Many out there know there are journals out there that border on SPAM. I have written about this often before (e.g., see For $&%# sake, Bentham Open Journals, leave me alone and Yet another SPAMMY Science publisher: Scientific and Academic Publishing and The Tree of Life: Really sick of Bentham Open Spam) as have many others (e.g., Open and Shut?: The Open Access Interviews: Matthew Honan and Academic spam and open access publishing - Per Ola Kristensson). UPDATE: forgot to include this link: Science SPAMMER of the month: OMICS publishing group
But this one takes the cake. There is a journal called "Molecular Biology" from the OMICS Publishing Group (for more on this publisher see Open and Shut?: The Open Access Interviews: OMICS Publishing ...). It seems new - as I cannot find any publications - but you never know - maybe they have been around a while and just have not gotten any submissions.
But I recommend everyone check out their Editorial Board. In addition to listing Peter Deusberg (the controversial HIV denialist) there is an amazing person on their Board - Peter Uhnemann. He is listed as being from the "Department of Oximology at Daniel-Duesentrieb Institute, Germany". Sounds a bit strange right? Well check out his Bio
And check out his research interests
It is pretty wacky right? Well it turns out, as some might have guessed - it is made up. The reason I know this is - is that Burkhard Morgenstern from the University of Goettingen let me know (in fact he is the one who alerted me to the whole story).
He sent me something he wrote on Facebook which I am posting here:
Hi,
I'm delighted to inform you that Peter Uhnemann from the Daniel-Duesentrieb Institute in Germany was just appointed editor of the OMICS journal "Molecular Biology":
http://www.omicsgroup.org/journals/editorialboardMBL.php
For those of you who don't know Peter Uhnemann: he is a fake person invented by the German satirical magazine Titanic. They created an FB account for him to make fun of social networks (he soon befriended on FB with various German politicians).
For those of you who don't know Daniel Duesentrieb: this is the German name of the Walt Disney comic figure Gyro Gearloose.
For those of you who don't know the OMICS journals: these are junk journals spamming around invitations to join their editorial boards.
On their web page they say that "election of the “right” editor for a journal is one of the most important decisions made by OMICS Publishing Group ... Editors, Executive Editors & Editor-in- Chief of journals must be senior researchers, e.g. chaired professors." As it looks, Peter Uhnemann from the Daniel-Duesentrieb Institute meets these criteria.
UPDATE: finally - as of 2/16/12 he is no longer listed on the editorial board ...
