"By the pricking of my thumbs,
Something wicked this way comes"
Keith S. Taber
(Image by Tesa Robbins from Pixabay)
Dear Henderson
Thank you for your email 'Membership for Your Publications' notifying me that the Journal of Diabetes Research Reviews & Reports has awarded me 'membership' based on my research profile. That is rather incredible as my research is in science education. The most relevant publication that comes to mind is "Is 6% kidney function just as good as 8% kidney function? A case of justifying dubious medical ethics by treating epistemology as ontology" which is not peer-reviewed, but a post on my personal blog.
This does rather suggest that either
- the Journal of Diabetes Research Reviews & Reports has a rather bizarre notion of its scope given the journal title, or
- it has extremely low standards in terms of what it feels it might be happy to publish.
- Or, perhaps both?
I am a little confused by your final paragraph which seems to suggest that although I have been 'awarded' various benefits (well they might have been benefits had I been a diabetes researcher) you would like me to send you $2519 (in some unspecified currency). I only ever recall being honoured with one academic award before, and that came with a sum of money. That is, when you make an academic award, you give money to the recipient, not the other way around.
So, let's be honest.
You do not know, or indeed care, if I know anything about diabetes research. (Either you have not examined my research profile to find out; or whoever was tasked with this has such limited scholarly background that they have no notion of how to identify publications about diabetes research – such, perhaps, as looking to see if the words 'diabetes' or 'diabetic' appear in any paper titles or keywords: not exactly a challenging higher level task.)
You are not making me an award.
You are trying to sell me some kind of a package of 'benefits' in relation to publishing my work in your dodgy journal. That is, the Journal of Diabetes Research Reviews & Reports is one of the many predatory journals seeking to take money from scholars without being in a position to offer a service consistent with normal standards of academic quality in return. (This has already been demonstrated by the journal identifying someone with no publications in the field as 'a potential author' for the journal based on scrutinising my 'research profile in [sic] online'. If that is the level of competence to be expected of the editorial and production side of the journal, why would any serious scholar let their work be published in it?)
That apparent lack of competence in itself does not justify spending my time responding to your invitation.
I write because I find these tactics dishonest. You deliberately set out to deceive by pretending you are offering an award based on the excellence of a scholar's research. I really do not like lying, which is antithetical to the whole academic enterprise. So, I reply to call out the lie.
If you feel that I have misrepresented the situation, and that my research profile justifies an award in the field of diabetes research, then I would be very happy to receive your explanation. Otherwise, perhaps you might wish to consider if you really are comfortable working in an unethical organisation and being complicit in lying to strangers in this way?
Best wishes
Keith
Update (5th August 2022)
I have just received a response from the journal…
