From ScholarTown to Sciedu Press to the Canadian Center of Science and Technology

ScholarTown's email of 1/19/17 (below) promised to let me "Review Articles and Get PAID." Why me? Because "Having read your article, 'Book Review, The Right and the Power: The Prosecution of Watergate', we believe that you have considerable experience as an author or peer reviewer of scholarly articles." That this 40-year-old book review was published in a journal that does not use peer review suggests that ScholarTown is none too perceptive. Interestingly, its address in Toronto is identical to that for the Canada office of Sciedu Press, which describes itself as "a private scientific publishing house" with the "objective of excellence in science, education, and culture."

I checked out ScholarTown's short list of journal articles begging for reviewers. Apparently, would-be reviewers bid to review these manuscripts. The one I clicked on was for the International Journal of Psychological Studies (IJES), an offering of the Canadian Center of Science and Technology. CCSE has been accused of predatory publishing. IJES is offering $20 for a reviewer. The bids to do the work are coming in at $25.

CCSE referred to the same 40-year-old book review when it contacted me to contribute to one its journals. One of CCSE's addresses is, you guessed it, the same as ScholarTown's and Sciedu Press.

Email

1/19/17: Dear David H. Kaye, Having read your article, "Book Review, The Right and the Power: The Prosecution of Watergate", we believe that you have considerable experience as an author or peer reviewer of scholarly articles. The purpose of this email is to invite you to participate in a new model for conducting scholarly peer reviews that enables you to earn from reviewing articles. ... Using ScholarTown’s online platform, publishers/editors can post article review projects that registered scholars can bid for. Employers (publishers/editors) can then select appropriate scholars for conducting article reviews, and pay them for work that is completed to their satisfaction. In contrast to the traditional voluntary approach to peer reviewing, this model enables scholars to receive reasonable compensation and stimulating work to review. To review articles and get PAID, please register ... Sign up now!
... Yours sincerely, ScholarTown Team, 2235 Sheppard Avenue East, Suite 901,Toronto, Ontario, M2J 5B5, Canada

Canadian Center of Science and Education (CCSE)

The Canadian Center of Science and Education "publishes many open-access journals and ... is now threatening to sue [Jeffrey Beall] for alleged defamation and libel." 1/ Beall, an academic librarian, listed it among the swelling ranks of "potential, possible, or probable predatory scholarly open-access publishers."

CCSE appears to be associated with ScholarTown and Sciedu Press.

Journal of Management and Sustainability

Less than a week after I posted a 38-year-old book review on the Social Science Research Network, a Maple Xiao pounced, sending an email for the Journal of Management and Sustainability. Apparently, "management and sustainability" embraces a wide swath of subjects. (The book review asked whether it was proper for a former prosecutor to disclose previously private information about the subjects of the criminal investigations, and it questioned the justifications given by former Watergate Special Prosecutor Leon Jaworski for some of his decisions.)

Email

• 12/23/15: I have the honor to read your paper "Book Review, The Right and the Power: The Prosecution of Watergate", and really appreciate your contributions in this area. As the editorial assistant of Journal of Management and Sustainability, I write to invite you to submit manuscripts to our journal.

Note

1. Declan Butler, Investigating Journals: The Dark Side of Publishing, 495 Nature 433 (2013); Colleen Flaherty, Librarians and Lawyers, Inside Higher Education, Feb 15, 2013, https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2013/02/15/another-publisher-accuses-librarian-libel.

Introduction to this blog

Barely a week goes by when I am not asked to submit an article to or become an editor of the Journal of This or That. One such missive is from Maple Xiao of the Canadian Center of Science and Education. Less than a week after I posted a 38-year-old book review on the Social Science Research Network, Ms. Xiao pounced:

I have the honor to read your paper "Book Review, The Right and the Power: The Prosecution of Watergate", and really appreciate your contributions in this area. As the editorial assistant of Journal of Management and Sustainability, I write to invite you to submit manuscripts to our journal.

The problem is widely recognized. 2/ In 2019, he Federal Trade Commission obtained a $50 million judgment against the OMICS Group and its interlocking companies for deceptive practices.

This blog contains excerpts from some of the academic journal spam that reaches me. Information about the identities and locations of some of the purveyors also is included.

Inclusion on the blog does not necessarily mean that a company (or an individual masquerading as one) is "predatory." It does mean that the entity relies on indiscriminate spam. I also note deceptive (or amusing) features of websites and emails and point out reasons to question claims of rigorous peer review and quality control.

Notes

1. Declan Butler, Investigating journals: The Dark Side of Publishing The Explosion in Open-access Publishing Has Fuelled the Rise of Questionable Operators, 495 Nature 433 (2013); Colleen Flaherty, Librarians and Lawyers, Inside Higher Education, Feb 15, 2013, https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2013/02/15/another-publisher-accuses-librarian-libel. I am not sure if it is merely duplicates Beall's list, but the list at Fake Research Journal Publishers, https://sites.google.com/site/fakeresearchjournalpublishers/home, is easy to scan.
2. E.g., John D. Bowman, Predatory Publishing, Questionable Peer Review, and Fraudulent Conferences, 78 Am. J. Pharm. Educ. 176 (2014), doi: 10.5688/ajpe7810176, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4315198/; Jocalyn Clark & Richard Smith, Firm Action Needed on Predatory Journals, 350 Brit. Med. J. h210 (2015), doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bmj.h210, http://www.bmj.com/content/350/bmj.h210; Kevin Carey, Fake Academe, Looking Much Like the Real Thing, N.Y. Times, Dec. 30, 2016, http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/29/upshot/fake-academe-looking-much-like-the-real-thing.html; Gina Kolata, Scientific Articles Accepted (Personal Checks, Too), N.Y. Times, Apr. 7, 2013; David Moher & Ester Moher, Stop Predatory Publishers Now: Act Collaboratively, Annals Internal Med. (2016), http://annals.org/article.aspx?articleId=2484878&guestAccessKey=a399556a-92ad-443f-855f-9d7fea36fefd; Karen Palmer, Timothy Caulfield & Maureen Taylor, Is Canadian Research Falling Prey to Predatory Journals?, Healthy Debate, Jan. 19, 2017, http://healthydebate.ca/2017/01/topic/canadian-research-falling-prey-predatory-journals; Cenyu Shen & Bo-Christer Björk, ‘Predatory’ Open Access: A Longitudinal Study of Article Volumes and Market Characteristics, 13 BMC Medicine 230 (2015), DOI: 10.1186/s12916-015-0469-2, http://bmcmedicine.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12916-015-0469-2 .