A Capella Ph.D and a tenure.

Discussion in 'General Distance Learning Discussions' started by chrisjm18, Feb 23, 2019.

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  1. chrisjm18

    chrisjm18 Well-Known Member

  2. Kizmet

    Kizmet Moderator

  3. Neuhaus

    Neuhaus Well-Known Member

    If you look at the list embedded within the times article, many of the predatory journals are actually ripping off the names of reputable journals. So "Systems Science" is a real journal, but they hijack the name and solicit entries under "System Science Journal," for example. I doubt anything they "publish" is going to be found in any reputable source. But I also doubt that anyone is verifying publications. If you've ever seen an academic CV, you can have multiple pages worth of publications listed. And faculty are almost never evaluated through a standardized HR process. If you can impress your colleagues that's all that usually matters.
     
  4. sanantone

    sanantone Well-Known Member

    There's been a good number of science articles with fake data published in legitimate journals. The peer review process can only verify so much.
     
  5. FTFaculty

    FTFaculty Well-Known Member

    Cabells is the big thing for these, they list the journals. They have a white list of legitimate journals and a black list of illegitimate ones. Of course the fraudsters always try to rip off the legit journals and fake up similar-sounding names. But even legitimate journals can be fooled by fraud.

    And there's often something bigger afoot. People have biases, so they are inclined to accept articles from heavy hitters at big universities and reject articles from nonentities at small colleges--without regard for the actual merit of the articles (and don't believe it when journals talk about their blind or double blind reviews, everybody who's active in a field knows who's doing what research, has often seen them present it at conferences, and the ones in power at the journals, the editors who make the final decisions and direct the articles to reviewers almost always know who's who and what's what).

    Of course, there are also the biases that develop in certain fields that have been talked about here at DI. It's why I have a lot of trouble trusting experts so-called when they speak of a consensus in a field demonstrating that a theory can be equated with proof. And it's not like these things happen cynically, they happen with the best of intentions. People are taught a certain paradigm in their upper divsion classes in undergrad, it's reinforced in graduate school, at every step through tenure to retirement. If a PhD student wants to get through their program, they probably want to do research that supports their mentor's bias, if a young assistant prof wants to get tenure, they probably want to research in a direction that supports the prevailing bias of the field, if a tenured prof wants to make full, ditto. If you want to advance your career and work your way up the editorial ladder on journals, you better tow the party line.

    Back in law school in trial advocacy class the professor divided us up at random to represent different sides in a mock trial. You came to really believe your side. You'd get angry at the intransigence of the other side: "These jerks won't listen to reason!" Of course, they were thinking the same of you--and you were all the same innocents right before the random division. People are funny that way; academics are just as credulous as anyone else, just as prone to herd mentality and groupthink, persecution of heretics and other behavior reminsicent of destructive cults. Maybe it's even worse among academics, because they have this delusion from the extra letters behind their name that they're "all that", so they don't have humility, which will invariably make a fool of you. So they'll often create these little echo chambers and truly think they're right and everyone else is a rube.

    They don't even know how inbred they and their journals and research are--they can sometimes spend an entire career thoroughly UNeducating themselves and become bigger idiots than someone who hasn't read 10 words in their field. I once was young but now am old, I've been around, worked in the law, worked for a major multination in fast-paced hi-tech sales, have worked in academia for many years, but I have never seen fools bigger than academics.
     
    Last edited: Feb 26, 2019
  6. dlbb

    dlbb Active Member

    I really doubt it. Most databases will indicate if something is peer reviewed, and none of these would qualify. I cannot imagine why anyone would pay extra for these, or if they would even be available, as they are part of weird publishers.

    I suppose it is possible, but I doubt it.

    In a lot of journals you have to pay to publish. That is not predatory, though you could argue that in a different sense. Here it is paying to publish nonsense without regard to content or quality.
     
    chrisjm18 likes this.
  7. dlbb

    dlbb Active Member

    Agreed, many academics fall into that category. Not all academics blindly follow their advisors and pick up biases, though some certainly do. You raise many other good, valid points.

    There are very high, rigorous standards for proof, so sometimes that term may be bandied about inappropriately.
     
  8. chrisjm18

    chrisjm18 Well-Known Member

    You're right. I recall that both Lamar and Liberty have a checkbox option to limit results to peer-reviewed articles.
     
  9. Phdtobe

    Phdtobe Well-Known Member

    Google Scholar. Does it list articles from predatory journals? I hope it does not list predators because I am a big user of google scholar.
     
  10. sanantone

    sanantone Well-Known Member

    Illegitimate journals can be picked up by Google Scholar. Google said that they do not police which journals show up in their search results.
     
    Phdtobe likes this.
  11. Phdtobe

    Phdtobe Well-Known Member

    Oops, that sucks. I am a big user of google scholar.
     
  12. Gbssurvivor1

    Gbssurvivor1 Member

     
  13. Gbssurvivor1

    Gbssurvivor1 Member


    At the risk of sounding ignorant... I have tried searching for professors with degrees from various institutions previously and I have very little luck... How do you go about it? I realize that it is probably staring me in the face...
     
  14. chrisjm18

    chrisjm18 Well-Known Member

    You could try the following: LinkedIn or Google. For LinkedIn, you can search something like "Ph.D. Capella University." For Google, you could try "Faculty Ph.D. Capella University." Of course, the first few pages will be showing Capella's Ph.D. programs. However, as you get to maybe the third page, you'll start seeing actual graduates who are faculty members at other HEIs.

    Also, see this thread: https://www.degreeinfo.com/index.php?threads/non-traditional-route-to-full-time-professorship.56752/
     
  15. SteveFoerster

    SteveFoerster Resident Gadfly Staff Member

    chrisjm18 likes this.
  16. chrisjm18

    chrisjm18 Well-Known Member

  17. RFValve

    RFValve Well-Known Member

    What is predatory and what is not, it is a bit like the fight we have here about that a for profit PhD is less valuable than a non profit PhD. In reality, everyone in the planet is allowed to open a journal. The model of publishing is changing, as very people buy journals anymore, many universities and individuals are opting for open access where the article is available for free over the internet but someone needs to pay for article to be available, this model proposes the author as the source of income . This model is good in theory but it is open for abuse as the author is paying to be published, some journals open only with the intention to make money and exploit the need for the academic to publish while others might have a real intention to add value to knowledge.
    Some faculty is biased and would say that any journal that requires payment is predatory, no exceptions, if you are for profit, you are guilty. A bit like the argument that all for profit education is bad. Others would put weight on the value instead of the model used, I believe that if the journal has value, it is an acceptable form of dissemination of knowledge. Many people use SCOPUS as a metric to measure this value, if the journal is indexed in SCOPUS is because is generating value. Check the SCOPUS ranking below:
    https://www.scimagojr.com/

    If the journal is in the list, it is normally of value even if someone considers it predatory because it asks for fees.
     
  18. Helpful2013

    Helpful2013 Active Member

    RFValve is a business professor and as such is giving good advice for that field, but readers do need to realise that his advice is very field-dependent. There are some fields that were the traditional core disciplines of the universities, many of whom have been awash in academic society-supported journals for over a century. In those fields, publishing in something that is pay-to-publish with a for-profit conglomerate means you’ve probably wasted all that effort on your part, catalogued in SCOPUS or not. This can be very important when it comes to getting interviews. Look, I’m all about quality of research, and when I’ve reviewed the cv’s of shortlisted applicants, I actually read some of their articles. However, the reality is that most people don’t read them for longlisted applicants, and many people never read even the shortlisted applicant’s articles, but only look at the journal in which it was published and judge accordingly. That isn’t fair, but that’s the way of things nowadays.
     
  19. Helpful2013

    Helpful2013 Active Member

    As far as those rankings go, in the fields I know something about, they are driven by a poorly-designed algorithm and lack credibility. Let’s look at the rankings for philosophy, classics, and history, established fields with hundreds of journals each.

    In Philosophy, ahead of Philosophical Quarterly and Mind, we find #6 – European Child and Adolescent Psychiatry (published by Dr. Dietrich Steinkopff Verlag).

    Classics? Ahead of giants like the Journal of Hellenic Studies or Classical Antiquity, we have the Review of Central and East European Law (Martinus Nijhoff Publishers) coming in at #14.

    History? Coming in at #11, we find Dementia (SAGE Publications), described as:
    ‘Dementia acts as a major forum for social research of direct relevance to improving the quality of life and quality of care for people with dementia and their families. For the first time an international research journal is available for academics and practitioners that has as its primary paradigm the lived experience of dementia.’​

    It’s not just subjectively lame to put these examples at the top of the respective fields, these aren’t even in the proper field. This is why scimago, useful as a resource to see a list of what journals exist, is laughed at when it comes to rankings … in the humanities.
     
    Last edited: Feb 14, 2020
  20. RFValve

    RFValve Well-Known Member

    I agree with you. In simple terms, if you are looking for a tenure track at a good school, avoid non traditional education (e.g online PhD) or non traditional doctorate titles (e.g. DBA, DM, DIT) or non traditional journal with no names. You are right, most traditional faculty would only care about big name publishers such as ELSEVIER, FRANCIS & TAYLOR, SPRINGER, ETC.

    We live in a world that is changing but the system is still under the dominion of people that went the traditional way so they will look at non traditional as short cuts or not the same value, etc. You might argue anything you want, but decision makers are not going to like anything non traditional.

    This forum is about people that want a traditional job in Academia by using non traditional means. People in Academia would see people that are not willing to publish in Big name journals or go to a traditional 5 years full time doctorate or taking doctorates with different titles (DBA, DM, DIT) as people looking for short cuts that are not committed enough or simply not qualified enough.

    Times are changing and in 40 years from now, non traditional will become traditional. People will see people that have done full time PhDs as non sense waste of time but this is not the case now.
     

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