David Weakliem reports:
There is a journal called the EON International Journal of Arts, Humanities & Social Sciences. I recently discovered that I [Weakliem] am listed as the Editor. I am not the editor—I had never even heard of this journal before, and would have declined if they asked me to be involved, since it looks pretty sketchy. I have written to the publisher telling them to remove my name from their site but also wanted to announce it publicly just in case anyone has noticed.
Apparently there was a previous fake editor—when he found out and objected, they put me in.
Here it is:
This is evil, all right! More evil than anything Wolfram Research has ever done, I think.
P.S. Unfortunately this is not new. From Retraction Watch, see here, here, and here.
Further exploration reveals:
24 members listed on the Editorial Board
38 papers published so far (so not a very large workload; maybe that’s why David didn’t realize he was Chief Editor?)
38 papers listed on the Journal’s home page under “Best Papers in Journal of Arts Humanities and Social Sciences 202x”.
Adventures in keyword generation:
Villains, Victims or Heroes?: The Three Main Women in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon; C.E. Zeiden, 2024, EIJAHSS 2:5, 10-16.
Keywords: Villains, Victims, Heroes.
Recognize The Actual Situation of The Embargo Policy of The United States against Cuba; T.A. Cong, T.X. Hiep, N.A. Hung, 2024, EJAHSS* 2:3, 24-35.
Keywords: Recognize, Actual Situation, Embargo, USA, Cuba
*I’m following the style of the journal’s home page, which refers to itself as EIJAHSS in the first instance but then switches to EJAHSS later on.
This journal appears to give the International Supply Chain Technology Journal (of Erik Jones fame) a run for its money. Many of the archived articles pdfs have disappeared. Those that remain are quite entertaining: one has a literature review with no references. Despite the journal saying it is published 4x per year, it seems to average just over one issue per year, with a number of issues having a single paper. The scope for the journal appears to cover virtually anything. What really surprises me is that there are not more “peer reviewed publications” in this journal. Given the poor incentives in academia, I would think that it would be flooded with manuscripts – and it doesn’t look like it is a case of a strong peer review filter limiting what is published.
Many people said they would like to see more examples of good research on this blog. This journal will not be providing any.
Andrew didn’t link to the site, but now this blog links to a page with a link to the site. Doesn’t that make it look good in the eyes of google?
Also, I wonder about the safety of downloading PDFs from such sites. This seems like a good way to target academics, they won’t click a link in a weird email anymore but downloading files from weird sites to see “just how ridiculous academia REALLY is” may be bait too tasty to ignore.
The individual professor is probably not a target so much as the school networks.
Anon:
It’s just horrible that they did this identity-theft thing. I can see why they did it—if then were to just make up a name, people could google and find out that it’s fake, but if they steal a real person’s name, that can make the journal more legit. Whoever did this should have to pay restitution—maybe they could be required to pull weeds out of Weakliem’s garden for a year, or be tasked to clean up the vomit off the seats after UConn basketball games, or something.
P.S. Yeah, I always wonder about this thing that when I post something about some evil thing that someone is doing, that I’m just giving them more publicity. It’s hard to know what to do about this.
I would definitely call the journal predatory. It has an address in Delaware (-> shell corporation?) and the official email address of the journal is eonjournals [at] gmail [.] com. The FAQ is full of grammatical errors. Peer-reviewed open access publication within four days costs only $200. The International Journal of Business and Management Studies has the same ISSN for its print and online versions, xxxx-xxxx, according to the editorial board’s website.
The link to ‘The Not-So-Great Divergence: Asian and Western World Economy before 1815, And Beyond’, an article listed as the second most recent publication (no author given), leads to a 404 error. The abstract contains tortured grammar (e.g. nonsensical last sentence) and phrases (‘Malthusian restraints’, supposedly *constraints* on population growth as developed by Malthus).
I am not sure that if you pay $200 to the journal you will get anything in return.