Many of us are receiveng more than one e-mail from traditional, on-line and/or open access journals every day (repeatedly) asking for papers because they are in shortage of them or just want to (re)publish it. Sometime they claim that they have found a previously published paper and they believe this or a similar one would prefectly fit their journal and would help them fulfil their publication plan or make their special issue complete..
I have mixed feeling about this new phenomenon. (I must also state that I am fond of open science and open publication, as long as they safeguard professional quality and integrity). Science should not be driven by marketing interests of publishers, but by the curiosity and projects of researchers., and the need of the society.
Or, will this be the new way of promoting science and releasing research results for public debate? I would be pleased to learn your opinion.
Hi Imre,
I've never seen such a solicitation from a journal that I would actually want to publish my work in (with regards to fit to the journal's topic and their claimed readership, as well as their academic status). That is of course apart from classical calls for papers for special issues.
I see these emails as purely predatory, and ignore them. (luckily, my university's spam filter usually already agrees and filters them out).
Dear Prof. Dr. Wever, beste Renee,
I resonate you very much with regards to your conclusion. Nevertheless, I think this phenomenon would deserve some scientifically rigorous inquiry concerning 'why' ...
Warm regards,
Imre
Imre,
That's an intriguing question you've raised. I agree with you that these online/open access journals are primarily driven by commercial/marketing interests. However, the rise of online journals offering fast publication opportunities (with few, or hardly any, quality controls) does signal a fundamental problem with many double-blind reviewed journals (e.g. in the management and business discipline). Many of these accredited journals have throughput times of 2 to 4 years (from initial submission to publication of the pre-print version, in case of acceptance), which is a delay that is too long and also unacceptable from a societal point of view. This deficiency of accredited journals has created the niche that various new online/OA journals now appear to be exploiting. Thus, I see the rise of these online/OA journals more as a symptom of a deeper problem that established journals have created, than as a big issue in itself.
You may be interested in checking out the phenomenon of predatory publishing:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predatory_open_access_publishing
Dear Mr. Horvath,
We at WFBR experience the same type of spam. Like Renee answered, we also ignore it. For some dubious reason they even send me invitations to publish in medical journals and not in targeted journals that would deal with chemistry or waste; is this a classical high-volume spam-approach or plain stupidity?
What worries me is that we have to take more aspects in consideration, when we choose a journal: 1) subject-fit, 2) impact factor, and now also 3) does my university have open-access agreement with this journal?
I read in our uni magazine that our management wants us to publish only open access in a few years time. But who will pay for these open access fees? And what will happen when we get through the revision process at a certain journal with which the university does not have an open access deal? These are unanswered questions as far as I know, that worry me.
Greetings from Wageningen,
Ulphard
I agree with Wever, Horvath, Romme and Velzen. You can also check the backgrounds of those journals for their impact factor and whether they have not been labelled as predatory journals. Where those journal have been index is also a big consideration.
Dear Prof. Imre,
I understand your sentiments and i find your question as very intelligent. The core problem is what Prof. Georges Romme has highlighted. The frustration and overly prolonged delay in paper publication in the very good journals has triggered the upsurge of new journals that send several spams soliciting for papers from us. Unfortunately, many of these journals are predatory. The only thing we can do is to critically evaluate these journals and verify their authenticities, especially the rigor of their review and impact factors. Best regards
Dickson
I am also receiving similar solicitations for articles from a lot of online journal. Sometimes I am tempted to respond due to unnecessary delays by the traditional journals.
This is plain spam. See Potential predatory scholarly open‑access publishers https://beallslist.weebly.com/
also see Article Beall's list of predatory open access journals: RIP
Hi,
I think that solicitation for papers by various journals has no real effect on the dynamic of science production, it only informs the authors where they can publish their research when it is done. It is a suggestion, no coercion is involved. Funding scientific projects, has much more effect on the direction and dynamic and the nature of scientific research theses days.
Basically, I do not see anything wrong with that. It only provides information for researchers on where to publish their papers. Although there may be terrible editors, who are interested in duping researchers, but we must not rule out the probability of meeting some credible outlets. The onus now rests on researchers to determine if outlets are good enough to publish their papers.
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