Fingerprint image by OpenClipart-Vectors from Pixabay
Dear ***** ****
Thank you for your message, asking me download a paper using the University of Cambridge library subscription, and then send you a copy of the pdf. I am sure you are aware that if I did this I would be breaching the terms of my use of the library subscription. It is unfortunate that your institution does not have a subscription to this journal (and quite incredible if as you suggest "only a person from Cambridge university can access this article….A person from any other institution cannot access this article" – I guess the journal cannot be of very high quality if no other institutions in the world subscribe to it).
As you are an academic (moreover, apparently a well renowned researcher in your field who has been awarded many distinctions nationally and internationally) you must be aware what you are asking is improper. The article is copyright material and the publisher is entitled to charge a fee for access. You are asking me (and many colleagues here) to be complicit in an act of theft. It is poor academic practice for you to make this request. I realise it must be very frustrating for you to not have ready access to an article you wish to read for your work – however, rather than composing emails to people you do not know, and asking them to undertake an underhand and improper act (which could in principle lead to them being disciplined for breaching the legal contract between library user, library and publisher), perhaps you could find a legal way to access the article:
perhaps your library could arrange an inter-library loan;
if the authors are still alive, perhaps they would send you a preprint;
if all else fails, perhaps you could raise the thirty US dollars to enable you to buy a copy of this 'really crucial' article from the publisher.
If this work is so essential for your research, you might consider if it is worth buying rather than asking someone to steal it for you.
I am sorry not to be more helpful, as I am aware many academics see copyright and licensing infringement as very minor matters, but I actually think both that legal agreements should be respected (certainly unless they represent clear violations of higher rights) and that academics, as professional authors themselves, should take intellectual property rights seriously.
Best wishes
Keith
(First published 20th January 2016 at http://people.ds.cam.ac.uk/kst24/)
Thank you for your email asking about review times.
You will appreciate that I was a little confused by your message.
You tell me that you are a "Deputy Head of Foreign Economic Legislation at the Financial Legislation Department" somewhere unspecified (apparently in Ukraine, although you use a hotmail account) and that you "have a PhD degree in Law" and you are eager to get your article (unspecified) published in "the" (unspecified) journal. So immediately I am quite confused as I am not associated with any journals in that field at all. I edit a journal in chemistry education, but that would hardly seem relevant.
Then you suggest you are "just a beginner at it". I assume 'it' here is scholarly research, or writing for publication – in which case perhaps you should be co-writing with a mentor or supervisor – and perhaps not targeting top international journals at this stage. This claim is hardly likely to recommend you to high status research journals.
Even if you were referring to the journal I edit, it is not possible to "specify the approximate time it would take to review the article". Usually authors get a first decision within a matter of weeks – but this depends on the availability of suitable reviewers, and whether the reviewers who first comment offer consistent recommendations. Nearly all articles published pass through two or more rounds of review as authors respond to initial reviewer comments, and the reviewers evaluate the revised manuscript(s). Articles certainly can sometimes be published within a month, but it may take much longer.
I am pleased to hear you have "many good ideas and ongoing projects in different fields of science… connected to further development and promotion of my scientific work and that of my colleagues" – that must be quite time consuming in view of your professional responsibilities as a lawyer. I can certainly understand that you "do not have much free time". However, even if "that is why my assistant will respond to the messages", journal editors tend to only deal with article authors, not their staff.
To be honest, it seems obvious that you do not actually have any work to submit to any journal I am involved with, and that no one undertaking serious scholarly work would send such vague undirected emails asking for this kind of information, so please forgive me if I assume some kind of scam or scheme is behind your message. Perhaps your request was innocent enough, but I wonder how many people you sent this message to? And what you hope to do with any responses?
Likely you will only get responses from journals desperate for authors looking to pay for publication regardless of article quality. As Groucho might have advised, you would not want to be published in the kind of journal that would encourage contributions in response to your kind of approach.
Best wishes
Keith
(First published on 2nd October, 2015 at http://people.ds.cam.ac.uk/kst24/)
I found a very kind invitation from an organisation calling itself "Peak Performance International" in my email Inbox this morning * ('Parents Workshop on 12th September 2015')), inviting me to a 'free' 2 hour workshop (in Nairobi) – free as long as I booked before a certain date.
The organisation claims to be run by two parents who had been concerned at their daughter's lack of progress at school and so (as one does) had travelled to various countries including "the US, Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia" to learn about programmes of "Accelerated Learning and Brain Development". They claim that what they found was "mind blowing":
We saw children who would flip through a 200 page book of completely new material, at high speed for just a few minutes and then give an accurate account of what the book was about. Others would mentally calculate long mathematical equations and give the correct answers instantly while Professors took so long and still [did] not get the correct answer.
During our tour we attended several trainings. I learnt more about the brain than I had ever done in my whole life. I understood how easy it was to assist children tap into their genius realm and experience quantum leaps in IQ and EQ (Emotional Intelligence) by synchronizing the two brain hemispheres.
It seems Peak Performance International are now keen to share their findings with other parents, thus the invitation to their workshop. How I would have liked to think this is a genuine (even if misguided) and kind gesture. There may be the odd savant who can complete complex calculations faster than professors – but I doubt there is much that can be learnt from those to advise others. As for such extreme speed reading and retention of information: this can be understood two ways. It is either just a complete fabrication (the human brain works slowly with 'completely new material' which has to be understood in terms of familiar material, and engaged with through modest learning quanta) – or is trivial. Any good reader could actually 'flip through a 200 page book of completely new material, at high speed for just a few minutes and then give an accurate account of what the book was about' – by focusing on the blurb or an introduction. However, there would be very little knowledge of the book's detailed contents.
I am not sure whether I should be upset or pleased about this invitation. It is always annoying that some people want to cheat, mislead and swindle others. Often the widows of dictators, dying philanthropists, senior bankers or lawyers, or american military personnel seem to have a problem moving vast amounts of money out of some national jurisdiction and offer to make me rich if I help them. They clearly feel I am especially deserving or suitably skilled to undertake such projects. It is hard to have too much sympathy for anyone who is so stupid and greedy that they respond to such approaches.
Here, however, the scammers are playing upon parents who do not want to get rich quick, but just want to help their children learn more effectively and do better in school. I wonder how much money they will be asked to part with to share in the Peak Performance Programme with its surely fraudulent claims? Shame on the scammers. The only positive aspect of this sorry tale is that people consider education and learning important enough for scammers to think they can make a 'fast buck' out of the selling the pedagogic equivalent of snake oil. Perhaps this is not so different form the companies in countries like the UK where so much of professional development in the education sector has become commercialised, with 'providers' selling programmes in 'learning styles' which often have very little evidential support. (There is good research into some models of learning styles – but where popular ideas like VAK work this is likely either placebo, or the focus on multi-model teaching, rather than the underlying model which is more a distortion of multiple intelligence theory than based on the research on student learning styles.)
When I first saw the email I seriously wondered if this was a genuine but misguided or exaggerated attempt to apply genuinely effective learning/study techniques. I was persuaded otherwise by a link in the email that directed me to "one of our students". Actually this was a 'youtube' video of a young boy on a television programme who allegedly could read whilst blindfolded. He struggled to read an autocue whilst blindfolded – although to be fair he struggled equally to read the same autocue before the blindfold was put on. Looking at the video, and in particular how the boy angled his head, I very much suspect he was looking through the fabric of the black eyeshades (in the section of the programme I watched it did not seem to have occurred to the presenter to provide his own blindfold). Even if this was a genuine sensory skill and not the trick it seemed to be, it appeared to have nothing to do with "Accelerated Learning and Brain Development" or Peak Performance International.
One aspect of academic life that has never sat easily with me, is having to be a publicity officer and marketing manager for oneself as a scholar. Not only does this involve keeping good records of everything one has contributed that might conceivably count in seeking a post or promotion and so forth, but making a case for just how important one's work is – its supposedly seminal status, and its inconceivably incredible impact – by seeking out and reporting various indicators. Perhaps it is something about being British, but it is one aspect of the role that I am pleased to be leaving behind.
Presentation is important. Yet, of course, one must retain one's integrity. One might need to display one's contributions in the best possible light, but lying is clearly not acceptable. Unlike on TV's 'The Apprentice' where hopeful future entrepreneurs making up achievements or exaggerating beyond any possible justification in their applications is presented as entertainment – a little naughty, but it shows they are committed and enthusiastic – this would (I assume) clearly be unacceptable in the real world of work. If that is idealistic, it is certainly not okay in the Academy.
A confession
Yet I must confess that for some years it seems I have been padding my publications list with an article that, I now find, may never have been published. Inadvertently, obviously.
But how can a scholar seriously claim they thought they had been published, when, actually, they never were? What possible defence can there be?
But ('your honour') it is true: I found out some days ago that one of my 2012 publications [sic] may not have actually been a publication at all – as it may never have been published. So my publications list may have misrepresented the status of this possibly previously* unpublished work. (*I've just 'published' it myself on the website – but of course that would not count for much in the hiring-and-tenure-and-promotions game.)
So how did this situation develop?
The invitation
On the 8th September 2009 I was invited by an esteemed colleague
As Editor-in-Chief of the Encyclopledia of the Sciences of Learning (to be published in 2011 by Springer Publ.) and in accordance with strong recommendations of the editorial advisory board I am wondering if you would be interested in joining the Encyclopedia's list of contributors…If you have the time and inclination, the Editorial Advisory Board and I would very much appreciate your support. If you agree to serve as an author on the topic(s) on molecular conceptions of research into learning
The deadline was in January 21st 2010, and I got the submission completed just before Christmas 2009. I was sent reviewer comments, and completed a revision in June 2010. I assumed all was well.
The article is shown as coded green: Manuscript accepted
However, when I saw in May 2012 that the book was published, my article did not seem to be listed. So I contacted the publisher:
Would you be able to give me an update on the current status of this project. On the project website the contribution I was invited to provide is shown as green (manuscript accepted) [see image above], and according to the Springer site the Encyclopedia is now published. However, I cannot see how to access the material (perhaps my institution does not have access (yet?), or pehraps the on-line version is not yet available?), and I cannot see my contribution (Molecular conceptions of research into learning Regular Entry 00394 894/894) in the downloadable contents. Please could you advise?
The publisher responded: "I can´t find the entry either. This is very strange as it should be there. I will check with the production team and the company that runs the website for us."
The next day came the bad news. Well, given the kinds of things that happen in the world it was only slightly bad, but as publications are seen as so important for academics, and given that I'd done the work, it was pretty disappointing!
I´m terribly sorry to tell you that your article was the only one that has not been received by the production vendor team although we sent it to them. That means that we didn't even had a proof of your article. We didn´t notice that before for which we apologize deeply. For the current printed book Encyclopedia of the Sciences of Learning it is much too late to get your article in. Please accept my apologies.
A second invitation
But I was offered a partial corrective:
We have developed a new publication platform for our Reference Works that launched in August last year. As the Encyclopedia is part of the Springer Reference Works series it is also published as Online Version …The Encyclopedia on that platform can be seen as a living book as authors and editors can add articles or update old ones at any time….Would you be interested to write/update your article on SpringerReference as part of the electronic/online version of the Encyclopedia of the Sciences of Learning?
Yes, I would. The next day I was formally invited to write my article, once more:
Thank you very much for taking part in Encyclopedia of the Sciences of Learning…With this e-mail we invite you to SpringerReference.com as author of the following topic(s): Molecular Conceptions of Research into Learning…
At SpringerReference.com, we offer an extremely innovative way of publishing that allows authors to keep articles constantly updated and make their writing efforts immediately visible online. … When the article is complete, simply click 'Submit' to submit your content. By doing so, your contribution will become immediately visible on the site for other users to read and cite–you do not need to wait until the deadline is reached should you have been given one.
The article was (now) due on July 17th, 2012. There were some technical issues using the on-line submission system, but an assistant at the publisher helped sort the problems relating to an image file and cross-links with other contributions. Finally, by the 9th July, the files were uploaded and some formatting issues were sorted, and I was told by the publisher's assistant: "You can confirm it and click on the ACCEPT button".
I did not have access to an accept button, but was able to reply "Thank you – I have clicked the submit button."
Looking back now, I am wondering if perhaps I did need to click on the accept button – except I did not have such a button on my screen. Perhaps the publisher did have an accept button at their end, and the production assistant did not realise that I did not, or had intended to accept the article later and for some reason…
However, as I could see the article on line (see below), I assumed all was well. After all, I had been told that "When the article is complete, simply click 'Submit' to submit your content. By doing so, your contribution will become immediately visible on the site for other users to read and cite…"
The article showed as being part of the on-line Reference collection, with its own DOI
As I am retiring from teaching, I have been building up this website as a central point for various things I've worked on, and have been reviewing the publications I've written over the years (some of which I have no files for, as the manuscripts were typed and submitted in hard copy in those days). When I came to check the current location of this reference article, I could not find it on line, nor indeed any reference to it in a search. Well, that is not absolutely true: I found it was referred to in a list of my publications, but nowhere else. So I reached out to the publisher:
The files were lost (again) in a migration
The publisher could not find my article, nor indeed any record of it.
I'm sorry to say that after scouring our repositories and email we've failed to find your entry "Molecular conceptions of research into learning". Encyclopedia of the Sciences of Learning was developed on older platforms we decommissioned years ago, and email archives go back only so many years, I am sorry to say. (16th June 2020)
It seems the publisher had decided the original system, a wiki-based platform, did not fully meet their needs, and that something more sophisticated was needed, a "a file- and book-based publishing workflow" that worked better for academic publishing. That is perfectly understandable.
I can also understand that if the publisher had never accepted the submission at their end, then it might be quite possible that the files would be missed completely when the published materials were transferred to a new platform. It seems the files were lost in that process.
A Schrödinger publication?
On the other hand, if it was true that "by [clicking submit], your contribution will become immediately visible on the site for other users to read and cite" then it is not obvious to me why the files were not transferred – unless the transfer was based on a list of the files at the time of the original publication. If that is the case then the "living book [where] authors and editors can add articles or update old ones at any time" died, and reverted to the state of the initial 2012 publication, when the transfer took place.
I am not sure what the moral of this story is. After writing, submitting, and revising an invited article, having the publisher lose it; resubmitting it, a lot of back and forth sorting format issues…it is disappointing to know all that effort may have came to nought.
In retrospect, perhaps when I emailed to say "I have clicked the submit button" I should have written "I have clicked the submit button as I do not have an ACCEPT button, so if an ACCEPT button needs to be clicked please advise, or otherwise confirm no further action is needed at my end". Usually I tend to be pedantic and explicit – and so, I suspect, annoying. Annoyingly, on one of the few occasions I let my guard down, being my usual annoyingly pedantic might have stopped the article being lost a second time.
On the other hand, perhaps my article WAS published on-line in 2012 (when I could access it), but then lost some years later when the resource was transferred to a new platform. That would be a bit like having a chapter in an edited book that has gone out of print (which would not stop an academic including it on a publications list) – except that the only copies of my article which would have survived would have been any downloaded onto individual computers whilst the original platform was live.
Perhaps I should label this a Schrödinger publication – and consider it as an entanglement of two states – ⎮published but no longer available ⎮ / ⎮ accepted for publication but never published ⎮ – as there does not seem to be any observation I can make now which would collapse the wave function.
So I am not not entirely sure if my entry in the encyclopaedia actually never was a real publication (given the publisher has no record of it), or is just not a currently available publication (given that it was submitted according to the instructions that were supposed to make it live immediately). That makes keeping an accurate publications list quite challenging.
To the organising committee of the International Congress on Advanced Materials Sciences and Engineering
Keith S. Taber
Dear Eve
Thank you for your kind invitation to be an invited speaker at the International Congress on Advanced Materials Sciences and Engineering (AMSE-2020). It is an honour that such esteemed colleagues as Professors Hans Fecht, Yoon-Bong Hahn, and Subhash C. Singhal, would feel that I can offer something of value to your Congress.
I was very taken that the committee felt that my paper on 'Upper Secondary Students' Understanding of the Basic Physical Interactions in Analogous Atomic and Solar Systems' should be considered to make such 'valuable contributions' that you would like me to speak at your session on 'Materials and Energy'. I am aware that traditionally in scholarly circles, personal speaker invitations of this kind are seen as prestigious and are very much welcomed by those looking to build up a résumé/curriculum vitae.
Of course, I am honoured to be invited as a speaker, and to know that my work on secondary students' understandings of atomic and solar systems is held in such high esteem by your committee. However, I was somewhat surprised that the committee (I assume all busy leading experts in areas of materials science) would even be aware of my work, and frankly I am not sure why this work would justify you inviting me to speak to a congress of materials scientists.
I am sure that AMSE-2020 is intended to be a serious academic conference designed to share experts' cutting-edge research among a specialist field (rather than, say, just generate income for the organisers by signing up anyone who can be sufficiently flattered by a personal invitation) and so your committee must be very careful and highly selective in issuing personal invitations to potential speakers. This would suggest that your committee can appreciate much better than I can why my work would be of sufficient interest to experts in advanced materials science and engineering for them to wish to hear about it first hand.
I imagine that your committee and delegates put a high premium on science education and care very much about the future supply of well qualified young people into science and engineering fields, and it is gratifying to know that they find time to take an interest in educational research. I do wonder, however, if those attending the congress really want to hear about how teenagers make sense of the forces at work within atoms and the solar system rather than about current developments in their own field. Therefore I feel I must decline your kind invitation
Best wishes
Keith
Dear Dr. Keith S. Taber, Hope everything goes well with you. International Congress on Advanced Materials Sciences and Engineering (AMSE-2020) will be held in Hilton Vienna Danube Waterfront, Austria on July 22-25, 2020. On behalf of the Committee, We are writing this time in order not to miss your participation at this congress. Based on your valuable contributions to Upper Secondary Students' Understanding of the Basic Physical Interactions in Analogous Atomic and Solar Systems, we sincerely hope that you can be a speaker at Session 8: Materials and Energy in our congress. …
Thank you very much for your kind personal invitation to deliver a speech at the 4th International Biotechnology Congress (IBC-2020) to be hosted from Dubai, UAE.
I am fine, thank you for asking. I hope you are also well. As you are kind enough to ask after my family, they are well as far as I can tell: we are all isolating here, so I am not currently able to meet them physically. Since my wife died, I have lived alone – though of course I am never socially isolated given such regular personal attention from the wider scholarly community, such as yourself.
Given that "high qualified speakers will be selected from all over the world", I am obviously very honoured to be invited to speak at the International Biotechnology Congress. I certainly appreciate that "the participation of outstanding international experts" gives a conference such as this the potential to make a real contribution to a field.
However, I have looked through the tracks, and I really cannot see how my expertise would fit into any of these. Indeed, I really wonder if my own work qualifies me as a suitable invited speaker (with all the costs this could entail for the organisers) in this particular conference. I am not convinced that the other outstanding international experts in biotechnology will feel I really am actually a highly qualified speaker able to contribute much to inform their work. Of course, if you feel I am being too modest, and that you still do consider that my research and scholarship would be appreciated by the other delegates, then please do get back to me to explain where you feel my work would fit into the programme.
Otherwise, I wish your congress well, but suspect I should focus my energies on activities more closely aligned with my own research.
Best wishes
Keith
The 4th International Biotechnology Congress 2020
Time: Nov. 9-11, 2020
Place: Dubai, UAE
Dear Keith S. Taber,
This is Sophie from organizing committee of The 4th International Biotechnology Congress (IBC-2020). How are you? Hope you and your family are all fine now. We would like to make sure you did not miss our conference invitation! I'm writing to follow-up my previous invitation as below. I sincerely wish you could reply me with your answer about our invitation. Thank you very much.
We are proud to announce that the 4th International Biotechnology Congress (IBC-2020) will be held during Nov. 9-11, 2020 in Dubai, UAE. On behalf of committee, we cordially welcome you to deliver a speech in our conference. …
