Pattern Recognition in Physics

Pattern Recognition in Physics

Discipline	Physics
Language	English
Edited by	Sid-Ali Ouadfeul
Publication details
History	2013-2014
Publisher	Copernicus Publications
Open access	Yes
Standard abbreviations ISO 4 (alt) · Bluebook (alt) NLM (alt) · MathSciNet (alt )
ISO 4	Pattern Recogn. Phys.
Indexing CODEN (alt · alt2) · JSTOR (alt) · LCCN (alt) MIAR · NLM (alt) · Scopus · W&L
ISSN	2195-9250
OCLC no.	858879687

Pattern Recognition in Physics was an open-access journal published by Copernicus Publications which was established in March 2013 and terminated in January 2014. The editors-in-chief were Sid-Ali Ouadfeul (Algerian Petroleum Institute) and Nils-Axel Mörner, the latter of whom is a well-known climate change skeptic.

History

The idea for this journal was taken somewhat critically when Mörner and Ouadfeul first proposed it, but Copernicus eventually decided to publish it because the editors claimed that the journal's aim would be "to publish articles about patterns recognized in the full spectrum of physical disciplines rather than to focus on climate-research-related topics." Concerns regarding the journal's peer-review process were first raised in July 2013 by Jeffrey Beall, an American librarian and well-known critic of predatory open access publishing. Beall wrote on his blog that Ouadfeul's research has "only been cited a couple times," and went on to accuse him of self-plagiarizing from a book he had written in 2012, entitled "Wavelet Transforms and Their Recent Applications in Biology and Geoscience." Beall concluded that "This is not a good start for a journal, and the publisher ought to be concerned and take action."

Controversy

After a special issue of the journal was published in December 2013, which contained a paper in which the authors said they "doubt the continued, even accelerated, warming as claimed by the IPCC project," managing director Martin Rasmussen expressed concern regarding this journal; he also said that "the editors selected the referees on a nepotistic basis, which we regard as malpractice in scientific publishing.” On January 17, 2014, Copernicus Publications announced that they were terminating the journal, citing both the statement that questioned the IPCC's prediction of continued global warming and the "nepotistic" appointing of similarly-minded scientists to the journal's editorial board. The new web site of the journal is: http://www.pattern-recognition-in-physics.com/

In the re-opening editorial of the journal, Nils-Axel Mörner rejected Martin Rasmussen's arguments stating: "In your decision, I think you violate the freedom of science and freedom of speech. I can do nothing but condemn your decision as unjust, unethical and ulti anti-scientific." Mörner explained that: "In the general conclusions of the special issue, 19 scientists had joined in a conclusion that we – from a solar-planetary point of view – are on our way into a grand solar minimum, which 'sheds serious doubts on the issue of a continued, even accelerated, warming as claimed by the IPCC.' In the mind of Rasmussen this logical statement posed an intolerable criticism of the IPCC, and the journal was shut down. If anything in modern society should not be tolerated, it is a censorship in conflict with ethics and scientific norms." Mörner also demonstrated that the original statement published by Rasmussen on the morning of January 17, 2014 to justify the closure of the journal mentioned exclusively Rasmussen's objection that "things had been published which questioned the correctness of the global warming scenarios of the IPCC." About Rasmussen's second concern that "the editors selected the referees on a nepotistic basis" Mörner stated: "in the afternoon of January 17, 2014 an additional `reason' appeared on the online statement – as it seems – in the act of diverging the attention of the public to something else... We certainly do not recall any nomination of reviewers on such a base: on the contrary, only specialists on the issues in question were asked to review the papers."