Spamference, spamjournal, spamreviews

Everyone's favorite spamference, the World Multi-Conference on Systemics, Cybernetics and Informatics (WMSCI; I'll refrain from linking to them in the name of not promoting that which doesn't deserve promotion) has now posted their conference submissions on the web. So, for your amusement and edification, head on over to My Pet Goat, where Mrs. Cake has baked up some pointers to them.

Of course, any profitable economic niche will attract new business ventures. The IPSI BgD folks do the WMSCI'ers one better, with two generic domains (internetjournals.net and internetconferences.net), generic conferences (actually, VIP conferences, which are also "M+I+T++" conferences: "Multi-, Inter-, and Trans- disciplinary") held all around the world, and no less than two journals! Here, I'll concentrate on the journals, since I recently got some email about them. There are two: IPSI Transactions on Internet Research and IPSI Transactions on Advanced Research.

Among their submission rules are, "Each paper must include at least 10 references. Papers without at least 10 references will be returned to the sender." Why? I assume that's because this is how they get names of reviewers. They charge €500 to publish a paper, which as they say is fortunate for you, because, "...the publication fee is to be paid only if your paper is accepted - we do not charge for the reviewing process, which is a very costly process." How costly? Well, they need to send out 12 emails to solicit reviews. Here's what I assume a typical email looks like:

Dear Dr. Michael Stiber

We have found on the Internet that your area of research is similar
to a topic submitted in the paper for our Journal
Transactions on Internet Research.

We know that you are extremely busy, but please take time to do the
quick review of a attached paper and send us your comments on:

- What did you like in the paper
- What you did not like in the paper
- Scientific approach level in the paper
- Updated info in the paper, etc.

Any comments of yours will help the authors of the paper.
Please reply as soon as possible.

Our journal is aimed at supporting a truly multidisciplinary,
interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research.
For details, please see the web (www.internetjournals.net).

We expect that your review has two parts.
First, improvement requests to the authors.

Second, your recommendation:
A. Unconditional accept
B. Conditional accept, with minor changes
C. Conditional accept with major changes
D. Reject

If you have any more questions, please contact me!
Please reply to this e-mail.

Best Regards,
Prof. Dr. Veljko Milutinovic, Fellow of IEEE

Then they attach a PDF of the paper. Unfortunately, they don't offer to pay me for my review, so I'm not sure what makes this review process so expensive. Could it be a lot of time spent finding reviewers? Well, no, as they themselves say, they grab previous journal and conference participants, folks cited in references, and Google the rest. Despite what they say, my research interests aren't similar to the attached paper, so they don't seem to do much more than type in a keyword or two, grab an email address, and shoot the request off.

Oh, all of their issues seem to be online in PDF form, but you can subscribe for €500 if you're an individual (€1000 for institutions; €500 for top 500 institutions).

I'm sure that there are people submitting to these things and reviewing their papers in good faith. After all, people get taken in by spam all the time. On the other hand, they apparently get 27 hits/day on their journal web site, so I guess that shuts me up.

Topics: academia, conferences, journals.

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