Spam!

This one totally faked me out at first. It was an email from “Nick Bagnall” that began:

Dear Dr. Gelman,

I made contact last year regarding your work in the CMG: Reconstructing Climate from Tree Ring Data project. We are about to start producing the 2014 edition and I wanted to discuss this with you as we still remain keen to feature your work.

Research Media are producing a special publication in February of 2014, within this report we will be working with a small selected number of PI’s with a focus on geosciences, atmospheric and geospace sciences and earth Sciences..

At this point, I’m thinking: Hmmm, I don’t remember this guy, is this some sort of collaborative project that I’d forgotten about?

The message then continues:

The publication is called International Innovation . . .

Huh? This doesn’t sound so good. The email then goes on with some very long lists, and then finally the kicker:

The total cost for each article produced in this report is fixed at a tax free amount of $ 2,980 USD for the full three page development, this is a required contribution.

OK, now I get it. But there’s more:

By publishing open access, researchers benefit from a higher visibility and increased cross pollination of their article.

Luckily, I can publish open-access for free whenever I want!

Finally:

Could you please drop me a mail and advise when would be a good time to discuss further?

Speak soon,

Nick Bagnall

Research Media
T: +44 7791 510 287

I don’t think so.

P.S. This happened last month; I scheduled it on a day when just about nobody should be reading this blog, that way I’m not wasting too many people’s time with it.

In all seriousness, though, this sort of thing really does hurt my feelings. I do all this research because I think it’s important. So it hurts when people like this guy come along and think of me as nothing more than a mark.

P.P.S. A few weeks later, “Bagnall” emailed me again:

Dear Dr. Gelman,

I sent you an email some weeks ago concerning the CMG: Reconstructing Climate from Tree Ring Data project. I understand how busy you are at present and may not have seen my email so I thought I would try one last time. . . .

Still with that juicy charge of $8940 $2980 per article. I wonder, does this guy get any takers at all, or is there some other game they are playing. Ugh. Although I guess this is better than mugging old ladies for spare change or selling Herbalife dealerships.

21 thoughts on “Spam!

  1. I hadn’t realized you were doing tree rings, but when I looked this up, it pops up in various grant lists…
    So I wouldn’t take it personally…
    I’d guess somebody has a program (or bunch of people) to go through grant lists , extract some text and stuff it into email like this, which likely helps it get through spam filters better.

    After all, who better to chase than people with grants?

    Q: Why to you rob banks, Willie Sutton?
    A: That’s where the money is.

  2. I can’t imagine they get any takers, which begs the question: why do they do it? Did they just start and have not yet figured out that it won’t work? Or is this something that has been happening for a long time?

    • There have long been automated harvesters for email addresses for typiucal spam, which is why people often avoid posting [email protected] in favor of myname AT place DOT com, or better: I’m at place DOT com and use ID myname.

      It is quite plausible that if you were gong to do an open access SPAM, that you’d at least start by harvesting from relevant lists, especially that would offer some text to include.

      Andrew might want to pass this along to Jeffrey Beall.

      • That “myname AT place DOT com” trick really assumes spammers are damn stupid doesn’t it? Think guys smart enough to hijack machines & run email harvesters wouldn’t be able to write a Regex to parse that?

        I think the only chance at success any more is to hide your email behind a captcha or post it as a scanned image.

  3. To be fair, he says the ‘total cost’ will be $2980, not the cost per page (to get the $8940 you mention in the last paragraph). This is quite near the going rate for open access papers, though presumably an article on PLOS One would get rather more reads than a ‘special publication’ called International Innovation.

  4. Rahul: just out of curiosity, when did you start using regex matching software ~daily?

    The point of comment was that many people have long known there were harvesters being used, not that the specific actions were necessarily effective against potentially-smarter harvesters. Whether it’s cost-effective for a harvester to bother being smarter is unknown to me. It’s awfully cheap just to scan for @.

  5. Thanks from me too! I got a similar email and did a google search and found this article.
    Saves me wondering about whether or not I’m passing up a good opportunity.
    I had not yet scrolled down far enough to get to the price (which is now $3100 for August 2014).

  6. Got similar e-mail from Josh Hillier from International Innovations. It sounded too good to be true, so did a Google search to find this and other blogs discussing this journal. I’ve decided not to do anything with it except ignoring it, but looking at their website indicates that major organizations such as FAO, CGIAR, Greenpeace, WWF and such have contributed to this. Do we think these have also been duped into spam. Not for a second am I trying to defend this journal/ magazine, but just wondering where we draw the line?

  7. I keep getting pestered by these clowns, emailed me many times and haven’t got the hint that I’ve ignored therefore I’m not interested, How are these scam artists still running I’ve looked at the website after I received their third email. It is a very professional looking scam but it really feels they are taking the throw enough mud at the wall and hoping something sticks approach. Essentially taking money from research looking at saving lives for their own personal gains

  8. I’m still not convinced or they are real or not. The website looks legit, and it seems that they are in fact producing the publications that they claim.

    http://www.international-innovation-environment.com/Latest-Report.asp

    The fee is of course high. But is it any different than being charged $1500 by the likes of Elsevier et al, who simply publish an article entirely written by the scientists?

    I think open source is by far the best way to publish science.

  9. Update: They no longer quote a price in the initial email. Instead they say:

    “As I mentioned, I would like to discuss the possibility of creating a bespoke article to highlight your current research objectives for this upcoming edition and would welcome a conversation with you to outline the opportunities available as well as the costs associated with the creation and production of the article and associated deliverables.”

    The relevant principle here is “Don’t buy from spammers.” I get plenty of emails offering to redesign my website, edit my papers, explain my work to the public, improve my sex life, etc. Their services MAY be fine if you need them. The example articles attached to this particular solicitation looked reasonable enough. But if you don’t like spam, then don’t buy from spammers.

  10. Had a similar email from them from International Innovation and also had an email from Research Media. I can publish my work for free elsewhere and self-publish. They will not share their publication stats which is a red flag. I would imagine that they send emails out to all journals and organisations from WWF, FAO are duped by the free publicity. Do these big organisations question the authority of the magazine or the organisation behind it?

  11. I have recently been approached by International Innovation.
    Please check this (google automatic translation) from an article published in the Swedish magazine “Curie”
    https://goo.gl/EWFwqP

    “Only at the end of the conversation reveals that it costs to be interviewed “

  12. I also got this email on October 21, 2015. There was no cost mentioned. I did not reply to the email. Then someone called me at my office a week later. Very persistent….Thanks for the warning.

  13. I also received the email. They claim to have recent collaborations with he below independent contributors:

    Canada Foundation for Innovation: Giles G Patry, President & CEO
    NSERC: Suzanne Fortier, President
    Minister of Industry: Christian Paradis
    Minister of Health: Rona Ambrose
    Council of Canadian Academics: Elizabeth Dowdeswell, President & CEO
    CIHR Institute of Cancer: Morag Park, Scientific Director

    And they have the cost part in there too
    When we speak, I will share with you details of the article development process, timelines and deadlines, and costs associated with the creation and production of the article and associated deliverables.

    How many times did they contact you before they get the hint that you are ignoring them?

  14. Pingback: It's . . . spam-tastic! - Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference, and Social Science

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