
Get Me Off Your Fucking Mailing List [pdf] - fforflo
http://www.scs.stanford.edu/~dm/home/papers/remove.pdf
======
Amorymeltzer
The point of this, as posted previously, is given in this 2014 post:
[https://scholarlyoa.com/2014/11/20/bogus-journal-accepts-
pro...](https://scholarlyoa.com/2014/11/20/bogus-journal-accepts-profanity-
laced-anti-spam-paper/) (also previously submitted to HN as
[http://www.vox.com/2014/11/21/7259207/scientific-paper-
scam](http://www.vox.com/2014/11/21/7259207/scientific-paper-scam))

Essentially, predatory journals spam scientists, seeking to publish their
paper for a small fee. Someone wrote this in 2005 as a joke response to spammy
conference invites, then someone else more recently sent this to one of those
predatory journals.

>After receiving a spam email from the International Journal of Advanced
Computer Technology, Dr. Peter Vamplew of Federation University Australia’s
School of Engineering and Information Technology sent the anti-spam article as
a reply to the spam email without any other message, expecting that they might
open it and read it, but not that it would be considered for publication.

>To his surprise, the journal accepted the paper and sent him an acceptance
email that had two PDF attachments. One was a formal statement of acceptance
and the second was the reviewer report.

>It’s clear from examining the reviewer report that the same filled-out form
is used for most or all submissions. Certainly, no peer review was completed
despite the journal’s claim to be a peer reviewed journal. The acceptance
indicates that the next step for Associate Professor Vamplew is to wire USD
$150 to the bank account of Tej Pal Singh, and the paper will be published,
but I don’t think he’ll be doing that.

~~~
JoshTriplett
I receive several of these per month. They range variously from bogus
conference CFPs (in locations like Hawaii and Rio) to bogus journals to
invitations to serve as the editor for a bogus journal. Most of them seem
completely automated, scraping authors and emails out of databases of papers.

Most of them stand out as obvious (especially when they spam me based on a
journal article that wanted names formatted like "J. Triplett"). But sometimes
they have _almost_ enough believability that I could imagine someone not
familiar with this type of scam falling for it. Some of them stand up to a
quick search, and someone seeing the journal title and CFP, not doing the
research on it, sending a draft ("spray and pray"), and following along with
the process and any fees. (Some journals charge substantial fees as well,
sometimes by the page, with extra for diagrams.)

The mails often follow the usual tactics of playing up the recipient's status.
And any university IT department would tell you that students and professors
are not by any means immune to scams. When one "success" earns hundreds in
fees, it wouldn't take a significant success rate to make this scam
profitable.

~~~
Amorymeltzer
Excellent points, and it's also worth pointing out that respectable publishing
does, of course, cost a fee, and a far more exorbitant one at that. It can be
easy to fall into the trap since that's not a red flag.

------
cef
Well I read the document in its entirety, and I'm still a little unclear as to
what the authors' specific point was. Perhaps a clearly articulated thesis
statement might have helped.

~~~
Aloha
I found the diagram on page 3 enlightening.

~~~
Amorymeltzer
I know we're all joking here, but the final figure (last page) intrigued me. I
generally read the X-axis first but this would have you read the Y-axis first.
Is that something people generally do, or were the authors going for a left-
to-right consistency?

~~~
JoshTriplett
In this case, almost certainly left-to-right consistency. But depending on the
diagram, sometimes you do care more about the Y axis than the X axis; I
wouldn't say I have a consistent reading order between the two, though
generally I'll look at the diagram caption first.

For the graphed data itself, I suspect people do tend to pay more attention to
the Y axis, and more specifically to the extremes; the results in most papers
tend to talk about those extremes (with the exception of the rare graph that
highlights consistency across a range of results). Given that, it makes sense
to check the scale for "how high" or "how low" first, and then check "by
varying what".

------
xpda
The references are a nice touch.

[http://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc2822.txt](http://www.rfc-
editor.org/rfc/rfc2822.txt)

[https://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2821.txt](https://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2821.txt)

------
cshum
Reminds me of "The Shining"
[http://uncyclopedia.wikia.com/wiki/All_work_and_no_play_make...](http://uncyclopedia.wikia.com/wiki/All_work_and_no_play_makes_Jack_a_dull_boy)

------
fgandiya
Ahh, this is among my favorite papers, alongside the two medical papers in
which one said to fake the NMR data (in first person) and the other said
'(insert statistical method here)

------
Aloha
I'd love to know the story here. Someone spent a fair bit of time on TeX to
make this.

~~~
Amorymeltzer
See my comment, but it's a joke response to a spammy predatory journal, which
was then accepted since they exist just to take money from scientists.

