I recently got an invitation as a potential reviewer from "[email protected]", In the email (see below), there was no mention of the group to which the journal belonged and the email has not been mentioned on the website of the journal.
Have you had any encounters with The Open Civil Engineering Journal yet? What do you think of them? Or do you think it is a fake email?
Thank you very much to you all for your valuable contributions which will benefit us all.
Here is the email in question:
March 3, 2022
Dr. AB Alsamawi
Univ Tlemcen
Fac Technol
Dept Civil Engn
EOLE Res Lab, BP 230, Tilimsen
ALGERIA
Dear Dr. Alsamawi,
In view of your work in the field, your name has been recommended, as a potential reviewer, for the manuscript entitled “...........” that has been submitted for publication in the journal “The Open Civil Engineering Journal”. Please review the abstract below, to see if it comes in your direct field of expertise, and provide us a confirmation of your willingness to review the complete manuscript. I hope that you will be able to help us.
Title: .......
Abstract: Aims: ........... Background: .......... Objective: ........ Results: ............
I would appreciate it if you could kindly respond to this message at your earliest. Since we are endeavoring to provide an efficient review process for our authors, we would request that you send your comments and recommendations, if any, back to us as soon as possible.
In addition to carrying out this review, we would also like to propose your name, as a reviewer, to be included in the Reviewer Panel of this journals, and possibly others relevant to your field. Our Reviewer Portal will also offer its reviewers the following benefits and discounts on other Bentham services:
• A free eBook of their Choice, on completion of two reviews
• A 50% Fee Waiver on Quick Track rates on completion of 3 reviews
• A 40% discount on Open Access Plus rates on completion of 4 reviews
As a member of our Reviewer panel, you would be expected to review a maximum of 3 articles every year. Please also note that to expedite the review, this request has been sent to several qualified researchers and once we get the first three commitments to review, we will not entertain any further acceptances.
Thank you for your consideration.
Regards,
Ayesha Chaudary
Editorial Manager
Dear Almoutaz Bellah Alsamawi ,
The journal is part of Bentham Open, a publisher fully dedicated to open access publishing. There are a number of discussions here on RG about this issue, like: https://www.researchgate.net/post/Bentham_Science_Publishers
My conclusion: This request is fake.
According to their own website they state: “The full manuscript has to be submitted online via Bentham's Manuscript Processing System (MPS) at (https://bentham.manuscriptpoint.com/). The link “Submit Manuscript Online” leads you directly to the submission system of that specific journal.”
You can ask confirmation here: [email protected]
Best regards.
PS. So far, I’ve seen the following suspicious addresses discussed on ResearchGate:
@editorial-peer-review.net
@specialissueeditors.net
@currentmedicinalchemistry.org
@currentsmartmaterials.net
@editorialboard-office.net
I asked the people behind this publisher to confirm my suspension that these mail addresses have nothing to do with Bentham Science, and that all official contacts always should end with [email protected] or …@benthamopen.net
I suspect that there is a third-party company active here that promises (for a fee of course) a successful application to an indexed journal (in this case a Bentham journal) and by this way they try to collect genuine peer review reports to make it all look more ‘real’.
Dear Rob Keller,
Thank you for your response.
At first, I thought it is fake because there is not a website or something real but when I saw the title of the article and the abstract I got suspicious that it may be a true email.
- Badges
- Science topic