I receive innumerable invitations these days to publish my work. Nice eh? For a while I kept a folder of nutty requests from new journals or conferences that wanted me to speak. In the past two months I’ve been asked to consider joining such outlets as the Journal of Drug Design and Medicinal Chemistry, the International Journal of Industrial and Manufacturing Systems Engineering, the wonderfully titled Probe: Computer Science and IT, among others. None of these actually are what they seem but on the surface of course, they sound good. If so inclined (and for a minute, I was), I could have given a keynote address in Berlin at an international Neuro-Psychiatry conference this year. Not bad for a professor of information.
The problem is, scholarly publishing and its associated conference circuit are now big business. And naturally, rogue publishers and conferences have sprung up. Most of these ‘journals’ seem to have no track record, provide an address in some industrial estate in the middle of nowhere, and a requirement that you pay for the privilege of publishing actual pages with them. Of course, as an editorial board member, they waive or reduce the charges for me, or you, or whoever is stupid enough to accept the invitation. I presume some of these succeed because well, some academics want to publish, quickly, to flesh our their resume with fine sounding titles. In an era of increased concerns about faculty ‘productivity’ and the stranglehold on academic publishing by a few (and growing fewer) large houses, one can understand the market for alternatives.
While there is a serious side to all this, I can’t help but have a little fun at the expense of these operators. After receiving two invitations, one a follow-up asking if I was really not interested in giving that keynote, I asked if they minded my talking about something other than Neuropsychiatry? I suggested that given my background, a nice talk about UX or HCI would be perfect. Nonplussed, the inviting agent came back with ‘yes, your talk about UX or HCI covers aspects of neuropsychiatry so we would be honored’. I really was tempted….I really was. Imagine going to the conference, being introduced as the keynote speaker, a renowned (allegedly) expert, and then talking about something totally unrelated to the conference. Yes, I know we can all recount some keynote speaker doing just such, but I mean doing it intentionally and making no effort to even relate to the subject matter of the conference. I actually wondered if anyone would notice or even care? I’d probably get an invite to keynote the next Agri-Business conference too.
All this comes to mind today when I receive my latest invitation, again in poorly worded English but surely revealing it all unintentionally from a group that goes by the name of ‘journals-mafia’. I know right? Here’s a sample from the invite:
Are you an editor of the journal or a member of editorial board?
If so, we propose a big profit for you and your journal.
The profit is from 1,000 up to 10,000 dollars per a month.It is necessary to publish articles.
The same work that you do, but you can get more money doing this with us.My company works in the markets of Russia, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, China and Iran.
We publish a lot of articles.
There is much more demand than we can publish.
We do not have enough journals in which we can publish all the articles.That is why we are searching more and more journals for publication every day.
We will share our profits with you.An alternative option is to buy your journal.
If your journal does not bring you joy no longer, we will buy it.The scheme of our work is simple:
1. The author writes an article.
2. The author pays us for publishing an article in a journal.
3. We work with the text of the article; we review and edit this article making it of excellent quality.
4. We check the quality of English language.
5. We format an article according to the requirements of a journal.
6. We send an article to the editor of the journal.
7. The article is published.
8. We share our profit with the editor of the journal.Win – Win – Win.
All the parties are satisfied.
Ever feel you’re in the wrong business?