Tuesday, April 4, 2017

IJHSSIOMGWTFBBQ

There is so much science spam these days that a message has to be particularly remarkable to even register; mostly I just mark as junk or report without even thinking about them. But this one is a beauty.


Let's count the ways:
  1. The message uses four different text colours (counting the links), several different font types, and more different font sizes than anybody in their right mind could consider tasteful.
  2. The title - International Journal of Humanities and Social Science Invention - is likely among the top five most convoluted titles I have ever seen, and given the competition that is saying something.
  3. The title does not make any sense either, but I guess that goes without saying.
  4. The spammer did not even write their script to personalise the message. At least other spammers have it insert the name of the recipient, but this one merely reads "dear author/researcher". Lazy.
  5. The first sentence randomly capitalises "international journal" and is poorly written.
  6. The second sentence claims the journal is indexed in "major indexing" (major indexing what?) and then lists four names none of which I have ever heard of. So whatever they are, they are certainly not "major".
  7. "IJHSSI follows the rapid publication process." So there is a rapid publication process, just one?
  8. Like many other spammers, this one sets arbitrary paper submission deadlines, presumably to create a sense of urgency. Why would a journal, which by definition publishes regular issues, ever do that?
  9. The sentence in bold and red is ungrammatical.
  10. The spammer does not even bother to invent a name for their imaginary editor-in-chief IJHSSI. Remember Robest Pual Ashcraft? That was fun. But no, here we only get a generic title.
  11. Note that there is very conspicuously no mention of the article processing fees in this message.
I think this is another, ahem, "journal" that I will pass on.

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