By Armando Simón
Having submitted a paper on the transgender movement to a journal, I was asked if I wanted to have it as a preprint first (a preprint is a paper which has been submitted to a journal but has not been peer reviewed yet, but is available on the internet to be reviewed by whomever is interested).
I had been asked the same question with other papers and always declined, but out of curiosity this time I acquiesced. That was a mistake. I was swiftly bombarded by editors from predatory journals (“predatory journals” are foreign scams pretending to be professional journals for the unwary; since almost all journals traditionally charge a hefty fee—usually paid by universities—the scam can be lucrative). They informed me how impressed they had been by reading it. “We have been following yours researches from a while and we are amazed by the progress it is getting readerships and views.” And, “I am amazed by your research & I will publish articles related to your research interest so I would like to invite you to contribute a paper for publication in the Annals of Civil Engineering and Management.”
I was duly flattered.
But, how exactly did I know these were predatory journals interested in my paper on the topic of transgenders? The titles alone of these “journals” were evidence enough: Journal of Robotics and Automation Research, Advances in Theoretical & Computational Physics, Environmental Science and Climate Research, Open Access Journal of Applied Science and Technology, Advance in Environmental Waste Management and Recycling, Annals of Civil Engineering and Management, International Journal of Cancer Research & Therapy, Forum for Linguistic Studies, Journal of Veterinary Health Science, Journal of Electrical Electronics Engineering, and best of all, Space Science Journal. It seems that preprints are like chum for sharks, something to consider before deciding whether to preprint or not.
2 Responses
Dear Author,
Having followed your impressive literary investigations for ___ years our imprint “Today’s Journal of Home Economics, Modern Cosmology, Advanced Particle Physics, and AI-Powered Bitcoin Mining Land Survey Submersible Architecture Studies” will be honored to publish your article about transgender people. However, there is the stipulation (which you no doubt expected) that your article on trans people must include transgendered Cosmologists and Particulate Physicists, in the least, else we could not accept the literary investigation you wrote. We’re sure you understand the need for this requirement and hope that you’ll consider our offer. Because of recent totally illegal fines levied against our parent company (Columbia University) by the cruel Trump administration our usual remuneration per article of $12,563 (US) is now reduced to 4.50 (C$). We feel a great sense of angst about this and feel correct in blaming Trump and MAGA. In normal times articles such as yours would command between 10,000 and 43,000 (US) per article of 4k words or thereabouts. These are sad times for publications such as ours and innocent scholars such as yourself are made victim because MAGA. As I mentioned in my voice mail we’re not a “predatory journal” except that we hunt for true quality – like a predator hunts for his/her/them prey.
Looking forward to many submissions of articles about trans people!
Pat,
(He/she/it/them/Obama/Kamala)
Editor,
Today’s Home Economics, Modern Cosmology, Advanced Particle Physics, and AI-Powered Bitcoin Mining Land Survey Submersible Architecture Studies Non-Predatory Journal
It was better when everybody rejected us.