Health Canada kept working with a “predatory” publisher in Croatia — a website publishing shoddy science — even after a Canadian government expert warned them against the practice, the Ottawa Citizen has learned.
Documents obtained under an access-to-information request show Health Canada dismissed the issue as a “perception issue.”
And the department continued to defend its ties with the Croatians, because Health Canada maintained full editorial control over what it published there.
The more than 400 pages of emails finally reveal what Health Canada wouldn’t discuss more than a year ago, when the Citizen ran several stories about the odd connection. The department’s Food Safety Directorate joined with New Zealand health authorities to set up an online journal to publish food safety research. And they paid InTech Open Access of Croatia to host the online journal.
The email trail shows that the first warning came in October of 2014. An Agriculture Canada librarian in London who specializes in journals noticed that a Health Canada official was listed as chief editor of a suspicious publication. She wrote to Health Canada asking whether the official was really the editor of the International Food Risk Analysis Journal.
Yes, the department said.
“I have to advise researchers on the selection of journals,” the librarian wrote back, “and this publisher meets all the criteria of being considered ‘predatory,’ in having what appears to be a fake peer review process.” (more...)
Health Canada kept ‘predatory’ publisher despite warning about shoddy science from government expert
NEVER trust a publication named The Sun!
No comments:
Post a Comment