[Coral-List] Publishing a rebuttal hits a snag
tomascik at novuscom.net
tomascik at novuscom.net
Thu Mar 3 20:54:10 UTC 2022
Hi everyone,
I have come across another paper (Ara et al. 2021) published in the
Journal of the Indian Society of Remote Sensing (JISRS) on the
non-existent coral reefs of St. Martin’s Island, Bangladesh (Impact of
Tourism on LULC and LST in a Coastal Island of Bangladesh: A Geospatial
Approach on St. Martin’s Island of Bay of Bengal | SpringerLink). The
paper published in the JISRS has a number of serious errors that should
have been flagged during the JISRS’s review process, yet somehow they
managed to slip by. I submitted to the Editor-in-Chief of JISRS a
request to publish a rebuttal comment on the paper, but I was informed
by the JISRS Editorial Board that because of their contract with
‘Springer Nature’ the Journal (i.e. JISRS) does not have the space
available for a “Comment” type article that in other journals is a
common venue to publish rebuttals to papers with errors. The comment
that I submitted to JISRS was peer-reviewed by my colleagues before I
made the submission, but JISRS rejected the submission on a
‘technicality’ and not through their peer-review process. Some of you
may be aware that we have published a comment on another paper (i.e.,
Gazi et al., 2020) that made very similar errors, and that comment was
published (Comment on Gazi et al. (2020): Detecting Coral Reef
Degradation on St. Martin’s Island, Bangladesh? | SpringerLink). I would
like to take this opportunity to thank the Editorial Board of the ‘Ocean
Science Journal’ who were very helpful in ensuring that our comment on
Gazi et al. (2020) was published.
The errors in Ara et al. (2021) need to be flagged and brought to the
attention to the coral reef research community, because the
misinformation published in their paper can have a very serious impact
on future management strategies to protect the fragile coral assemblages
on St. Martin’s Island. Since the Editorial Board of the Journal of the
Indian Society of Remote Sensing is not willing to consider publishing a
rebuttal to a paper published in their journal through existing “article
types” such as “Opinion” or “Editorial” I uploaded my comment on
ResearchGate, and anyone who is interested to learn about the true
nature of the coral assemblages of St. Martin’s Island can download the
comment at:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/358969864_Sedimentary_rocky_reefs_on_St_Martin's_Island_Bangladesh_are_not_coral_reefs_A_review_of_Ara_et_al_2021
or
(PDF) Sedimentary rocky reefs on St. Martin’s Island, Bangladesh, are
not coral reefs: A review of Ara et al. (2021) (researchgate.net)
Earlier I also uploaded a comment on a conference presentation on this
subject that includes many pictures that show the nature of the rocky
reef that surrounds St. Martin’s Island. Anyone interested seeing the
rocky reefs please visit:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/355472339_Comment_on_a_conference_paper_Sharmin_Ara_K_M_Ashraful_Islam_Ashad_Uj_Jaman_Alif_2020_Spatio-temporal_relationship_of_LST_LULC_and_NDVI_in_Saint_Martin's_Island_of_Bay_of_Bengal
If anyone is still interested in our Gazi et al. (2020) comment please
visit:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/353022202_Comment_on_Gazi_et_al_2020_Detecting_Coral_Reef_Degradation_on_St_Martin%27s_Island_Bangladesh
I would like to again reiterate that currently there is zero evidence
that St. Martin’s Island is a coral island or that it is surrounded by
coral reefs, and I hope that the above papers will not be cited to
spread that misinformation any further. I still hope that the Editorial
Board (Journal of the Indian Society of Remote Sensing | Editors
(springer.com) of the Indian Society of Remote Sensing will reconsider
their ‘technical’ decision and will create a new article type where this
type of comments can be considered for peer-review and published.
Perhaps e-mails to the JISRS Editorial Board from the coral reef
research community requesting that they address misinformation about
coral reefs in their publications may ensure that this will happen.
Cheers,
Tom
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