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Bentham OA spam techniques, nonexistent peer review

alienentity

Illuminator
alienentity
Joined
Feb 21, 2009
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The subject of Bentham's came up again on another thread, so I did a bit more research into professional objections to its spamming scientists. I discovered that not only have scientists received unwanted solicitations from Bentham's, but that they are even encouraged to submit in journals outside their fields of expertise, thru generic form letters.

Needless to say this has raised some concerns about unprofessional or even unethical conduct, and naturally calls into question the quality of materials being published by Bentham's.

I include also some references to the recent (June 09) acceptance of a nonsense article submitted by Philip Davis (as a test of Bentham's 'peer review' standards). This paper demonstrated without a shred of doubt that there was no meaningful peer review going on in that case.
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn17288-spoof-paper-accepted-by-peerreviewed-journal.html

And what is the relevance to 9/11 conspiracy theories? Well one of the strongest 'appeals to authority' used by truthers is the recent paper by Dr. Steven Jones, Niels Harrit et al. published in one of Bentham's OA 'pay to play' journals, The Open Chemical Physics Journal. Remarkably, after the paper, titled 'Active Thermitic Material Discovered in Dust from the 9/11 World Trade Center Catastrophe' was published, the Chief Editor Marie-Paule Pileni resigned in protest.

' “I cannot accept that this topic is published in my journal. The article has nothing to do with physical chemistry or chemical physics, and I could well believe that there is a political viewpoint behind its publication. If anyone had asked me, I would say that the article should never have been published in this journal. Period.'

This is shaping up into a very interesting story. It now appears that certain members of the 9/11 'truth' movement is responding to such criticism by crafting special 'talking points' that truthers can use against it.
http://www.911blogger.com/node/20408

Here's a few of the links I've come across for your perusal:

http://www.library.yale.edu/~llicense/ListArchives/0804/msg00027.html

'"Bentham once enjoyed a reputation as a high-priced reputable scholarly publisher," comments Charles Oppenheim, professor of information science at UK-based Loughborough University, another researcher to be targeted by Bentham.
"In my view, it has damaged that reputation...."

Eysenbach, meanwhile, is less forgiving. Indeed, he is so angry that he is considering suing Bentham under anti-spam laws....

As is now evident, Bentham is not a communicative company. And while it has a presence in four countries — the United Arab Emirates, the Netherlands, Pakistan, and Illinois, USA — in all four jurisdictions the contact point is either a PO Box, or c/o address....'

http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2008/04/some-background-on-bentham-open-but.html



'As a publisher and editor of the Journal of Medical Internet Research, a leading open access journal (and the #2 cited health informatics journal), I am (as many of my colleagues) usually very sympathetic to any new open access journal start-ups, and I know that some sort of marketing is necessary to attract submissions from top authors (luckily, JMIR has survived its first 10 years and now naturally attracts submissions from top authors). While JMIR never engaged or engages in any unsolicited bulk emails (we send out content alerts only to users who have opted-in), some other (in particular open access publishers) seem to betray the trust and sympathy bonus they receive by many researchers by relentlessly spamming researchers' email accounts asking for articles / submissions.' Gunther Eysenbach

'My first spam award goes to Bentham Publishers, a "publisher" of "over 200" author-pays open access journals. In the past couple of months I have received no less than 11 emails from Bentham, all mostly identical in text and form, all signed by "Matthew Honan, Editorial Director, Bentham Science Publishers" or "Richard Scott, Editorial Director, Bentham Science Publishers", "inviting" me to submit research articles, reviews and letters to various journals (I got one email per journal!), including "The Open Operational Research Journal", "Open Business Journal", "Open Management Journal", "Open Bioinformatics Journal", "Open Ethics Journal", "Open Analytical Chemistry Journal" and so on - all of them sent to me "because of your eminence in the field" (wow, I didn't know I was so eminent in so many fields! As an aside, the claim that "this is no spam because you are eminent" defies any commonly accepted definition of spam - a message is spam if it is bulk and unsolicited, whether the recipients are all Nobel prize winners or not is irrelevant).

All pleas and begging from my side to stop the spamming, as well as clicking on any "unsubcribe" links did not stop the spam plague from Bentham.'

http://gunther-eysenbach.blogspot.com/2008/03/black-sheep-among-open-access-journals.html

Editors quitting and growing criticism

http://www.the-scientist.com/blog/display/55759/

http://scintilla.nature.com/node/700079

http://jurnsearch.wordpress.com/2009/06/10/new-titles-added-today/

http://chronicle.com/news/index.php?id=6613&utm_source=pm&utm_medium=en
 
alienentity said:
The subject of Bentham's came up again on another thread, so I did a bit more research into professional objections to its spamming scientists. I discovered that not only have scientists received unwanted solicitations from Bentham's, but that they are even encouraged to submit in journals outside their fields of expertise, thru generic form letters.

Needless to say this has raised some concerns about unprofessional or even unethical conduct, and naturally calls into question the quality of materials being published by Bentham's.
Click to expand...


I noticed the quotes from the publisher of the JMIR. I wonder if this sort of nonsense is impacting how researchers view open access journals as a whole?
 
It seems like the criticism is directed at Bentham's strategy for rapid growth. The desperate spamming appears to be directly linked to their objective to publish 200 to 300 journals.

And the lack of peer review oversight is a Bentham issue, not an OA issue per se.

OA is just another model of publishing, it seems to be legit AFAIK. It just seems Bentham's is not doing a good job.
 
alienentity said:
It seems like the criticism is directed at Bentham's strategy for rapid growth. The desperate spamming appears to be directly linked to their objective to publish 200 to 300 journals.

And the lack of peer review oversight is a Bentham issue, not an OA issue per se.

OA is just another model of publishing, it seems to be legit AFAIK. It just seems Bentham's is not doing a good job.
Click to expand...


Oh, I agree that Bentham's antics shouldn't impact the reputation of Open Access as a model, I am simply wondering if it does.
 
Off-topic and bickering posts sent to aah. Stay on topic. Don't bicker.
Replying to this modbox in thread will be off topic  Posted By: Tricky
 
alienentity said:
It seems like the criticism is directed at Bentham's strategy for rapid growth. The desperate spamming appears to be directly linked to their objective to publish 200 to 300 journals.

And the lack of peer review oversight is a Bentham issue, not an OA issue per se.

OA is just another model of publishing, it seems to be legit AFAIK. It just seems Bentham's is not doing a good job.
Click to expand...

It is more then them not doing a good job. I think they saw an opportunity to make money with a minimal amount of effort, and capitalized on it. They capitalized on the extreme desire for publication by those who could not or would not get published in traditional journals, charged a fee, produced a "joke" of a peer review process, and then went into business.

TAM:)
 
There's also a pretty self-destructing argument I've seen Truthers make in regards to the Editor's resignation.

They point out statements she made after her resignation, where she declined to comment on the scientific aspects of the paper, citing it wasn't in her field of expertise.

Truthers point to her history and proclaim that she's lying, therefor, she cannot be trustworthy and if you listen to her when she says the article was snuck in, you have to believe a proven liar that has already discredited her self.

Here's where it all blows up...

If she's this discredited, poor editor that no one should trust when she says the paper was snuck in... then you have to concede that the paper was published in a journal with the approval of a terribly inept Editor, by their own admission.

If she's discredited and didn't know about it as she claims, then you're back at stage one -- a paper that was snuck into the backdoor of a journal in an open access publication that already has tons of scrutiny placed on it by the scientific community.

When posed with this self-destructive dichotomy, everyone I've spoken to always falls back to one thing: "Well, she was a really good Editor. None of what she says makes sense with her history. This means she was forced to say the things she did."

And of course at that point, the house of cards just collapses on it self.

By the way, she didn't actually lie about her field of expertise, I just entertain that she does because it only makes it worse for them.

She said nanothermite wasn't in her field of expertise. While she has a history of work in nano journals and even military explosives... this was over two decades ago. It would be like working on computers in the 1980s, not working on it since, then someone calls you a liar when you say it's not your expertise to comment on a computer related article. It also completely ignores that humans who don't want to be involved in a controversy will say things to avoid them. There's nothing sinister about it, they simply don't want to be involved in the trash you drug them into.

Silly gooses.
 
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There is no real argument, just laughter over here at JREF. They know they have lost this one, but because of the nature of the typical truther, rather then admit defeat and move on, they will put their hands on their hips, whine with a shrill, and then stomp their feet about it.

TAM:)
 
So, if I keep my online journal to only a few "publications," I can stay unter the radar while raking in the dough?
 
Unfortunately, Open Access Journals appear to be the perfect "town crier" for the snake oil salesmen, so I suspect even though this episode should be used as ammunition to regulate such, it will not...expect to see more charlatans using this type of format to try and legitimize (Falsely) their pseudoscience and Woo.

TAM:)
 
Poetry Hound said:
Interesting article in today's NYT about the proliferation of illegitimate pay-to-play scientific journals and their deceptive tactics in recruiting their "editorial boards." Reminded me of Bentham.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/08/h...orld-of-pseudo-academia.html?ref=science&_r=0
Click to expand...

Sounds like Bentham here.
But some academics say many of these journals’ methods are little different from spam e-mails offering business deals that are too good to be true.
Click to expand...

The only people into these "deals" are those cashing the checks, and twoofers !
Go figure!
 
I read the article when I saw it in the Times. The actual print edition that's made available for free where I work, and I'm stunned at how few people take advantage of it.

Anyway, Bentham's not on it. One of you guys should contact the professor and see if it qualifies.
 
RedIbis said:
I read the article when I saw it in the Times. The actual print edition that's made available for free where I work, and I'm stunned at how few people take advantage of it.

Anyway, Bentham's not on it. One of you guys should contact the professor and see if it qualifies.
Click to expand...
Bentham Open is on it. Did you look? Missed it.
Bentham Open is over qualified. This is why Jones and Harrit picked it, they can make up a fantasy and have it published in a "journal". They fool gullible people, and spread their idiotic thermite nonsense.
 
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