We read spam a lot: prospective cohort study of unsolicited and unwanted academic invitations
BMJ 2016; 355 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.i5383 (Published 14 December 2016) Cite this as: BMJ 2016;355:i5383
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Dear Editor,
It is interesting to peruse this eye-opening article. The issue is topical and in-need-of deliberation and optimal collective, and meaningful action. (1)
There cannot be a second opinion to ban predatory journals to save the profession. The way to solve the problem could be: 1) stop association in any form and to stop submiting manuscripts to these journals by enlightening all researchers and academicians, 2) to stop all medical search engines to index and abstract such journals, and 3) to update the list of predatory journals regularly, i.e., Beall list (2) is not inclusive, needs to be updated periodically.There are many predatory journals, though not indexed in prestigious search engines like pubmed but are indexed in other medical search engines.
Thus said, there is need to reflect on the other side of the coin as well. Most journals from high- to- medium impact factor, have depressingly high rejection rates ( around 75-90%), often without offering any help/suggestion to improve research work or the draft of manuscript .This renders even genuine investigator hapless: even though, he/she has a message to convey. It is easy to understand the space constraints of a print version of a prestigious journal, but hard to comprehend the space constraints of online version of the same journal. This may encourage the submission of the rejected manuscripts to predatory journals.
Such variables must be considered before a collective action.
References:
1. Moher D, Moher E. Stop Predatory Publishers Now: Act Collaboratively. Annals Intern Med Published online February 2, 2016. doi:10.7326/M15-3015
2. Beall J. Criteria for Determining Predatory Open-Access Publishers. Scholarly Open Access. 3rd Edition, January 1, 2015. https://scholarlyoa.files.wordpress.com/2015/01/criteria-2015.
Competing interests: No competing interests
I greatly appreciate that the authors went above and beyond, also searching the Grey literature. However, they omitted one of the tastiest benefits of academispam(TM) - the opportunity to combine spam with Google Street View to truly go beyond. I have seen eminent publishers whose office are located between nail salons and used car lots, in private residences, and sometimes apparently entirely in a box in a commercial mail drop establishment. Given that most of our electricity here in Seattle comes from hydropower, this virtual travel has had almost no carbon footprint. I suggest virtual spamtravel as an alternative to attending fake conferences, conserving costs, time, and energy.
Competing interests: No competing interests
Dear Sir,
I read the study by Grey et al. (2016) with great interest and found it somehow to resemble my own story. Although the study by Grey et al. (2016) encircled among the professionals, it is also common for graduate students like me. I do get a lot of such hoaxes invitation to attend conferences or submit manuscripts. Although I am aware of such scams now, a few years back I was prompted by several of those fake invitations and even happened to submit and publish a manuscript in a bogus journal that self-claimed to be well indexed and have an impressive impact factor over 3. After my work had been published, it appeared as if my credibility was increased among those hoax journals because the number of such junks in my inbox augmented.
Also, there is a gap in how we deliver the importance of academic publications among the students and early careers. We tend to emphasize a lot on publishing but fail to caution the students of such frauds around us. Although many instructors/advisors assume that students know about such spam and hoax invitations, but the fact is many students are unaware and think that the correspondence is real and from a prestigious journal. I am very glad that Grey et al. (2016) came up with this study which exactly depicts a rising swindle in the academia.
Competing interests: No competing interests
Greetings Professor Grey, eminent Colleagues and friends!
I hope you and your families are flourishing
Congratulations on your most excellent publication We read spam a lot: prospective cohort study of unsolicited and unwanted academic invitations
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Competing interests: No competing interests
The authors of 'We read spam a lot: prospective cohort study of unsolicited and unwanted academic invitations' identify the frequency and breadth of academic spam invitations for mid-career academics, a stance I wholeheartedly agree on. These correspondences and the associated outlets aim to deliberately mislead academics to earn money, through unethical practice.
The concern goes beyond mid career academics with many early career and even postgraduate students receiving spam academic correspondence. In recent years, early career colleagues and postgraduate students have commented to me that they have received academic spam, but on several occasions, were unaware that the correspondence was from a fake journal. For instance, an early career academic recently informed me that after invitation they were going to submit an article to a journal. After searching for the journal because of the substantial amount of correspondence from fake journals that I like others have received, I highlighted that the outlet was a money-making scheme. Their response was of shock: “Wow - thanks for reading the small print! What a cheek to ask for money!!” This is only one of many instances and unfortunate stories where academics have been duped into submitting to fake, predatory journals where publishing costs are hidden until an article is submitted or even accepted.
The rise in journals that target academics is a concern, particularly given the pressures of publishing amongst early career academics and in some cases students. Often these predatory journals that offer quick turnaround of articles, are not indexed, have questionable review processes, have fake websites and publishers and hide the cost of publishing. The amount of fake, predatory journals that send correspondences widely have increased overtime to a point where receiving invitations from these outlets have become a daily occurrence. The occurrence of fake, money making journals that target academics suggests that universities should highlight the dangers of predatory journals to ensure that outlets are reputable and ethical in their approach.
Competing interests: No competing interests
Spam 2017: second helpings
Highly <>
Greetings for another day!!!!!!
The Academic Spam Study1 investigators have not been idle. Between considering invitations to give presentations at Petrochemistry 2017 and submit manuscripts to Advances in Recycling & Waste Management, we have relentlessly been vigilant in enlightening the lamp of Spam research. We have identified Impact Spam, a novel variant of academic spam.
On June 14 2017 the 2016 journal impact factors were released. Between June 15 and August 1 2017, we received 40 emails that primarily or prominently advertised journal impact factors. 28/40 (70%) were from journals listed in Journal Citation Reports (JCR). Two were duplicates received by the same investigator, 1 a duplicate received by each of two investigators and 1 a duplicate received by each of three investigators. 12/40 (30%) emails were from journals not listed in JCR. Two were duplicates received by the same investigator, and 1 a duplicate received by each of three investigators. Thus, 31 unique emails (23 from JCR journals, 8 from non-JCR journals) were assessed.
The accuracy of impact factor measurement was impressive. Among the 27 emails that reported the metric, 23 (85%) did so to 3 decimal places, the other 4 (15%) did so to 2 decimal places. Punctuational enthusiasm for the new journal impact was modest – only 7/31 (23%) emails contained an exclamation mark, although 5 of these 7 did so in the subject line!! We were thrilled to read about new records – the impact factor of Diabetes, Obesity and Metabolism reached “an all-time high”, while that of Diabetes Care “leapt” to “the highest impact factor ever achieved by an American Diabetes Association journal”. Research Journal of Social Science and Management, from which we received 3 emails at different times, deserves special mention – its impact factor increased from 5.38 on 15 June 2017 to 6.86 on 2 July 2017, an annualised increase of 30.01.
Research on academic spam often presents challenges. Thus, we would dearly like to know the impact factors of non-JCR journals such as International Journal of Computational Engineering Research, International Journal of Pharmaceutical Research and Applications and IOSR Journal of Pharmacy, each of which is a self-proclaimed “top” or “best” impact factor journal but unfortunately forgot to include the metric in its email. We were uncertain about the visibility of publications in International Journal of Pharmaceutical Research and Applications, where “all published papers are indexed in well repute Indexing of world”. Our excitement about the stunning increase in impact factor of the World Journal of Pharmaceutical and Medical Research (from 3.535 to 4.103) was diminished when we read that it had been “positively evaluated by Scientific Journal Impact Factor Organisation, Morocco”, an organisation that unfortunately has no internet presence. We thought that Immunology and Cell Biology might have updated last year’s spam email – its subject line this year announced its 2015 impact factor.
Mindful of the modern imperative to promulgate the influence of our research, we raced to assemble manuscripts to submit to these journals which had so helpfully informed us of their impressive impact. To enhance the crafting of our personal impact statements, we determined how much the journals’ impact had burgeoned. We extracted data from JCR and calculated the change in impact factor and discipline-specific ranking of each journal between 2015 and 2016. Our enthusiasm bubbles were initially burst! The median (interquartile range) change in impact factor was 0.427 (-0.118, 0.847, n=23); for change in journal ranking it was 0 (-3.25, 3.25, n=22). Perhaps this explains why only 5/23 (22%) of the JCR-listed journals provided both the 2015 and the 2016 impact factors in their emails.
However, our enthusiasm returned when we discovered that the median (95% CI) change in impact factor between 2015 and 2016 among all 11,021 journals in JCR was 0.1 (-0.7, 1.3). This means that the impact factor trajectory of the journals which kindly sent us Impact Spam emails is 427% more positive than that of the journals which did not. Our personal impact statements can benefit after all!
Especially-eminent colleagues, Impact Spam might be more frequently served by ‘establishment’ (JCR-listed) organisations than other organisations. It might also hype minor or no changes in impact and ranking of the issuing journal. Impact Spam might become theme for major novel international conference!
1. Grey A, Bolland MJ, Dalbeth N, Gamble G, Sadler L. We read spam a lot: prospective cohort study of unsolicited and unwanted academic invitations. BMJ. 2016;355:i5383.
Competing interests: AG, MB, TC, ND and GG face imminent scrutiny of their research impact by the New Zealand Performance-Based Research Funding process, even though many spam emails attest to their awesomeness. LS wishes fervently to retain Iconic Professor status