I got an invite to join SciPinion and I can't tell if it is a predatory journal or not. Anybody have experience with them?
The email opened with this: "Your peers have identified you as an expert in your field and you have been invited to join our highly respected scientific community. Please claim your account!" and then went and ended with: "We believe your inclusion in our community strengthens our mission and our collective goal as scientists to find the truth, we would very much appreciate your insights. Your participation in any of this may remain completely anonymous at your discretion."
SciPinion is not a publisher, but a network of experts, see https://scipinion.com/about/.
See also https://www.researchgate.net/post/Does_anyone_know_if_scipinion_is_a_legitimate_organisation for a similar discussion and https://theregoestheneighbourhood.com/blog/?plink=de6ef47a1c9621ac8382b023569a5997 for an opinion about SciPinion.
I have just received exactly the same message from SciPinion and I have the same doubts about this organization or network
I would not bet my chips on it. A lot of people, including myself, have been targeted in mass sent emails. Experts or not, no one will pay you thousands of USD for a short peer review.
I am Sean Hays, President of SciPinion - I can assure you we are absolutely legitimate and not a predatory publisher. We have an active community of tens of thousands of the world's experts, spanning hundreds of niche scientific subject matter areas and we work with governments, industry and academia alike to shed light on some of the most complex and controversial science questions our society faces today while maintaining psychological safety for our experts and prioritizing merit at all times.
I am a scientist and have worked as a consultant since 1995 in the environmental health risk field. My cofounder, Chris Kirman, and I started SciPinion because we got tired of how science wasn’t getting the fair attention it deserves. In particular we became appalled by how experts were being attacked when they shared their opinions in public discourse. In fact, I too was attacked by an advocacy group when I served on an EPA science advisory panel. It made me never want to speak up or serve on an important government panel ever again.
We realized this was wrong and needed to be fixed. Furthermore, we wanted more experts to share their opinions, not less. As a result, we created SciPinion to engage the broader scientific community, to give experts safety for speaking their opinions, to be a voice for the scientific community and ultimately to help decisions makers (governments, companies, the broader public) make better decisions. We’ve already won the endorsement of the US government (https://www.epa.gov/system/files/documents/2022-07/_epaoig_20220720-22-E-0053.pdf) and we hope to achieve this with all governments around the world.
If you receive an invitation to join SciPinion, I hope you will consider joining. We never ask for any money, we don’t sell user data and we have paid our experts millions of dollars to date.
Kindest regards, Sean
Based on your question, you may enjoy this article calling for more open science: Data A Girardian Case for PhDs by Publication
I received the same message, same words, same objectives and same doubts.
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