Who wants to be an author?

At the EMS-CDC meeting last year in Berlin I heard for the first time the concept of predatory publishing. I have received, like many other I am sure, endless e-mails asking me to submit papers to journals I have never heard of.

It doesn't take much to suspect an e-mail addressed to a number theorist that claims:

given your expertise in the area of supply chain dynamics, disruption management, resilience, and control, we cordially invite to submit a paper to a Special Issue on Supply Chain Dynamics, Control and Disruption Management in IJPR with the NEW submission deadline by JULY 15, 2014.

I typically just took it as yet more spam to have to deal with.

As it happens things can be nastier than that. I quote from the Wikipedia page on predatory publishing

"In academic publishing, some publishers and journals have attempted to exploit the business model of open-access publishing by charging publication fees to authors without providing the editorial and publishing services associated with more established and legitimate journals (open access or not)."

As if things were not already hard enough for researchers struggling to have their work published in reputable journals.

I heartily recommend the Wikipedia article as well as the editorial by B. Teissier in the EMS newsletter discussing the issue further.