{"id":1561,"date":"2012-11-06T15:03:34","date_gmt":"2012-11-06T20:03:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/pamphlet\/?p=1561"},"modified":"2012-11-06T15:03:34","modified_gmt":"2012-11-06T20:03:34","slug":"how-not-to-entice-an-author","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/pamphlet\/2012\/11\/06\/how-not-to-entice-an-author\/","title":{"rendered":"How not to entice an author"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
…There’s a “tree” in it…<\/span>
\n“Fall New England<\/a>” image by flickr user BrtinBoston<\/a>. Used by permission<\/a>.<\/span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

I received the attached email, inviting a contribution to a journal called\u00a0Advances in Forestry Letter<\/em>. Yes, that’s “Letter” in the singular, which is even still optimistic given the number of papers they’ve published so far, viz., none. For a week or so after I received the email, the journal’s web site was down. It’s back up now, and we can glean some further information about this “journal”. It is claimed to be published by “World Academic Publishers” (already listed<\/a> in Jeffrey Beall’s list of predatory publishers<\/a>), though the publisher’s site does not list the journal as of this writing. The listing of covered topics from their “Focus and Scope” page seems to have been plagiarized from the corresponding listing for the MDPI journal Forests<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Why am I, a computer scientist, being invited to submit an article on forestry? On the basis of being the author of an article entitled “Optimal k<\/em>-arization of synchronous tree-adjoining grammar<\/a>“. (Actually, they got that wrong too. I’m a co-author, along with Rebecca Nesson<\/a> and Giorgio Satta<\/a>.) See? There’s a “tree” in it. It must<\/em> be about forestry.<\/p>\n

I have half a mind to submit the article to them (after making it “80% different”) and see what happens.<\/p>\n

\n

Dear Shieber Stuart M.<\/p>\n

This is from the Editorial Board Office of Journal of Advances in Forestry Letter (AFL). It is my honor to contact you.<\/p>\n

Your paper
\nTitle: Optimal k-arization of synchronous tree-adjoining grammar
\nAuthor(s):Shieber Stuart M.<\/p>\n

has drawn our attention. We found the paper in the subject coverage of AFL. To promote the development and communication of Forestry Engineering, we sincerely invite you to make it 80% different from the original one and submit to AFL. The new papers in this area are extremely warmly welcome.<\/p>\n

If you are interested, please submit your manuscript online before Nov. 15, 2012. Your paper will be published with no charge if accepted.<\/p>\n

PAPER SUBMISSION WEBSITE:
\n[removed so as not to improve their page rank]<\/em><\/p>\n

Best regards,<\/p>\n

Editorial Board Office
\nAdvances in Forestry Letter (AFL)
\nWebsite:\u00a0[removed so as not to improve their page rank]<\/em>
\nEmail: afl@seipub.org<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

…There’s a “tree” in it… “Fall New England” image by flickr user BrtinBoston. Used by permission. I received the attached email, inviting a contribution to a journal called\u00a0Advances in Forestry Letter. Yes, that’s “Letter” in the singular, which is even still optimistic given the number of papers they’ve published so far, viz., none. For a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2110,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[618,68],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1561","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-open-access","category-scholarly-communication"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5pLfN-pb","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1106,"url":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/pamphlet\/2012\/01\/04\/switching-to-open-access-for-the-new-year\/","url_meta":{"origin":1561,"position":0},"title":"Switching to open access for the new year","author":"Stuart Shieber","date":"Wednesday, January 4, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"\u201c...time to switch...\u201d A very old light switch (2008) by RayBanBro66 via flickr. Used by permission (CC by-nc-nd) The journal Research in Learning Technology has switched its approach from closed to open access as of New Year's 2012. Congratulations to the Association for Learning Technology (ALT) and its Central Executive\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "computational linguistics"","block_context":{"text":"computational linguistics","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/pamphlet\/category\/linguistics\/computational-linguistics\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1742,"url":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/pamphlet\/2013\/05\/15\/policies-publishers-and-plagiarism-prosecution\/","url_meta":{"origin":1561,"position":1},"title":"Policies, publishers, and plagiarism prosecution","author":"Stuart Shieber","date":"Wednesday, May 15, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"...going after plagiarists on legal grounds... \"Judge Coco Declares Ang Out of Line!\" image by flickr user Coco Mault used by permission. One of the services that journal publishers claim to provide on behalf of authors is legal support in the case that their work has been plagiarized, and they\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "open access"","block_context":{"text":"open access","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/pamphlet\/category\/scholarly-communication\/open-access\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1866,"url":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/pamphlet\/2013\/11\/21\/thoughts-on-founding-open-access-journals\/","url_meta":{"origin":1561,"position":2},"title":"Thoughts on founding open-access journals","author":"Stuart Shieber","date":"Thursday, November 21, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"\u2026 altogether too much concern with the contents of the journal\u2019s spine text\u2026 \u201creference\u201d image by flickr user Sara S. used by permission. Precipitated by a recent request to review some proposals for new open-access journals, I spent some time gathering my own admittedly idiosyncratic thoughts on some of the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "open access"","block_context":{"text":"open access","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/pamphlet\/category\/scholarly-communication\/open-access\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1412,"url":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/pamphlet\/2012\/06\/28\/the-inevitability-of-open-access\/","url_meta":{"origin":1561,"position":3},"title":"The inevitability of open access","author":"Stuart Shieber","date":"Thursday, June 28, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"...wave of the future... \"Nonantum Wave\" photo by flickr user mjsawyer. Used by permission (CC-BY-NC-ND 2.0). I get the sense that we've moved into a new phase in discussions of open access. There seems to be a consensus that open access is an inevitability. We're hearing this not only from\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "open access"","block_context":{"text":"open access","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/pamphlet\/category\/scholarly-communication\/open-access\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1811,"url":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/pamphlet\/2013\/10\/15\/lessons-from-the-faux-journal-investigation\/","url_meta":{"origin":1561,"position":4},"title":"Lessons from the faux journal investigation","author":"Stuart Shieber","date":"Tuesday, October 15, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"\u2026what\u00a0419 scams\u00a0are to banking\u2026 \u201cscams upon scammers\u201d image by flickr user Daniel Mogford used by permission. Investigative science journalist John Bohannon[1] has a news piece in Science earlier this month about the scourge of faux open-access journals. I call them faux journals (rather than predatory journals), since they are not\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "open access"","block_context":{"text":"open access","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/pamphlet\/category\/scholarly-communication\/open-access\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":666,"url":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/pamphlet\/2011\/01\/15\/a-ray-of-sunshine-in-the-open-access-future\/","url_meta":{"origin":1561,"position":5},"title":"A ray of sunshine in the open-access future","author":"Stuart Shieber","date":"Saturday, January 15, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"Used by permission of PLoS I'm flying back from Berlin, where I gave talks at the Academic Publishing in Europe (APE) Conference and the Study of Open Access Publishing (SOAP) Symposium. Karmically, the SOAP Symposium was held in the very room, in Harnack Haus of the Max Planck Society, where\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "open access"","block_context":{"text":"open access","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/pamphlet\/category\/scholarly-communication\/open-access\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/pamphlet\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1561","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/pamphlet\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/pamphlet\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/pamphlet\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2110"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/pamphlet\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1561"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/pamphlet\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1561\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1570,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/pamphlet\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1561\/revisions\/1570"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/pamphlet\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1561"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/pamphlet\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1561"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/pamphlet\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1561"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}