Nice Try, Science Publishing Group

Science Publishing Group is another scam Open Access journal publisher or academic vanity press. Yesterday they sent me a form-letter invitation to submit papers or become member of an unspecified editorial board or become a peer reviewer. "Join us!" But they don't even publish an archaeology journal. The closest they get to one is a godforsaken excuse for a journal named Social Sciences. It allegedly caters to everything from law to anthropology.

The best part is that they sent the letter to my Academy address. The one I use when editing Fornvännen, a rock-solid paper and OA archaeology journal with 106 years of back issues. Sorry guys, you picked the wrong dude.

Update same evening: The editorial board of Social Sciences has twelve members and apparently no Editor-in-Chief. Only one of the twelve has filled out his CV page on the site, making him the best candidate if you would like to contact the journal. He is a professor of nanotechnology in Cheboksary. The journal's web site however gives his specialities as "Knowledge Discovery in Database, Data Mining and its using for scientific and applied research, Social Science and Social Management, Family relations and Educational Management". Awesome.

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I'm sure if you show interest they make you editor-in-chief of their new archeology journal, just send them a title that's not taken and you're in business. Well, busy at least, they get all the money part.

Most likely these folks have acquired a mailing list on which your name appears, and postage is cheap enough that it's less expensive for them to send you their junk mail rather than pay someone to say, "Wait, this guy edits a competing journal."

A non-academic example: I have done business with an appliance store about 20 km away, so they send me a notice in the mail whenever they are having special deals on some or all of what they sell. I get two copies of this notice: one with my name on it, and one in the name of the previous owner of my house. I am sure the latter has not bought anything from this store in well over a decade, because he has been dead for that long. I have tried to return the dead guy's mail to the sender, informing them that he is dead, but that hasn't yet caused them to take his name off their mailing list.

By Eric Lund (not verified) on 13 Dec 2012 #permalink

Interestingly, I also received a similar kind of email from them. I tried to google to find their journals and papers but with no hits. Most of their journal names are very close to well known journals' name. To me it looks like an scam what do you all think???

The email I got from them is following

Dear XYZ

You are invited to be a part of Science Publishing Group journal as a member of editorial board.

Journal Title: Computational Biology and Bioinformatics

Journal Site: http://www.sciencepublishinggroup.com/j/cbb

You are requested to read the terms and conditions carefully. Please click the following link to get the detailed information:

http://www.sciencepublishinggroup.com/info/benefitsresponsibilities.aspx

Please click the following link to confirm the acceptance of the terms and conditions and the appointment as a member on editorial board of Computational Biology and Bioinformatics

http://www.sciencepublishinggroup.com/info/response.aspx?personid=20325…

Please click the following link to reject the invitation.

http://www.sciencepublishinggroup.com/info/response.aspx?personid=20325…

Please make your decision before December 29, 2012.
After two days of your membership confirmation, we will create an account and sent you an email about the login information. Please check your mailbox and follow the instructions to create your personal webpage in Science Publishing Group Platform.

If you have any question, please feel free to contact: journal@sciencepublishinggroup.com

Best Regards,

Will Smith
Science Publishing Group, USA
http://www.sciencepublishinggroup.com

To unsubscribe, please click the following link:
http://www.sciencepublishinggroup.com/info/unsubscribe.aspx

By MQ. Fatmi (not verified) on 23 Dec 2012 #permalink

They're a scam or an academic vanity press depending on your perspective.

When in doubt, always check the email it's allegedly sent from. Mine was from: ad (at) funymall (dot) com. Oh, right. Seriously. Nope. And I'm a PhD scholar (in Forest Pathology) and haven't published anything (yet).

By Siri Bjoner (not verified) on 08 Jan 2013 #permalink

I have just received an email where they invite me "to describe the state-of-the-art in this field, such as the new contributions, ideas, or clarifications that resulted after the conference paper was presented. We expect your revised and extended paper will be published in the first issue of our journals!"

For a second I thought it wasn't a scam ...

What conference was the letter referring to? I thought they spammed blindly?

They ask me $70 for publishing a paper that was already published in another journal! What a shame. I think they never publish anything.

By Tjamme Wiegers (not verified) on 23 Feb 2013 #permalink

Who suggested that? Quality journals don't do reruns.

It must be a scam.
I just received a similar email but in this one the return address is
cfp@godcarer.com

On top of that, if you go to sciencepublishinggroup.com you get a black signup page from WorldClient, not the page of a journal.

I think this is an attempt to scam people starving for publications. "Send us $70 and we will make you an editor, or republish your old paper, or whatever"

What will happen if I filled their forms and I have uploaded my CV to it too. :(

They will most likely put your info up on the site as a member of some journal's editorial board. If you don't want to be on there, then write them and ask them to remove your info. Perhaps they will do so?

do they have any paper edition, or only electronic?

Thanks for sharing this...
There should be a kind of common repository somewhere for all these spam conferences, so we could get all these emails filtered away before ever seeing them...
I guess it's called Google, for now.

Still going...

Dear [Surname], [First Name] [Middle Name]

Science Publishing Group is an independent international publisher of 50+ open access, online, peer-reviewed journals covering a wide range of academic disciplines.

SciencePG Call for Editorial Board Members, Reviewers and Papers: http://www.sciencepublishinggroup.com/info/joinus.aspx

Full peer review: All manuscripts submitted to our journals undergo double blind peer review.
Fast publication: Fast peer review process of papers within approximately one month of submission.
Low price: The article processing charge for one manuscript submitted before May 15 2013 is 70USD or 120USD.

For manuscripts submitted to Science Innovation, Science Research, Science Discovery before March 20, 2013, Science Publishing Group offers large discounts on APCs: 50USD for one manuscript.

Science Publishing Group website:
http://www.sciencepublishinggroup.com

We are looking forward to your submission!
The submission website: http://submission.sciencepublishinggroup.com

Best Regards,

Will Smith
Science Publishing Group

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Please do not reply to this email.

To unsubscribe, please click the following link:
http://www.sciencepublishinggroup.com/info/unsubscribe.aspx

By Wolowizard (not verified) on 15 Mar 2013 #permalink

Good grief, is this someone making fun of the scammers? Or are they really that inept?

Good job, Martin. The idiots are still at it.

No thank you. Please do not send e-mail to this address again.

From: SciencePG [mailto:cfp@godcarer.com]
Sent: Tuesday, March 19, 2013 12:42 PM
To:[me]
Subject: Dear [me], Call for Editorial Board Members, Reviewers and Papers
Importance: Low

Dear [me]

Science Publishing Group is an independent international publisher of 50+ open access, online, peer-reviewed journals covering a wide range of academic disciplines.

SciencePG Call for Editorial Board Members, Reviewers and Papers: http://www.sciencepublishinggroup.com/info/joinus.aspx

Full peer review: All manuscripts submitted to our journals undergo double blind peer review.
Fast publication: Fast peer review process of papers within approximately one month of submission.
Low price: The article processing charge for one manuscript submitted before May 15 2013 is 70USD or 120USD.

For manuscripts submitted to Science Innovation, Science Research, Science Discovery before March 20, 2013, Science Publishing Group offers large discounts on APCs: 50USD for one manuscript.

Science Publishing Group website:
http://www.sciencepublishinggroup.com

We are looking forward to your submission!
The submission website: http://submission.sciencepublishinggroup.com

Best Regards,

Will Smith
Science Publishing Group

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Please do not reply to this email.

To unsubscribe, please click the following link:
http://www.sciencepublishinggroup.com/info/unsubscribe.aspx

Has anyone told them yet to bug off ? I tried to go to the "unsubscribe" site and it seems they want A LOT of information. Oh, they forgot the field where they ask for credit-card information. Or does that come later in the process?

I have been looking at the Science Publication Group as well since I also need papers printed. There are scammers out there who want to make a quick buck. The world is full of those.

I did, however, check this publication group and this is what I found: A new effort to create a chance to publish in a world where there is cut-throat competition. Electronic journals that are accessible to all at no cost. (Obviously they need to cover costs somewhere, so they charge the author only when his papers are accepted. Many journals do that.) They have been on the air since last year and there are papers accessible to all, and these papers do show up on Google.

What more do you want? Sure, they would be looking for reviewers and editorial board members - they have to start somewhere. 106 year ago, Martin Rundkvist, the acclaimed archeological journal was also a new upstart and could have had the same comments made about it. Maybe in a 100 years time this publication group will outstrip your acclaimed journal because they offer more general readability. Their impact factors will take a while to improve but if they have a found a niche, they surely will improve as people notice them and use them.

Scammers? No, I don't believe so. What they need is good papers to put them in the market, and they will get them. Many of the acclaimed journals have puffed up editors and reviewers who will not allow the sun to shine on any of their competition, even if they are better and deserve a fair chance.

Science Publication Group! - Go for it.

By Martin William… (not verified) on 22 Mar 2013 #permalink

I get these a lot. The e-mail address most likely snatched from PubMed. Others that send out a lot of spam are Bentham Science and Hindawi. It's papers, books and now even conferences. Incredible, but common sense should prevail to filter out the non sense (if the spam filter didn't already). After all, most of you know how hard it is to get a paper actually published, right ?

http://www.sciencepublishinggroup.com

Call for Books/Book Chapters
SciencePG produces high-quality paperback books, hardback books and eBooks, so if you wish to publish books, or just want advice on cost-effective publishing, SciencePG can help. We provide all the services to help authors publish their own books and ebooks, from proofreading, book covers, book design and ebook files, to printing, book distribution and book marketing.

Once you want to publish a book, an ISBN number will be assigned to the book.

SciencePG Book Features:
Open Access: The readers can download the ebooks freely.
Rigorous peer review: Manuscripts undergo double peer review.
High visibility

Benefits for book authors: all the income of the hard copies except the printing cost will be distributed to the authors.
Become a Conference Organizer
If you are interesting in running an academic conference. SciencePG could help you to publish the conference proceeding.

Your conference should be reviewed and approved by SciencePG before you use the SciencePG brand. After your conference is approved, your conference will be listed on the SciencePG website. For more information, please visit our website and contact us.
Join Editorial Board & Become a Reviewer
We are actively looking for peer-reviewers from all specialties. Peer-reviewers should be experienced researchers who have published high quality papers before. If you want to be added to our peer-reviewers database, please click the following link to fill out the form and upload your scientific CV to us:
http://www.sciencepublishinggroup.com/info/joinus.aspx

Call for Journal Papers
SciencePG is an academic publisher of open access journals/books. It is currently publishing more than 60 open access, online, peer-reviewed journals covering a wide range of academic disciplines.
Full peer-reviewed: All manuscripts submitted to our journals undergo double blind peer review.
Fast publication: Peer review process of papers within approximately one month of submission.
Low price: The APC for one paper submitted before May 10 2013 is $70 or $120.

We are looking forward to your submission.
The submission website: http://submission.sciencepublishinggroup.com
American Journal of Modern Physics
2326-8867(Print) 2326-8891(Online)
International Journal of Materials Science and Applications
2327-2635(Print) 2327-2635(Online)
American Journal of Physical Chemistry
2327-2430(Print) 2327-2449(Online)
American Journal of Networks and Communications
2326-893X(Print) 2326-8964(Online)
Pure and Applied Mathematics Journal
2326-9790(Print) 2326-9812(Online)
Clinical Medicine Research
2326-9049(Print) 2326-9057(Online)
International Journal of Renewable and Sustainable Energy
2326-9715(Print) 2326-9723(Online)
Education Journal
2327-2600(Print) 2327-2619(Online

By Ruud de Jong (not verified) on 27 Apr 2013 #permalink

So, it is not a valid journal to publish article in? right?
I could not fine its impact factor!!

That's right, the journals put out by the Science Publishing Group are not read by scientists and have no impact factor.

My spam came today...which quickly brought me to this thread. More bothersome was a comparable spam sent by one of these outfits to one of my undergrads after she attended a conference. They lifted the title from her abstract and invited her to publish her work in an alleged journal. Took me a while to convince her that it was a scam.
Cheers
Declan

By Declan McCabe (not verified) on 19 May 2013 #permalink