How not to entice an author
November 6th, 2012
 |
| …There’s a “tree” in it… “Fall New England” image by flickr user BrtinBoston. Used by permission. |
I received the attached email, inviting a contribution to a journal called Advances in Forestry Letter. Yes, that’s “Letter” in the singular, which is even still optimistic given the number of papers they’ve published so far, viz., none. For a week or so after I received the email, the journal’s web site was down. It’s back up now, and we can glean some further information about this “journal”. It is claimed to be published by “World Academic Publishers” (already listed in Jeffrey Beall’s list of predatory publishers), though the publisher’s site does not list the journal as of this writing. The listing of covered topics from their “Focus and Scope” page seems to have been plagiarized from the corresponding listing for the MDPI journal Forests.
Why am I, a computer scientist, being invited to submit an article on forestry? On the basis of being the author of an article entitled “Optimal k-arization of synchronous tree-adjoining grammar“. (Actually, they got that wrong too. I’m a co-author, along with Rebecca Nesson and Giorgio Satta.) See? There’s a “tree” in it. It must be about forestry.
I have half a mind to submit the article to them (after making it “80% different”) and see what happens.
Dear Shieber Stuart M.
This is from the Editorial Board Office of Journal of Advances in Forestry Letter (AFL). It is my honor to contact you.
Your paper
Title: Optimal k-arization of synchronous tree-adjoining grammar
Author(s):Shieber Stuart M.
has drawn our attention. We found the paper in the subject coverage of AFL. To promote the development and communication of Forestry Engineering, we sincerely invite you to make it 80% different from the original one and submit to AFL. The new papers in this area are extremely warmly welcome.
If you are interested, please submit your manuscript online before Nov. 15, 2012. Your paper will be published with no charge if accepted.
PAPER SUBMISSION WEBSITE:
[removed so as not to improve their page rank]
Best regards,
Editorial Board Office
Advances in Forestry Letter (AFL)
Website: [removed so as not to improve their page rank]
Email: afl@seipub.org