I wrote last year about junk research journals and conferences when I explored the intriguing case of a Philip Morris employee speaking at one of these conferences in Brisbane.
Every researcher I know receives dozens of gushing emails every week from the organisers of these conferences and editors of the journals.
There is barely any sub-specialist field in science, business, engineering or you-name-it that hasn’t reached out to me with these breathless invitations to write articles, attend conferences as a delegate, keynote speaker or panellist, or become a member of the editorial board.
Not only do you get the initial invitation, but also imploring, obsequious follow-ups, with ever-increasing saccharine coatings. Everyone I know instantly deletes these. But I go a step further and mark each email with “block sender”. When they often continue to come, this suggests the senders use multiple email addresses to avoid going immediately into spam.
Colleagues derive great amusement from sharing the more bizarre ones and I had such an experience recently, giving me insights into how these outfits operate.
We’d be honoured if you’d write for us
On January 23, I received an email from a John Behannon, managing editor of the Journal of Bioequivalence & Bioavailability. You’ll understand as I am a social scientist, this is naturally not a journal perpetually at my bedside, yet I read on.
John wrote:
I wonder if you can write a short review or commentary on the topic “Biosynthesis of Taxadiene in Saccharomyces cerevisiae : Selection of Geranylgeranyl Diphosphate Synthase Directed by a Computer-Aided Docking Strategy”. If it is not possible to submit by February 15th, 2017 kindly let us know your feasibility regarding the submission of the article. Anticipating positive response!
This request seemed to be in the very top tier of junk mail, so I thought I’d have some fun with it. I wrote immediately to Mr Behannon:
I know less than absolutely nothing about this subject, but imagine this probably doesn’t matter to you. Can you confirm you would still like me to write something?
Overnight he replied:
Thank you for the prompt response! The Journal was seeking for an article having similar study as I have mentioned earlier. Your name was mentioned in that article and hence thought of contacting you with the hope of receiving a quality work piece. Kindly, let me know if I can get such an article for the next upcoming issue!
So I tell him I know less than absolutely nothing about the subject and he still holds the door wide open.
I donned my sleuthing outfit and pasted the “topic” of his invitation into Google. There I found a paper with the exact title by Chinese authors published in the accredited (indexed) and peer-reviewed journal PLoS One in 2014.
The original paper had received a modest number of readers and only nine citations since publication, so why would another journal be in the least bit interested in publishing a commentary on it?
PLoS One welcomes commentaries from readers, which is the normal route scientific responses take. So the rank odour of predatory publishing began to increase.
I then searched the PLoS article for my name. And sure enough there was “Chapman” in a reference to a 1991 book, the Dictionary of Terpenoids, published by … are you ready for this … Chapman & Hall, London.