I thought I ought to share a recent incoming email with the world... I know this is a widespread problem, but the coincidence of this appearing just as I was thinking about Gerlich, Tscheuschner and Monckton made posting this one a little irresistible :)
Invitation to Propose a Special Issue and be the Lead Guest Editor
Dear [...]
SciencePG (http://www.sciencepublishinggroup.com) is one of the worldwide publishers who is dedicated to promoting exchange of knowledge and advancing technological innovation. Special Issue is a part of SciencePG and plays an important role of its rapid development. Acquiring that you have once published a paper titled COMMENT ON "FALSIFICATION OF THE ATMOSPHERIC CO2 GREENHOUSE EFFECTS WITHIN THE FRAME OF PHYSICS" on the theme of Greenhouse effect; climate; thermodynamics in INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF MODERN PHYSICS B, SciencePG believes you must have great achievements in your research field and sincerely invites you to propose a Special Issue and be its Lead Guest Editor.
Benefits of being the Lead Guest Editor:
● Publish 2 papers for free and enjoy 30% discount for your extra papers published in your Special Issue.
● Publish 2-8 papers for free in any journal or Special Issue of SciencePG in the future according to the quantity of charged papers you collect for your Special Issue.
● Give the right to your Guest Editors and authors invited by you to publish papers with 30% discount.
● Build your own editorial team and exchange ideas with them on your research area.How to Propose a Special Issue:
You can cooperate with your colleagues/friends to propose a Special Issue together introducing your research results. You can also propose a Special Issue relating to your research interest yourself.
If you would like to propose a Special Issue and be its Lead Guest Editor, you should firstly offer us a Special Issue proposal form. For the details about how to propose a Special Issue, please refer to
Propose a Special Issue website:
http://www.sciencepublishinggroup.com/specialissue/proposal.aspx
Special Issue Guidelines website:
http://www.sciencepublishinggroup.com/specialissue/guidelines.aspxFor some queries about Special Issue, you can find an answer from Frequently Asked Questions.
Contact Us:
If you have any question, just feel free to contact us. You can go to our support center to find the corresponding contact info.: http://www.sciencepublishinggroup.com/info/contactus.aspx
Looks like with a little effort and not much money we could get a nice collection of "peer-reviewed" papers out! Unfortunately Science Publishing Group is on Jeffrey Beall's list of potential, possible, or probable predatory scholarly open-access publishers. Publishers behaving badly is nothing new (the "vanity press" has an ancient history, and even I've been solicited by various incarnations of "Who's Who" in the distant past), but the combination of almost cost-free publishing on the internet and the legitimizing of payment for publishing through the "Open Access" movement has had the unfortunate side effect of spawning a vast new collection of "entrepreneurs" trying to take advantage of naive (or maybe not so naive) academics.
Anyway, I expect to be writing some more thoughts on the general problem of badly behaving researchers and publishers. I had a few more examples to share as well. This particular incident highlighted for me the degree to which things have changed in science publishing over the last decade or so - other changes have of course been very positive (open access itself, for instance, and the easy interlinking that's pretty much standard now). But I think we do have some problems that need fixing; more on all that later...
