Dear Frontiers Journals - I am sick of your SPAM and I want nothing to do with you

Dear Frontiers Journals

Repeated unsolicited emails with no means to unsubscribe oneself (such as the one excerpted below) are SPAM. I like some aspects of the Frontiers journals but your email system has to be changed. I will not submit to or review for your journals until you make some commitment to stopping SPAMMING scientists.

Dear Dr Eisen, The article submission deadline for the Frontiers Research Topic, for which you received a call for participation, is approaching. If you are planning to submit a manuscript and you anticipate any delay beyond the deadline, please inform the Topic Editors and the Frontiers Editorial Office so they can manage the delay. If you have not yet responded to the call for participation or have not yet committed to a submission and you are planning to submit a manuscript, please let us know by responding to this message.

PS - the article alerts also have to stop. For F#*$@( sake clean up your act.

Scary and funny: fake researcher Peter Uhnemann on OMICS group Editorial Board #JournalSPAM

OMG.  This is both hilarious and terrifying.

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.

It is both hilarious and a bit terrifying.  Now - mind you - it is possible that this journal could end up with some papers worth looking at.  But clearly, the Editorial process at this journal is probably going to be a bit, well, circumspect.


UPDATE: finally - as of 2/16/12 he is no longer listed on the editorial board ...

UCDavis IT and GMail think this "Open Journal of Genetics" journal announcement is SPAM, I do too #EndScienceSpam

Just got this email which both Gmail and UC Davis systems think is SPAM (see below). It is from yet another new journal and the journal certainly seems a bit, well, off to me. I am posting such emails from journals emails like this in the hope that in Google search results people at east see some comments on the web at least asking questions about the quality of these journals. I do not know any details about this journal but I note I could not find any actual description of their licensing/copyright policies and all the papers list the copyright as belonging to the journal.  This seems to me to be unlikely to fit the standard definition of "open access" though it is very hard to tell from their website. 






Please circulate this CFP among your colleagues and students. 

**********************************************************************************************

CALL FOR PAPER:
Open Journal of Genetics
ISSN Online: 2162-4461
www.scirp.org/journal/ojgen 

**********************************************************************************************
Dear Jonathan A Eisen

Open Journal of Genetics (OJGEN) is an international journal (Open Access) dedicated to the latest advancement of Genetics. The goal of this journal is to provide a platform for scientists and academicians all over the world to promote, share, and discuss various new issues and developments in different areas of Genetics. 

------------------- 
Topics:
www.scirp.org/Journal/AimScope.aspx?JournalID=613 
------------------- 
+ Behavioural genetics
+ Classical genetics
+ Developmental genetics
+ Conservation genetics
+ Ecological genetics
+ Evolutionary genetics
+ Genetic engineering
+ Genetics of intelligence
+ Genomics
+ Human genetics
+ Medical genetics
+ Microbial genetics
+ Molecular genetics
+ Population genetics
+ Psychiatric genetics
+ Quantitative genetics

------------------- 
Editorial Board:
www.scirp.org/Journal/EditorialBoard.aspx?JournalID=613 
------------------- 
Editor in Chief
Prof. Benoît Chénais, Université du Maine, France
Editorial Board
Prof. Jinsong Bao, Zhejiang University, China
DR.   Gonzalo Blanco, University of York, UK
Prof. Yurov Yuri Boris, Russian Academy of Medical Sciences, Russia
Prof. Hassen Chaabani, University of Monastir, Tunisia
DR.   Craig E. Coleman, Brigham Young University, USA
DR.   Ming-Shun Chen, Kansas State University, USA
DR.   Philip D. Cotter, American College of Medical Genetics, USA
DR.   Clark Ford, Iowa State University, USA
DR.   Andreas Futschik, University of Vienna, Austria
DR.   Cenci Giovanni, University of L’Aquila, Italy
DR.   Tomonobu Hasegawa, Keio University School of Medicine, Japan
DR.   Karen Elise Heath, Hospital Universitario La Paz, Spain
Prof. Gregg E. Homanics, University of Pittsburgh, USA
DR.   Nilüfer Karadeniz, Ankara Training and Research Hospital, Germany
Prof. Presa Martínez, Universidad de Vigo, Spain
DR.   James Michael Mason, National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, USA
Prof. Pratibha Nallari, Osmania University, India
DR.   Georges Nemer, American University of Beirut, Lebanon
Prof. Ettore Olmo, Università Politecnica delle Marche, Italy
DR.   Drewell A. Robert, Harvey Mudd College, Canada
DR.   Surasak Sangkhathat, Prince of Songkla University, Thailand
Prof. Bernd Schierwater, Yale University, USA
Prof. Genlou Sun, Saint Mary’s University, Canada
DR.   Reshma Taneja, National University of Singapore, Singapore 

------------------- 
Authors' Guidelines:
www.scirp.org/Journal/ForAuthors.aspx?JournalID=613 
------------------- 
+ All manuscripts must be prepared in English.
+ Review paper is warmly welcome.
+ Submit your paper via online submission system papersubmission.
www.papersubmission.scirp.org/admin/initLoginAction.action?journalID=107 
+ To expedite the review process, please format your reference as the guideline,
+ Please visit journal homepage for more information.


Best Regards, 

Joyce Y.
Editorial Office of OJGEN
Scientific Research Publishing, USA 
Email:ojgen@scirp.org

Bentham publisher - so wrong in some many ways #SPAM

I have written about Bentham - that Spam bots of science publishing before.   Got an email from them today - it is wrong in so many ways.  I thought I would just post it here - and let people judge for themselves but am a bit wary of calling attention to them and putting out any of their message.  So I am going to put out mine

BENTHAM - LEAVE ME THE $&%#@ ALONE

And if that is not enough for you, how about reading Richard Poynder's piece on them from four years ago.  Seems they have not changed a bit.