Nine years ago, when Pavel Tuleja (TOP 09) ran for rector of the University of Silesia in Opava, he also wrote three professional texts. They were published a month before Tuleja was appointed head of the university by the then president Miloš Zeman in February 2015.
According to the Seznam Zpráv search, the mentioned texts appeared in periodicals from a list of possible predatory journals compiled in the past by University of Colorado librarian Jeffrey Beall.
Among serious scientists, listing a periodical on Beall’s list means one thing – avoid it. Predatory journals are a parasite on the science funding system. While serious scientific publications subject submitted papers to rigorous peer review and reject many texts, predatory journals publish almost anything. Often for money.
When challenged, I apologize
When reporters confronted incoming Science and Research Minister Tuleja with this finding, he said he was sorry. At the same time, however, it is suffocating that he did not arrange the publication of his texts and does not know whether he published them for money.
“I confess that I regret that I did not check where we published the articles,” Tuleja told Seznam Zprávám.
He is talking about two texts, which are said to have been brought to his attention by unspecified colleagues. Seznam Zpravy then found two more texts – the last one is from 2013.
Photo: List of News
One of the texts published by Tuleja in a suspicious magazine.
For scientists, publication activity is essential – they are evaluated according to it, and their workplaces have a chance to get money accordingly. And even for a Czech economist, publication was not a marginal matter – for example, Tulej’s profile on the Research Gate website records a total of 37 texts of which he is a co-author during his entire academic career.
Only a small part was published in foreign scientific journals, otherwise it is conference proceedings or textbooks.
“I take it as my mistake in retrospect. If the professional public demands my apology, of course I will apologize for it,” Tuleja, who should officially become minister next Monday, told Seznam Zprávám. He added that the rector of the University of Silesia will have the publications removed from the list of his academic activities.
At the same time, the University of Silesia itself warns against predatory publications on the website.
“For a fee, authors are offered the possibility of making their scientific work visible in the form of publication in a journal, publication of a monograph, participation in a conference, etc., while there is no actual review process or other control of the plausibility and quality of the results made visible. This is a clearly negative phenomenon that threatens one of the basic principles of scientific research – quality review management and the need to successfully defend one’s results in front of colleagues from the field (“peer review”),” the school states.
She was a PhD student
However, Pavel Tuleja claims that the actual publication of his texts was ensured by a doctoral student at the time – Karin Gajdová, today also a representative for ANO in Ludgeřovice, not far from Opava.
“Those things were put together by a doctoral student who published the articles with me. I gave her the background for those articles, the materials,” he said, adding that he could not say whether they, as a pair of co-authors, paid for the publication of the texts.
Seznam Zpravám has not been able to contact Gajdová, who, according to the university’s website, still works as an assistant professor at the Department of Economics and Public Administration of the University of Silesia.
At the same time, Pavel Tuleja added that he had already informed the management of TOP 09 about everything, the reaction of this party is being ascertained by Seznam Zprávy.
The TOP 09 leadership agreed on the nomination of Tuleja for the post of Minister of Science on Tuesday. Tuleja is to replace Helena Langšádlová in the coalition government, who is leaving due to TOP 09’s dissatisfaction with the way she presented the results of her work in public.
