Details are in the first email I got from this person, which is copied below:

Journal of Physics & Astronomy

H-index: 10 | Impact Factor: 1.56

Dear Prof. L.D. Edmonds,

Greetings from TSPA

We have gone through your prior article entitled “An Original Presentation of an Old Theory: Lorentz Transformation Generalized to Allow for an Accelerating Coordinate System ”.We thought it was extremely well written. It is with excellent pleasure that we extend an invitation In connection with you to contribute any article of your choosing to our esteemed journal. Your involvement would undoubtedly enhance the value of our publication.

It appears to be quite interesting and would kindly be aware that your audience eagerly anticipates your forthcoming masterpiece, especially if you choose to publish in our Journal of Physics & Astronomy, a public gate platform. The Journal of Physics & Astronomy carries original and full-length articles that reflect the latest research and developments in both theoretical and practical aspects of Physics & Astronomy.

The Journal aims to provide the most complete and reliable source of information on the current developments in the field of acoustics, astrophysics and geophysics, biophysics, computational physics, condensed matter physics, engineering physics, free electron physics, laser and quantum electronics, medical physics, optics, semiconductor physics and devices, solid state physics, space physics.

Here are a few advantages of choosing to publish with us:

· Rigorous peer review process

· Provision of Digital Object Identifier (DOI) for your article

· Fast-track publishing upon submission completion

· Your article receives global promotion

Submission Link- https://www.scholarscentral.org/submissions/physics-astronomy.html

Note: If you're interested in joining the Editorial Board of the journal, kindly send your CV to the mail mentioned earlier.

Anticipating your interest with a quick reply.

Thanks and Regards

Dr.Simone Blaise Managing Editor

Dear L.D. Edmonds

The journal “Journal of Physics & Astronomy” https://www.tsijournals.com/journals/journal-of-physics-astronomy.html is published by “Trade Science Inc.”

Red flags are:

-This publisher is listed in the Beall’s list (https://beallslist.net )

-The indexing info is full of so-called misleading metrics (https://beallslist.net/misleading-metrics/ ) like DRJI and Cosmos IF. These are often used by predatory journals/publishers

-The APC is nowadays 2300 euro’s https://www.tsijournals.com/journals/journal-of-physics-astronomy-guidelines.html

-The contact info https://www.tsijournals.com/contactus.html is the same as of Pulsus Group (part of the OMICS ‘empire’)

If one click on submission you are indeed redirected to https://www.scholarscentral.org/submissions/physics-astronomy.html

I think that by itself this Scholars Central is a real submission system, see for example

https://www.omicsonline.org/submitmanuscript-international-journal-of-emergency-mental-health-and-human-resilience.php

https://www.scholarscentral.org/submissions/international-emergency-mental-health-human-resilience.html but only for predatory journals/publishers (OMICS is a notorious one ).

So, I am not sure whether this Simone Blaise (if even a real person) is representing this journal but there are way too many red flags so personally I would avoid this.

Best regards

PS. This ‘journal’ is discussed before here on RG https://www.researchgate.net/post/Journal_of_Physics_and_Astronomy_publications

To make things worse, they asked for 2300 euros and I said no, so they agreed to half price. Another red flag I guess.

Another red flag. The submitted paper was accepted after 4 days of review. It is 45 pages of hard-core math. I would never be able to review that much math in a few days. But I knew the journal was not respectable and I accepted that. I did at least expect my paper to be published. Taking my money with no publication was a surprise. Anything I can do about that?

Dear L.D. Edmonds You could try to get in touch with Andrew Bradford. As indicated in the following question here on RG https://www.researchgate.net/post/Journal_of_Physics_and_Astronomy_publications he has some experience with them. Fully unclear whether his paper was published. I found here

https://www.i-scholar.in/index.php/JPA/search/authors/view?firstName=Andrew&middleName=&lastName=Bradford&affiliation=Independent%20Researcher,%20Department%20of%20Cybernetics,%20Reading%20University&country=GB the suggestion that it is published three times… but could not really find anything on the website of the ‘journal’ itself…

Perhaps ask him here on RG in the question as indicated or perhaps through LinkedIn https://uk.linkedin.com/in/andy-bradford-999172a7

It depends on how the ‘journal’ will (or have) react(ed). It could be that they are extremely slow and will publish your paper in the end. If not, then ‘normally’ when you are dealing with a legit and genuine journal you can withdraw your paper (and receive (part of) the money you paid back). Unfortunately, it is hard to predict how this ‘journal’ will react. In most cases it will be not that responsive.

Best regards.

The good news is that not all open-access publishers are criminal frauds. My article was published by the “International Journal of Physics Research and Applications” (IJPRA), which is an open access journal of “Heighten Science Publications Inc” (HSPI). I corresponded with several open access journals regarding publication of my article and it is interesting to make some comparisons between IJPRA and those other journals. The comparisons below speak favorably of IJPRA.

One comparison between IJPRA and others that I corresponded with is that IJPRA has the ability to correctly type my equations. To appreciate the significance of this, it should be noted that the equations are numerous (the submitted format of the article is 45 pages of mostly equations), some equations are messy enough to occupy several lines, and the equations require careful attention to different fonts appearing in the same equations. My correspondences with several other journals ended when these journals demonstrated inability to type the equations without excessive errors. It is very frustrating to deal with most of the hundreds of equations containing typing errors, and when I asked the journals to start over and do a better job, the correspondences with those journals ended. Fortunately, IJPRA was the one journal (the only journal that I corresponded with) that did a respectable job of reproducing the equations.

Another point of comparison is the review process. Other journals that I corresponded with reviewed 45 pages of mostly hard-core math in a couple of days. What kind of reviews were those? That these journals accepted the article without revision is not a surprise considering that it is doubtful that anyone studied the article at all. In contrast, the review by IJPRA took enough time to make me believe that someone actually studied the article. Also, IJPRA required revisions before accepting the article (revisions that I agreed with and complied with), again indicating that someone actually studied the article. Of those journals that I corresponded with, IJPRA is the only one that performed a review that I would call respectable.

Estimating the predictability of questionable open-access journals

"Questionable journals threaten global research integrity, yet manual vetting can be slow and inflexible. Here, we explore the potential of artificial intelligence (AI) to systematically identify such venues by analyzing website design, content, and publication metadata. Evaluated against extensive human-annotated datasets, our method achieves practical accuracy and uncovers previously overlooked indicators of journal legitimacy. By adjusting the decision threshold, our method can prioritize either comprehensive screening or precise, low-noise identification. At a balanced threshold, we flag over 1000 suspect journals, which collectively publish hundreds of thousands of articles, receive millions of citations, acknowledge funding from major agencies, and attract authors from developing countries. Error analysis reveals challenges involving discontinued titles, book series misclassified as journals, and small society outlets with limited online presence, which are issues addressable with improved data quality. Our findings demonstrate AI’s potential for scalable integrity checks, while also highlighting the need to pair automated triage with expert review."

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adt2792

https://www.science.org/content/article/ai-tool-labels-more-1000-journals-questionable-possibly-shady-practices

Remember Who the Bad Guys Are

"Close followers of recent geopolitics will be forgiven for wondering if the good guys and bad guys of the traditional world order have been swapping sides. When a dictator who has invaded a country gets praised while some of the oldest democracies are attacked for their positions, it’s tempting to slap yourself about the face to see if you wake up.

The same can be said for scholarly communications at the moment, as technological progress and policy changes seem to be occurring at such a dizzying pace, one feels the need to grope for something solid to hold on to. But who do we trust when everything seems so unstable?

There have been two recent stories that, in particular, have highlighted questions about just who the good guys and bad guys are in academic publishing...

And there is also a link here with organized crime and the dodgy operators of predatory journals. There is money to be made from publishing by either subverting or diverting the traditional process, and bad actors are in prime position to take advantage. We are reminded of this by the second recent story on nefarious behavior relating to paper mills. In a piece in The Conversation, a UK academic argued that scientific fraud was now becoming big business...

Rather than focus on identifying individuals who were using paper mills and other bad practices in order to get their paper published, the author argued that there was a need to scale up investigations; otherwise, the situation would get out of control. It may be obvious, but it is worth spelling out that the problems being caused by industrial-level cheating will manifest themselves in poor science, poorer health, and social outcomes, and a potentially catastrophic drop in trust in the good science can do..."

https://blog.cabells.com/2025/08/27/remember-who-the-bad-guys-are/