We Have a Sinking Feeling About This

Jonathan Rochkind has a blog post at Bibliographic Wilderness that suggests Elsevier and Merck's fake journal might not be a one-time collapse in judgment. After doing some research, he found that the phony journal was published under the "Excerpta Medica Communications" imprint -- which runs 50 other publications. "Certainly I’d think anything published under this imprint, if not anything by Elsevier in general, is suspect," Rochkind writes, noting that its website describes Excerpta as "a strategic medical communications agency [that partners with] clients in the pharmaceutical and biotech industries to educate the global health care community." Bloggers are abuzz with the news; check out commentaries at Ouroboros and Open Reading Frame.