Flaky Journal Prices

Some flaky journals are so anxious for content that they will lower their advertised fees or publish for free. That is what some authors of spoofs have discovered after submitting absurd papers.

"Neuroskeptic" at Discover Magazine prepared a "spoof manuscript about 'midi-chlorians' – the fictional entities which live inside cells and give Jedi their powers in Star Wars." It was filled with "references to the galaxy far, far away, and submitted ... to nine journals under the names of Dr Lucas McGeorge and Dr Annette Kin." The author found that

The American Journal of Medical and Biological Research (SciEP) accepted the paper, but asked for a $360 fee, which I didn’t pay. Amazingly, three other journals not only accepted but actually published the spoof. [T]he International Journal of Molecular Biology: Open Access (MedCrave), Austin Journal of Pharmacology and Therapeutics (Austin) and American Research Journal of Biosciences (ARJ). I hadn’t expected this, as all those journals charge publication fees, but I never paid them a penny. \1/

A biologist, threatening to withdraw a paper on "What Up with Birds?" and send it to Nature, negotiated a $1,600 charge down to $1,027, to $99, and then, pleading "financial crisis," to $0. The journal manager reported that he had "done session with our Higher Authorities" to obtain this one-time waiver. \2/ The abstract of the article, which appeared this month, reads as follows:

Many people wonder: what’s the deal with birds? This is a common query. Birds are pretty weird. I mean, they have feathers. WTF? Most other animals don’t have feathers. To investigate this issue, I looked at some birds. I looked at a woodpecker, a parrot, and a penguin. They were all pretty weird! In conclusion, we may never know the deal with birds, but further study is warranted.

The paper and Iris's alleged peer review are discussed in other blog postings. \3/

UPDATE 5/9/20: On ResearchGate today, Malek Alghdeir commented that "I was invited to publish a chapter in a book by IntechOpen. Then asked me to pay 1400 £! firstly, the editor of my chapter suggests a great discount, but after that, they accepted to publish my chapter free."

NOTES

1. Neuroskeptic, Predatory Journals Hit By 'Star Wars' Sting, Discover, July 22, 2017 5:57 AM, https://www.discovermagazine.com/mind/predatory-journals-hit-by-star-wars-sting
2. https://twitter.com/evornithology/status/1224775369783435264?s=20 (hilarious Twitter thread)
3. Iris Publishers Releases the World's First Quantification of the Deal with Birds, Flaky Academic Journals, Apr. 26, 2020; Ryan F. Mandelbaum, Sketchy Science Journal Publishes Article Titled 'What's the Deal With Birds?', Gizmodo, Apr. 17, 2020 4:40PM, https://gizmodo.com/sketchy-science-journal-publishes-article-titled-whats-1842924936/amp

Iris Publishers Releases the World's First Quantification of the Deal with Birds

"Our curated content is original and rigorously peer-reviewed, so be assured of the premium quality information, checked and approved by highly acclaimed academic editors and subject matter experts." -- Iris Publishers, About Us

the Scientific Journal of Research and Reviews (SJRR) is part of Iris's "great podium." The lead research article in the April 2020 issue is Daniel Baldassarre's "What the Deal with Birds?" The abstract is refreshingly colloquial:

Abstract
Many people wonder: what’s the deal with birds? This is a common query. Birds are pretty weird. I mean, they have feathers. WTF? Most other animals don’t have feathers. To investigate this issue, I looked at some birds. I looked at a woodpecker, a parrot, and a penguin. They were all pretty weird! In conclusion, we may never know the deal with birds, but further study is warranted.

This tantalizing description hardly does justice to the heavily referenced work of scholarship that follows. Here is a sampling:

Introduction
Birds are very strange. Some people are like “whoa they’re flying around and stuff, what’s the deal with that?” This sentiment is shared by people across socioeconomic backgrounds. Figuring out what the deal is with birds is of the utmost scientific importance. It is now widely appreciated that the majority of socially monogamous passerine species are weird [1]. In species with moderately high extra-pair mating and paternal care, we need to understand what is going on with them [2]. In territorial species, what are they even doing [3] and they do all sorts of weird stuff [4] (but see [5]). ...
Material and Methods
Study species and general field methods
I looked at three different birds: a woodpecker, a parrot, and a penguin. I looked really close at them, squinting and everything, to try and figure out what was up with them. ... Detailed population monitoring and paternity assignment methods are described elsewhere [10]. Briefly, I watched them really close for quite a while [13-15]. To eliminate potential confounds, I thus conducted my experiments only on animals that I knew for sure were birds, and no other things like bugs and bats. ...
Discussion
This is the first study I am aware of to attempt to quantify the deal with birds. Unfortunately, the results were ambiguous, although Bayesian approaches may prove useful in the future. This study has implications for climate change research. When presented with weird behavior, birds exhibited a multimodal response including physical aggression and duetting, both of which were repeatable across highly variable contexts. ...

I do not know whether the "highly qualified and expert Editorial committee ... indulged in scrutinizing articles with stringent peer review process" were impressed with the acknowledgments at the end of the article:

We thank Big Bird from Sesame Street for comments on the manuscript. Several trained monkeys transcribed videos.

The author asked the editor "if they were a predatory journal and he assured [him] they weren’t. He said [the] paper was reviewed by three experts" and supplied an "Article Review Form" with the following "Specific Review Comments and Suggestions: THE MATERIAL PRESENTED IS VERY INTERESTING, THE ARTICLE ACCEPTED FOR PUBLICATION."

SOURCES

• Ryan F. Mandelbaum, Sketchy Science Journal Publishes Article Titled 'What's the Deal With Birds?', Apr. 17, 2020 4:40PM, https://gizmodo.com/sketchy-science-journal-publishes-article-titled-whats-1842924936/amp
• https://twitter.com/evornithology/status/1224775369783435264?s=20 (Twitter thread sent to me by Dr. Baldassarre)

FURTHER READING

• Iris Publishers, "your one-stop-place for latest scientific!", Flaky Academic Journals, July 12, 2018 (the first of several postings on Iris Publishers)