After the Bohannon fun, we’re all more aware of predatory publishers trying to get our money to publish any old crap. You would have thought they would have been aware of his, and at least made an attempt to look more legit. Well, apparently not. I jut got this unsolicited spam in my email:
Dear Colleague,
RESEARCH ARTICLES PUBLICATION – NO PUBLICATION CHARGE
Pinnacle Journal Publishes peer-reviewed, open access journals covering a wide range of academic disciplines.
We invite you to submit your research paper for publication in PINNACLE JOURNALS. Send your paper via e-mail attachment only to: [email protected].
Regards,
Publisher
Pinnacle Journal Publication
Note: To opt-out from our email list, simply send a blank message with STOP as subject.
Impressive, no? Not even a web page. This may have come from Pinnacle Journal Publication, but the email came from a wildblue.net domain (which is, apparently, a US internet provider), and the gmail submission address just shouts professionalism, doesn’t it?
Ah well, at least it amused me for a few minutes.
Rogue publsiehrs antedate the internet or the current vogue for open-access publishing. You will of course remember Kingsley Amis’ Lucky Jim in which the protagonist is encouragd to submit his thesis to an obscure journal run by the shadowy L. S. Caton. Months pass after submission and no inquiry is answered – until, one day, Jim’s work appears under the authorship of the same L. S. Caton.