Friday, September 12, 2014

Endless fraud of fee-for-up-load Open Access 'publishing'

So, for your enjoyment, here's the latest instalment of the fee-for-upload 'open access' publishing industry. I received this just now. Make sure to read beyond the invitation-to-submit reproduced below. It gets more interesting.

"Dear Dr. Udo Schüklenk,
Greetings from the Journal Palliative Medicine and Nursing: Open Access (PMNOA).
We would like to introduce Aperito Online Publishing which is dedicated to the scientific community. Our motto is to provide the easily accessible research information worldwide.
For this we have chosen the selective scientists who have enormously contributed to the scientific community to have their work published in our Journal. You are requested to send any type of articles (Research; Review; Case Report; Mini Review; Short communication; Opinion; Letter to Editors, etc) to the Journal to increase the visibility of our Journal.
You can submit your article by sending an email to mailto:editor.pmnoa@aperito.org. The article submission date is 09 October 2014. The articles which will be submitted on or before 27 September 2014 will be waived 50% & the articles which will be submitted on or before 04 October 2014 will be provided 25% off over publication fee. The Publication fees are as follows.
Country TypeResearch/Review ArticlesCase ReportsMini Review/Letters to EditorsShort Communications
High Income$909$549$500$400
Middle Income$729$459$400$300
Low Income$549$369$360$200


Note: If required we can also extend the date of submission as per your convenience.

You are requested to send an email for the confirmation within 48 hrs.

Best Regards
Sophia Elena
Aperito Online Publishing
1999 S. Bascom Avenue,
Suite 700, Campbell, California, 95008
USA

So, I'm selective scientist (I'm not a scientist, I'm a philosopher), and if I submit before September 27 (!!!) I will get my up-load (aka Open Access fee) reduced (aka waived) by 50%. The motto of this fee-for-upload publication is 'easily accessible research information worldwide'. Cool. Why should I bother? Right, the journal wants my fee-for-upload 'publication', so that it can increase its own 'visibility'. Gotcha.

Remarkably, this SPAM outfit boasts two University of Toronto academics on its Editorial Board. I wonder whether they are aware of the nature of the publication that they're listed on the Editorial Board on: Peter C Coyte, Vincent Maida. Other academics are listed without the academic institution even being mentioned. The usual. A hastily copy-pasted-together 'journal' website aiming to get suckers to send their articles and credit card details…  Why do academics support these kinds of outfits - well, do they? I'm not so sure even about that. Oh, in case you want to know where this prestigious academic journal is supposedly or really physically located, this is what a quick address search offers, an insurance broker, probably fully unaware of the fact that they're sharing an office address with this prestigious Open Access journal. Ein Schelm war bosses dabei dent.

Oh, and in case you wonder, of course there are academics that fall for such fraudsters, as this 'publication' in one of its journals demonstrates.

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