Bringing science into disrepute - Part 2

In December 2017, I received an unusual email from a journal I had never heard of. In this email, I was invited to submit a paper to the International Journal of Agriculture Innovations and Research. It all sounded rather grand, although the email was not signed by a person. No names of anyone in an editorial office appeard in the email, and it felt a little odd. Obviously I have never done any research in this area, and never published in it. So I was a little puzzled about how I got on to their mailing list. But I thought I would set aside my scepticism and submit a paper. After all, what had I got to lose? The time writing the paper, perhaps?

Some years ago, I came across a very funny website called SciGen. Some MIT Information Scientists had got rather fed up with constant invitations to conferences with almost no standards in relation to what they would accept. They developed a site that neeeded only the input of names for authors, and a random text generator would automatically generate a spurious paper in Information Science, instantly. The papers are properly formatted, had references, diagrams, graphs, and enough nonsense jargon to satisfy those who organise academic work only to make money, with no thought given to the quality of science. In fact, the papers are complete nonsense, but they have often been accepted for publication and at conferences. So, it took me about 20 seconds to generate the paper and send it to the International Journal of Agriculture Innovations and Research for their consideration.

Here is their invitation to me:

And here is my response:


As requested, here is my paper.

Best wishes

Will Hughes

I didn't bother with a salutation, or explanation, as no one signed the invitation and there seems to be no named editor. It felt strange writing this kind of covering email for a paper. (Especially in light of the guidance I once wrote about how to write a covering letter for journal submissions.) All this had taken less than a minute. I then waited...

Within 90 minutes, I got this back from them:


Dear Author,
Received your paper and we are submitting it to our reviewers and will get back to you soon.
If you had not submitted .doc (word file) file of your paper, please submit it.
Please also provide the alternate email id and contact number to avoid bounce back problem and communication gap.
Feel free for any query..
With Regards,
Editor-in-Chief,
IJAIR.
ISSN : 2319 – 1473
"Submissions Open"

So, I sent them a Word version, with this email:

Dear Editor

Here it is. I have only one email address. There will be no bounce-back problems.

Best wishes

Will

Then, they must have read it, because two weeks later, at 5 am, they sent this:

Dear Author,
Thanks for your valuable paper submission.
Your submitted paper is not in the scope of IJAIR.
It is most suited to our another journals IJECCE(International Journal of Electronics Communication and Computer Engineering) (www.ijecce.org ). and IJEIR(International Journal of Engineering Innovations and Research)(www.ijeir.org) and we are considering it for IJECCE and for IJEIR.
The review process of your paper has been completed but it will be helpful for us, if you can mail us your concern.


Feel free for any query..
With Regards,
"Wish you Happy Christmas and Prosperous and Bright New Year"
Editor-in-Chief,
IJAIR.
ISSN : 2319 – 1473
"Submissions Open"

So I came back with:

Hi
Thank you for this. I have no concern. Please go ahead.
Best wishes
Will


And, hey presto, my paper was now submitted to two more fake journals:

Dear Author,
Thanks for updates and soon you will get the final response from IJECCE and IJEIR

Feel free for any query..
With Regards,
"Wish you Happy Christmas and Prosperous and Bright New Year"
Editor-in-Chief,

IJAIR.
ISSN : 2319 – 1473
"Submissions Open"


I noted that there was still not editors named and nothing that would lead me to believe that this was real, but we we all seemed happy enough, spinning each other along.

The very next day, I got an email with seven attachments! The paper had been reviewed and the referees' comments were in. Fantasic! I was looking forward to read about how the paper was utter nonsense and could not possibly be published. It was going to be a great rejection letter, I was sure. Imagine my surpise when I read this:

And, 40 minutes later, this:

The same paper accepted in two different journals! This was despite their insistance that no paper can be considered for publication if it is being considered for publication elsewhere. They had messed that up, big-time. Still, I was looking forward to the referee reports. Given that the paper was pure random mush, they must have pretty steep requirements? Here are the referee reports, 1 and 2.

This was getting rather stupid. Both journals sent exactly the same referee reports. They were behaving like money-grubbing idiots, so I felt that this was the time to close this down. Here was my final message to both journals:

I am not paying money to publish a paper in your journal. You should have mentioned that there was a fee before you embarked on this process. By the way, I don’t know who you asked to review this paper, but they have no expertise in this area. They have utterly misjudged this paper. Your editor-in-chief is also ignorant in relation to the topic of your journal. I have no idea why you think I would pay money to publish in such a terrible journal. What are you playing at?

You do not even sign your emails with a name. This is not an academic process in any way. If you want to publish this paper in your so-called journal, go ahead. But I am not paying a penny. And I don’t care whether the paper cannot be withdrawn. Keep it. It can bring you nothing but disrepute.


They never answered this, and I suppose they never published the papers. Now the agriculture journal have written asking for another paper. I am not sure I can be bothered again. It took much longer to write this blog post than I spent on the actual tasks. But then, that's the price of having a blog!