Some dubious facts about a biology book by Nova Science Publishers
Inspired by a recent thread in Taxacom and by other discussions about "Nova Science Publishers, Inc.", I took a newly published biology title, chosen randomly (more or less) from several new acquisitions from this publisher in our library, and checked the content for the following questions: Does it have original content? Or just reprinted material? Does the price seem adequate?
Results are somewhat unclear (nevertheless in accordance with anecdotal insights from browsing other Nova titles in biology), and results neither point unambiguously to bogus publishing nor to high quality science publishing. It is bad style, no doubt.
The title chosen was: Primates : classification, evolution and behavior / Everett F. Hughes ... eds., ISBN 978-1-62081-498-7 ; 1-62081-498-6 , New York : Nova Science Publ., 2012. This book, of moderate size (16x23 cm, 193 pp.), has five chapters, and costs 120 USD according to the publisher's website.
Two out of five chapters (no. 4 and 5) show footnotes saying that the present contribution already appeared in another book published by Nova Science recently (example: "A version of this chapter also appears in Monkeys: Biology, Behavior and Disorders, edited by Rachel M. Williams, published by Nova Science Publishers, Inc. It was submitted for appropriate modifications in an effort to encourage wider dissemination of research.").
Using Biological Abstract as well as Google Scholar and a generic web search engine, I could not find evidence of previously published versions of the five chapters, except as indicated for chapters 4 and 5. The first author of chapter II published a paper with seemingly similar bibliographic data in an Elsevier journal (Neurología. 2012; 27: 354-369): four out of five authors are the same in both publications; and the title of chapter II in the present book appears as a subtitle of the journal article; but the content of the publications is clearly different.
Most authors in the present book have affiliations in Spain or the U.S. When taking first author and senior author from the first chapter, I found that they either do not have their own web pages with CV and publications list, or these pages are very much outdated.
There is no jacket text or blurb. The Preface consists of little more than verbatim repetitions of the abstracts of the five chapters; however these paragraphs are not marked as citations, and in cases where the authors of a chapter used a first person wording, the preface authors do so as well ("Within the hominoid specimens dissected by us ..."). The names of the editors, who are supposed to have collated the preface, only occur at the book cover and title page. There is no evidence of any kind of review process implemented by the publisher.
Summarizing, the book does have original scientific content, but only in part; it contains reprinted material as well. Publishers and editors display a dubious approach to scientific literature. The price of the book, in my eyes, does not seem adequate.
My observations only touch upon one out of several aspects of Nova's publishing activities which have been discussed elsewhere (see for example David Bade, and the Wikipedia entry "Nova Publishers" including the related "Talk" page .)
Results are somewhat unclear (nevertheless in accordance with anecdotal insights from browsing other Nova titles in biology), and results neither point unambiguously to bogus publishing nor to high quality science publishing. It is bad style, no doubt.
The title chosen was: Primates : classification, evolution and behavior / Everett F. Hughes ... eds., ISBN 978-1-62081-498-7 ; 1-62081-498-6 , New York : Nova Science Publ., 2012. This book, of moderate size (16x23 cm, 193 pp.), has five chapters, and costs 120 USD according to the publisher's website.
Two out of five chapters (no. 4 and 5) show footnotes saying that the present contribution already appeared in another book published by Nova Science recently (example: "A version of this chapter also appears in Monkeys: Biology, Behavior and Disorders, edited by Rachel M. Williams, published by Nova Science Publishers, Inc. It was submitted for appropriate modifications in an effort to encourage wider dissemination of research.").
Using Biological Abstract as well as Google Scholar and a generic web search engine, I could not find evidence of previously published versions of the five chapters, except as indicated for chapters 4 and 5. The first author of chapter II published a paper with seemingly similar bibliographic data in an Elsevier journal (Neurología. 2012; 27: 354-369): four out of five authors are the same in both publications; and the title of chapter II in the present book appears as a subtitle of the journal article; but the content of the publications is clearly different.
Most authors in the present book have affiliations in Spain or the U.S. When taking first author and senior author from the first chapter, I found that they either do not have their own web pages with CV and publications list, or these pages are very much outdated.
There is no jacket text or blurb. The Preface consists of little more than verbatim repetitions of the abstracts of the five chapters; however these paragraphs are not marked as citations, and in cases where the authors of a chapter used a first person wording, the preface authors do so as well ("Within the hominoid specimens dissected by us ..."). The names of the editors, who are supposed to have collated the preface, only occur at the book cover and title page. There is no evidence of any kind of review process implemented by the publisher.
Summarizing, the book does have original scientific content, but only in part; it contains reprinted material as well. Publishers and editors display a dubious approach to scientific literature. The price of the book, in my eyes, does not seem adequate.
My observations only touch upon one out of several aspects of Nova's publishing activities which have been discussed elsewhere (see for example David Bade, and the Wikipedia entry "Nova Publishers" including the related "Talk" page .)
nbutb01 - 2012-12-17 12:39
