philosophy journal corrects article…by a cat

A cat philosopher, via Pixabay

In 1982, Bruce Le Catt wrote a response to a paper in the Australasian Journal of Philosophy critiquing an earlier article about prosthetic vision.

But Le Catt was no ordinary author. No, he was a cat, the beloved pet of David Lewis, a world-class philosopher who just happened to be the author of the article about which Bruce Le Catt was commenting.

Lewis’ inside joke wasn’t lost on those who knew him, and the benign deception seems to have been common knowledge in the field since the Le Catt paper appeared in 1982 (which also happens to be the year Cats began its run on Broadway). The paper has been cited four times since it was published, according to Clarivate Analytics. But 25 years later, the journal has finally decided to put an end to the gag.

The joyless notice states plainly: Continue reading After 35 years, philosophy journal corrects article…by a cat

Publisher retracts “conceptual penis” hoax article

File this under “not a surprise.” After the authors of a paper entitled “The conceptual penis as a social construct” confessed it was a hoax immediately after publication, the publisher has retracted it.

The notice is sparse:

This article has been retracted by the publisher. For more information please see the statement on this article.

In that statement, which we covered last week, the publisher said published the paper after choosing reviewers whose “expertise did not fully align with this subject matter.”

We asked co-author James Lindsay what he thought about that explanation:

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Publisher blames bad choice of reviewer for publication of hoax paper on penis as “social construct” 

Less than a week after publishing a much-discussed hoax paper, a scholarly publisher has acknowledged that it had chosen reviewers for the paper whose “expertise did not fully align with this subject matter.”

The subject matter: that the penis should not be considered an anatomical organ, but more as a concept – “a gender-performative, highly fluid social construct.” Upon publication, the authors immediately admitted the paper was a prank, arguing that its publication illustrates a lack of intellectual and scientific rigor in some social sciences, especially gender studies. But others have questioned whether it really demonstrates that at all.

In response to the revelation of the hoax, Taylor & Francis associate editorial director Emma Greenword published a statement about the process that led to this entanglement: Continue reading Publisher blames bad choice of reviewer for publication of hoax paper on penis as “social construct” 

Does the philosophy literature have a plagiarism problem?

Michael Dougherty

Philosopher Michael Dougherty doesn’t take plagiarism sitting down. Over the years, the researcher at Ohio Dominican University has tipped us off to numerous instances of plagiarism he’s spotted. And it turns out, he’s done the same thing for publishers, as well. In a new paper in Metaphilosophy, Dougherty describes his experience contacting publishers over an instance of what he terms “serial plagiarism,” and how they responded – or didn’t respond – to his allegations.

Retraction Watch: Your paper focuses on the publications of one author – Martin W. F. Stone – who you claim has plagiarized numerous times. (We’ve reported on 14 retractions for Stone.) What made you decide to undertake this work?

Continue reading Does the philosophy literature have a plagiarism problem?