Is anybody else getting spammed by "Scientific Research Publishing"?

turbo

I've been busy unsubscribing from I-don't-know how many "journals" from this group and I don't know how they got my name, but I get at least one email every day or two. Many of the "journals" listed on their website seem to be place-holders for future electronic submissions, and nothing more. Even if they are legit, I have no academic credentials in the fields that they are asking me about, and I would not be a good addition to their editorial boards, except perhaps to put technical papers in good form. That, I can do.

Where are these people getting names and email addresses? Any ideas? Are they mining ArXiv or Springer journals for author names and emails?

Garth

Hi Turbo,

In the past 6 days I have been asked to submit an article to Energy and Power Engineering
and to be on the Editorial Board of
Materials Sciences and Applications (MSA)
Journal of Modern Physics (JMP)
Journal of Biophysical Chemistry
International Journal of Electromagnetic Analysis and Applications
Smart Grid and Renewable Energy (SGRE).

I am not professionally qualified in any of these fields!!

It seems a strange way to set up editorial boards, but on the other hand it would seem a great opportunity for any crackpots out there!

Garth

turbo

That's just my concern. How reputable and honest can these folks be if they are asking me to consider joining editorial boards in fields in which I have no credentials? I'm sure that they would quickly acknowledge their error if I contacted them with resume/transcripts/academic credentials, etc, but their scattergun approach is disconcerting and annoying.

Asking me to submit papers in fields in which I have some experience and qualification would not be all that bad, but how could they possibly know about my on-going research, relevant work experience and past status as an industry consultant? The relevant requests are just lucky coincidences and the rest are annoying. My gut feeling is that they haven't researched authors properly, and they are mining journals for all kinds of authors, and wall-papering them via email without respect for their expertise. Spam.

rootX

I get spammed by all kind of things :(

turbo

I do too sometimes, but this is the first time a "professional" organization has latched on and sent so many requests. It's a very crappy (quick and dirty) way of getting some editorial expertise on board, and it is likely to result in poor-quality journals at best.

dlgoff

Are they willing to pay Turbo?

turbo

The requests never mention compensation. Not that I could sleep at night, anyway. Their business-model seems to be that they want to grow very quickly and offer content free on-line. I don't see where they can profit from that.

By way of contrast, Springer journals are subscription-only. Both the electronic journals and the print versions. BUT, in a counter-intuitive move, when your paper has been refereed and accepted, Springer will urge you (the author) to pre-publish on ArXiv, then they publish your paper electronically, and lastly they publish your paper in the paper journal. I think I understand their model. People lose electronics links, they can't afford unlimited digital storage of papers that they might possibly find useful later, but (if they have academic affiliations, especially) they can count on heading to technical libraries to dig up those papers from print journals, and those are the expensive media that most benefit the publisher.