Sustainability and Disturbances of the Scientific Process

Borislav V. Toshev

Abstract

Science advances as a sustainable process. The academic journals mark the new scientific results. The system of scholarly journals is developed in two levels: the first level includes the primary research journals; the secondary journals where the papers of the primary research journals are indexed and abstracted build the second level. The world system of indexing, abstracting and evaluation consists of about 75000 primary research journals; about 10% of them are under the control of Thomson Scientific, f. Institute for Scientific Information. The journals that do not belong to that system are to be considered as marginal ones. From macroscopic point of view such an organisation of the scientific process provides its sustainability. However, the microscopic consideration exhibits disturbances that appear continuously. They are in the relationships between authors, referees and editors. They appear when the rules of scientific publishing and/or science ethics are violated by some of the participants in the scientific process. The most common cases of such offences are listed and commented.