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A Major Science Journal Publisher Adds A Weird Notice To Every Paper. (forbes.com) 107

Posted by msmash from the how-about-that dept.
An anonymous reader shares a report: Back in March of 2017, this strange note first appeared at the end of a paper in the journal Nature: "Publisher's note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations." I looked over the paper, and it didn't have any maps in it. None of the authors had unusual affiliations, just the normal university departments. Why the disclaimer? Before answering this question, let's dig a bit deeper. This notice first started appearing in mid-March of 2017, when it was attached to every single research paper in that issue. I cannot find any papers prior to that with the "Publisher's note." Ever since then, Nature has put this notice on every paper in all of their journals. For example, the current issue has a paper on mapping sound on the planet Mars, by an international team of astronomers and physicists. It does contain maps, but they don't describe any features on Earth. Nonetheless, it has the disclaimer at the end about "jurisdictional claims in published maps."

(Nature has done it to me too, for example in this 2018 paper led by a former Ph.D. student of mine. I didn't yet know about the weird disclaimer when that paper appeared, and I didn't catch it until later.) It's not just Nature, but apparently all of the many journals published by the Nature Publishing Group, which today number in excess of 100 publications. I looked at a few randomly chosen papers in Nature Biotechnology and Cancer Gene Therapy, as a test, and they all have exactly the same Publisher's Note. None of these papers, I should add, have any maps in them. I couldn't find anything odd about the institutional affiliations either. Nature is one of the oldest and most-respected journals in all of science, dating back to 1869. Just a few years ago, in 2015, Nature's publishing group merged with Springer, the second-largest for-profit scientific publisher in the world, and they changed their name to Springer Nature. We'll see why this is relevant in a minute.

I should also mention that the papers appearing in these journals, especially Nature itself, are rigorously peer-reviewed. Any map that appears undergoes the same peer review. The reviewers also see all the authors' institutional affiliations. Normally, the publisher has no say over any of this content: if it passes peer review, it's published. So what happened? Springer Nature, it seems, added this note because of pressure from the Chinese government. The Chinese government doesn't want any maps to show Taiwan, and it doesn't want any affiliations to from scientists in Taiwan unless they show (incorrectly) that Taiwan is part of China. I admit that I'm speculating, but we have very clear evidence that SpringerNature has succumbed to Chinese demands on related matters. In late 2017, the New York Times reported that Springer was "bowing to pressure from the Chinese government to block access to hundreds of articles on its Chinese website." [...]
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A Major Science Journal Publisher Adds A Weird Notice To Every Paper. More

A Major Science Journal Publisher Adds A Weird Notice To Every Paper.

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  • Science (Score:3, Funny)

    by Mass Overkiller ( 1999306 ) on Monday May 30, 2022 @10:22AM (#62577206)
    Science?

    • Re:Science (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Hari Pota ( 7672548 ) on Monday May 30, 2022 @11:21AM (#62577380)
      The Springer takeover explains alot. While it used to be a good decent source of low-tech info, Nature is the "People" of "scientific journals. Like The New York Times and Public Radio you need to carefully read between the lines for the main gist which is always "political science".

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by fermion ( 181285 )
      Science has to protect itself from politics. Nature is a preeminent journal instrumental in distributing methods and finings to researchers worldwide. The verbiage is going to depend on the authors or the demands of their institutions. So maybe a university has some policy about calling a country Zaire, and the researcher wants to keep the job so they say the fossil was found in what was then Zaire. This might hurt peoples feelings, so the disclaimer exists. It is like the disclaimer on films, which is ther

  • Maps (Score:5, Funny)

    by backslashdot ( 95548 ) on Monday May 30, 2022 @10:25AM (#62577214)

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]

    Not everyone has maps.

  • For some reason Russia disagrees with the rest of the world's depiction of regions near its borders.

  • NOT peer reviewed (Score:1, Flamebait)

    by Immerman ( 2627577 )

    Just a reminder - the review that happens prior to publishing is NOT the peer review that's part of the scientific method - that peer review can't even begin until the paper is published so that their peers can start examining the research.

    Pre-publishing review is just a few people knowledgeable in the field giving it a quick once-over to weed out papers with problems that are so egregiously obvious that it's not worth wasting other people's time by publishing them.

    • Then why do we call them peer-reviewed journals?

      • What he described is *NOT* scholarly peer-reviewing, whence his comment makes no sense at all, as you pointed out with your question.

    • I partly agree with this. For a high profile paper, yes, the prepublication review is only the beginning of a very long vetting of the scientific results and conclusions of the paper by the large scientific community. However, there are many, many low profile papers out there for which the prepublication reviews is the closest that anyone will ever look at them. As a scientists you want you paper to be high profile, but the reality is that you may be addressing a problem that, although interesting to you,

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gtall ( 79522 )

      No one is arguing that the peer-review for publication is scientifically vetting the result, that's just a strawman you invented.

    • That may be the case for Nature (a rag), but just try submitting a paper to the Journal of the American Chemical Society or Analytica Chimica Acta, then let me know how many revisions and experimental modifications are required before they will publish your paper.

      Not all "journals" are created equal

    • that peer review can't even begin until the paper is published so that their peers can start examining the research.

      That's **NOT** what peer review means or works, you're plain wrong.

      "Peer review" means a paper is reviewed by specialists _before_ it's published, where (hopefully) most of the glaring errors/bad papers are weeded out.

      Yes, I've published in peer-reviewed journals, so I know how it works. What you just described is just how regular science works.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

    • Um, no, peer review happens when the journal editors contact the author's peers to get their opinions prior to publication. Replication is what is supposed to happen after publication. Do you even science, bro?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Potor ( 658520 )

      Pre-publishing review is just a few people knowledgeable in the field giving it a quick once-over to weed out papers with problems that are so egregiously obvious that it's not worth wasting other people's time by publishing them.

      That's the job of someone like a managing editor, who then sends papers out for thorough review. And I know as I've been a managing editor for a peer-reviewed journal.

  • I'm getting some mixed messages here (Score:5, Informative)

    by Can'tNot ( 5553824 ) on Monday May 30, 2022 @11:20AM (#62577378)
    I know that China has been throwing their weight around, but adding a little note saying that papers within the journal are not reflections of the publisher seems pretty harmless. However, there's this [rfa.org] article from 2020 which says that the journal is not allowing researchers to identify themselves as being from Taiwan without a 'China' modifier. That's not harmless. And there's this [nature.com] page, which is just confusing in that context.

    I also found this [nature.com] paper from 2021, which clearly gives institutional affiliations in Taiwan. Not Taiwan-China, just Taiwan. Maybe that first article was a mistake or miscommunication, or maybe Nature has changed course since then.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      I looked at your Nature links and they just say Taiwan, nothing about China. I looked at some other articles and they were the same.

      I wonder if the version you get depends on your location. I'm in the UK.

      • Well yes, that was the point I was making. The first article said,

        A Taiwanese doctor, Wu Jo-hsuan, recently reported via Facebook that she had been asked by the editorial team at Eye and Vision, a medical journal published by the group, to add the word "China" after "Taiwan" in her paper, or have her article rejected for publication.

        Talking about Taiwan as an individual entity doesn't seem to be an issue for the website though, or for that other paper that I linked.

  • So much text (Score:5, Informative)

    by ceoyoyo ( 59147 ) on Monday May 30, 2022 @11:42AM (#62577418)

    That is a crapload of text just to say "China bad."

    A large majority of countries worldwide have ongoing border disputes. To name a few, Beijing and Taipei both claim to be the legitimate government of both mainland China and Taiwan. Pakistan and India can't decide who Kashmir belongs to (and apparently most Kashmiris would prefer they both piss off). Israel and Palestine disagree about whether the other exists. The US has border disputes with eight different countries and also groups in several of their imperial posessions.

    It *is* unfortunate a scientific journal has to publish such a disclaimer. Petty wankers should stop using science as a political football.

    • One of your examples is not like the other, because it's the only one where one "side" went so far as to publish a founding charter claiming it didn't exist or have any rights to claim territory that it's now completely reversed position on. And that's not even getting into using its current name as a slur for the other side for most of history.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

        Ah, there's one of those you care about specifically hey?

        They're all different. They're all complicated. There are people on both sides of each one who care very much about them.

        Some of them have surprisingly common elements, if you can distance yourself a bit from the propaganda. Taking your example, for instance, doesn't that sound a bit like the relationship certain governments have had with native Americans? If you squint a bit it could even describe Hawaii.

        • Not in the slightest, actually. The Seminole were the Seminole long before anyone from Europe set foot in the Americas. They didn't show up several thousand years after the Spanish colonized Florida, issue a charter saying that Florida belonged to the British since the dawn of time, and then when Florida was sold suddenly reverse their position and claim that actually take-backsies they really meant it was theirs.

          Your post is just a non-sequitur is all. It's like listing several real historical wars and the

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

            Maybe, instead of making oblique allusions, you could actually specify which one of my examples of jurisdictional disputes you feel is "the Battle of Endor" (i.e. not a jurisdictional dispute) and we can actually discuss it?

            Unless you're afraid to do so for some reason? Possibly you don't wish to publicly take a side? Maybe you'd like to "remain neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims?"

    • Beijing and Taipei both claim to be the legitimate government of both mainland China and Taiwan.

      This is technically true, but not true in practice. The Nationalists who took over Taiwan in 1949 were mainlanders who didn't care about Taiwan and asserted their goal of returning back to their true home. Those Nationalists have died off, and the current people and government of Taiwan, while not yet officially renouncing a claim over the mainland, have clearly adopted a policy of downplaying and avoiding overt assertions of control or claim over the mainland. The overwhelming portion of the Taiwanese p

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by g01d4 ( 888748 )

        The overwhelming portion of the Taiwanese people want independence but officially voice ambiguity

        I think the majority want integration with a West European style government on the mainland. Hence the "ambiguity".

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by _merlin ( 160982 )

          I think at this point, at least amongst Taiwanese residents under 40, the majority favour Taiwan becoming an independent, and don't want reunification with mainland China. However, changing the official government position wouldn't be easy, and would likely anger the PRC - they prefer the situation where everyone agrees there's only one China, but we still haven't quite decided which is the legitimate government. This could have been resolved in the '70s, but the PRC overplayed their hand. It's too late

    • A large majority of countries worldwide have ongoing border disputes. To name a few, Beijing and Taipei both claim to be the legitimate government of both mainland China and Taiwan.

      Once again, when something was true once a very long time ago, people think it's true forever and will never change. Welcome to the twenty first century, my friend. In reality, Taipei decades ago stopped claiming to be legitimate government of both mainland China and Taiwan. While there may be a few KMT party zealots who still claim that, even the KMT presidents of Taiwan have long since dropped that claim. Under Chiang Kai Shek it was actually policy to make that claim and it was bolstered a bit by

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

        Uh huh.

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

        Actually, it appears there is a fair amount of support for constitutional reform in Taiwan, but it's opposed by, among others, the United States, which has an official One China Policy.

        My point is, it's complicated. China cares (both of them). The US cares (for some reason). That's why so many Americans have posted such passionate responses to this story about Nature saying they don't care.

    • As an honorary wanker, I would like to apologise for the petty blokes amongst our ranks.

  • ... are neither new nor rare. Wikipedia tries to keep up. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] Many of these disputes fester, e.g. Israel/Palestine. Some lead to war, e.g. Ukraine, Malvinas/Falklands. Some are even settled peacefully. I don't know of any others that involved the publisher of scientific journals. Disclosure: I am neither historian nor scientist, though I was a science journalist.

  • As soon as it said maps in the summary I knew it (Score:5, Informative)

    by waspleg ( 316038 ) on Monday May 30, 2022 @12:22PM (#62577508) Journal

    was the CCP. They actively change any maps (globes, etc) made in China to reflect their megalomania - and have for a while now - both regarding Taiwan and other things such as the South China Sea.

    It's the same way they claim sovereignty over all ethnically Chinese whether they have any actual ties to China or not, and try to conflate the CCP with race.

  • South Korea was like "let's call this the Sea of Peace instead of the East Sea.".
    Japan is like "No. We think the name Sea of Japan suits it just fine."

    Now it's not too hard to use the "correct" name when translating to a particular language. But what these guys get uptight about is the name that English and many other Western languages are using internationally.

    Russia is more pragmatic. You can say whatever you want in English. But if you use the wrong word in Russian then the police will investigate.

  • >Springer Nature, it seems, added this note because of pressure from the Chinese government. The Chinese government doesn't want any maps to show Taiwan, and it doesn't want any affiliations to from scientists in Taiwan unless they show (incorrectly) that Taiwan is part of China.

    It's amazing isn't it? You cause a global pandemic and commit genocide and instead of becoming an international pariah, somehow Western science journals become your political enforcers.

  • At least they didn't edit the content (Score:3)

    by RogueWarrior65 ( 678876 ) on Monday May 30, 2022 @04:35PM (#62578030)

    Small victory, IMHO. At least the publisher didn't edit it to conform to Chinese orthodoxy. The pendulum is starting to swing the other way especially given that Paramount told Tencent to take their money and go pound sand.

  • All geographic information was accurate as of the date this program was recorded

  • I always consult the latest science journals.

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