Sometimes I wonder

[purplecat]

An email:

"OMICS Publishing Group has been successfully publishing quality open access journals with continuous support from scientists like you. We are aware of your reputation for quality of research and trustworthiness in the field of "Computer Science & Systems Biology" hence, you have been chosen as an Editorial Board Member of our Journal of Computer Science & Systems Biology."

*looks at publication list*

*looks again at email*

*squints at publication list*

Conclusion: OMICS doesn't know anyone actually working in Computer Science and Systems Biology and has decided to spam random computer scientists, presumably in the hope that at least one of them will have expertise in the relevant area.

As a result, I can't say that I believe their assertion:

"We again assure you of international quality and standards of our articles published in our journals, using state-of-the-art prominent reviewers and editorial board."

Unless they have a very different idea of what constitutes a state-of-the-art editorial board.

This entry was originally posted at http://purplecat.dreamwidth.org/45789.html.

Comments

[lukadreaming.livejournal.com]

Another academic con . . .

[purplecat]

Grey publishing certainly.

[kargicq.livejournal.com]

That's scary as it's got a website which looks just like a real journal. The only clue all may not be well is that instead of an impact factor it cites its "index copernicus" (??). Needless to say it isn't on the Thomson ISI list. Presumably the idea is to amass a number of scientists who look vaguely suitable for its editorial board (e.g. it wouldn't be obvious even to me that you shouldn't be there), then try and con naive (third-world? young?) scientists into publishing with it. Then sit back and rake in the open-access fees. One for Ben Goldacre perhaps! - Neuromancer

[purplecat]

B's heard that some governments (India and China I think), are bootstrapping journals as part of a general endeavour to raise their scientific profile. That's likely to result in a lot of journals with, initially at least, poor impact factors and relatively unsuitable editorial boards. I guess the idea is that some of them, at least, will rise above the crowd and become important but, in the meantime, it does sound like there are going to be a lot of rather "grey" journals out there. This is the first editorial board invite I've had, but in the past couple of years I've had a number of invitations to submit to various journals or books published in India, some of which would have charged fees for the privilege and all of which have suggested minimal peer review would be involved.

I don't know if this is one of them, there are a couple of grammatical errors in the email which make me think it was composed by a non-native english speaker. But there's no reason it shouldn't both be a scam on the open-access fees and from a publisher based in a non-english speaking country.

[kargicq.livejournal.com]

Sympathetic to India & China starting new journals, vg idea. BUT this SO isn't the way to do it, and I suspect that's not what this is about. No expert in this area but my impression of how the new Asian economies kick-start science is, they pay handsomely for top names (thinking Singapore, S Korea in particular), and that would be a good way to do this too - ie make a targeted approach to Professor Famous who genuinely does lead this field, and offer him £££ to be on the editorial board. Spamming random people is NOT going to raise anyone's scientific profile - quite the reverse. (Sorry, entering rant mode there - I know you know that of course.)
I too have had the spams, and have assumed all of them are scams rather than government-sponsored attempts to boost Indian science.
N