University research needs better publishing guidelines

Hopefully you’ve had time to read through our recent investigative series by CJ reporter David Bass on UNC System professors publishing their research in “low-quality” journals. While there are a lot of moving parts, and it looks like a lot to jump into, the issue is fairly simple: The taxpayers give money to our universities (through both state and federal taxes), and expect that money — $5 billion, or about 15% of our new $34.4 billion state budget — much of which is spent on research, to be used wisely and honestly.

Our investigation suggested though, there are few guardrails to ensure that’s that case. The process appeared to miss the mark both on the research itself and how that research is then published. Some additional accountability measures in these areas would go a long way to ensuring research does not waste the public’s money or pump out false or useless information, especially when that information is often then used to make the case for additional spending.

I won’t dwell too much on what constitutes “bad research,” since that is well outside my expertise. But the important part is that when there is bad research — whether due to an incoherent study design, poor implementation, sloppy data gathering, conflicts of interest, or conclusions that don’t follow from data — some process should make this clear.

Publication in an academic journal ideally plays this role, and often does. But it’s a Wild West on which journals professors publish their work in, and many of them are not the reputable, peer-reviewed publications their funders assume. Those funders, whether from nonprofits, federal grants, or the state budget, frequently use publication in a journal as a “deliverable” that proves the requirements have been fulfilled in a satisfactory way.

Those funding sources will then, based on this apparent success, decide what programs and initiatives to give further funding to. If this process is flawed, it could cause them to throw good money after bad.

So what if these journals, instead of acting in their proper capacity as a metric of legitimacy, were “low quality” or even fraudulent operations, happy to publish whatever you handed them as long as there was a check attached?

That’s what we found in our investigation.

It’s widely known that there are many low-quality and fraudulent journals, and many of them can be found on the infamous “Beall’s List” of predatory publishers. But we focused on two large networks of journals — the OMICS and NABP families of journals — and a key player in both of these enterprises, Robert Tian.

Tian is listed on ResearchGate, where many academic papers are posted, as a “Faculty Member at Huaihua University” in China. And in one of his published journal articles, he is described as “the Director of Institute of Business Anthropology and Professor of Marketing in the Business School of Shantou University,” also in China.

It’s fairly safe to assume that anyone with a public position, a business, a university job, or anything else of prominence in China has almost certainly had some discussions with Communist Party leaders about their role and that their role is directly tied to a state interest of some kind. So why is a Chinese professor so involved in journals for Western university professors to publish their research in? Seems like, at best, to scam them out of money.

If one checks the Beall’s List of predatory journals, they will find OMICS, and OMICS subsidiary Allied Academy. Allied Academy was actually started by two Western Carolina University professors, but it was then joined with OMICS later. In 2016, the FTC filed a lawsuit against OMICS for fraudulent publishing practices, and in 2019, according to Bass’s reporting, “US District Judge Gloria Navarro ruled in the FTC’s favor and imposed a $50.1 million civil penalty — one of the largest enforcement actions in the agency’s history against an academic publisher.”

Robert Tian is not only on an OMICS editorial board, but is also connected with North American Business Press, headquartered at 30 N Gould St Ste R, Sheridan, Wyoming, where he is the editor in chief and appears to run most of the operations. But you won’t likely find him at that address, which is also “home” to 300,000 other businesses and has been the subject of multiple investigations for fraud, according to reporting from the Wyoming Tribune Eagle and the Sheridan Press.

Businesses flock to this location because Wyoming allows anonymous LLC registration through “registered agents.” If you were a Chinese-owned and run fraudulent publisher, there would be no better way to shield your identity. Asking the Sheridan, Wyoming, agent who registered the NABP paperwork who owns the operation would just get you an answer like, “Sorry, I can’t provide that information. Our clients confidentiality is very important to us.”

While Tian signed his last “board update” for Journal of Higher Education Theory and Practice from Sheridan, Wyoming, suggesting he is local, the NABP website also says Tian “spends much of his time in Bejing, Shanghai, and other Chinese cities, focusing on developing and managing our interests with authors and universities.” I’m going out on a limb and saying he wrote that update from China, where he is listed as a professor at two universities.

Beyond the shadowy connection with another predatory academic publication network through Tian and the decision to keep their identity anonymous at the registered agent site in Wyoming, NABP has many other unorthodox practices, like slyly listing people who submit articles as “editors” of their journals (with many of these “editors” telling us they had no idea their names were being used this way), in what is called “credibility laundering.” They also strongly and repeatedly request payment to publish, a red-flag for predatory journals.

Unfortunately, our investigation revealed that many professors at both public and private universities across North Carolina publish in these “low-quality journals.” In the case of the UNC Asheville research, when they submitted their work to a reputable journal, the Journal of American College Health (ACH), their work was rejected, with the journal saying that their claim of lowering COVID rates with their program were “exaggerated,” that there were numerous instances of missing information, and that there was an overall lack of scientific merit to their study. NABP had no such qualms and published the research.

Similarly, in the latest installment, Bass looked at a UNC System Office paper published in an NABP publication. Despite the authors’ research involving the Math Pathways program, which they were heavily tied to, there was no disclosure of the connection. But NABP had no issue publishing it as well. No disclosure necessary.

A UNC System spokesperson told CJ that they currently do not have any guidelines or best-practices on which journals professors should publish their research in and that those matters “are generally handled at the institutional, departmental or faculty level.”

Well, with UNC Chapel Hill alone receiving over $1 billion a year for research projects, much of it taxpayer money, and with the other 15 UNC System schools bringing in many millions each as well, there should be.

“University research needs better publishing guidelines” was originally published on www.carolinajournal.com.