A dummy research paper worth an honorary Ig Nobel and titled ‘Get Me Off Your F*cking Mailing List’ has been accepted for publication by an open-access science journal.
The paper, written by US researchers David Mazières and Eddie
Kohle in 2005, revolved only around these seven words repeated
over and over again. The 10-page mantra, which also boasted some
useful diagrams, was the Stanford and Harvard professors’ ironic
response to a stream of unwanted spam invitations.
Another computer scientist, Australian Dr. Peter Vamplew, decided
to submit ‘Get Me Off Your F*cking Mailing List’ to the
International Journal of Advanced Computer Technology (IJACT)
after receiving a whole series of unwanted spam from it and other
similar journals.
It seems a number of ‘predatory’ journals spam scientists,
offering to publish their work. Once an article is accepted, the
journal asks for a fee.
The IJACT says it "does not compromise with quality of
research" informing on its website that it welcomes the
submission of manuscripts that meet the "general criteria of
significance and scientific excellence."
Much to Vamplew's surprise, the IJACT gave ‘Get Me Off Your
F*cking Mailing List’ an excellent review, saying it would
publish the paper for a fee of $150.
"I received a dozen of these sorts of academic spam messages
one day and I snapped and sent them all as a response. It made me
feel better for a few minutes, but I didn’t even expect it would
get me off their mailing list, let alone have the paper accept
it," Vamplew told RT.
Other "professional" journals have been subject to practical
jokes from the science community.
In April a reporter for the Ottawa Citizen wrote a plagiarized
nonsense paper tackling soils, cancer, and Mars. His
‘masterpiece’ entitled ‘Acidity and aridity: Soil inorganic
carbon storage exhibits complex relationship with low-pH soils
and myeloablation followed by autologous PBSC infusion’ was
nonetheless accepted by eight ‘predatory’ journals, which asked
from $1,000 to $5,000 from him to publish it.
Last year, another science reporter submitted a flawed paper
about cancer to some 340 journals, and got it accepted by 60
percent of them. Using IP addresses, he discovered that the
journals that accepted his paper were located in India and
Nigeria, vox.com reported.