That friendly solicitation is probably a scam if: 

The journal accepts manuscripts on a very wide range of topics. 
You have been contacted to submit an article, but you have no experience in the field described.
The fees for publication are suspiciously low. 
The contact email addresses for the editors are generic. 
The journal's website looks poorly home-made.


However it might just be lazy spam:

The email is written in incoherent English, or with very strange vocabulary.
It is addressed to you with the wrong title (usually Professor!)
There are sections which should have been auto-filled that are left empty.


Nothing I am doing here is clever or original: it is just for my own amusement. Far more marvellous are the efforts of Peter Vamplew (recently famous for having Mazieres & Kohler's "Get me off your fucking mailing list" accepted with minor revisions), Tom Spears (the plagiarised soil/biology/Mars manuscript which includes "seismic platelet activity"), Michael Eisen (the deliberately flawed arsenic DNA paper accepted by Science), John Bohannon (hoax cancer/lichen paper accepted by more journals than rejected it), and of course the SCIgen folks whose randomly generated texts have infiltrated journals and conferences everywhere. 

 

Wednesday 3 December 2014

Jacobs Journal of Experimental Dermatology

Journal name: Dermatology and Clinical Research (aka "Experimental Dermatology")
Publisher: Jacobs Publishers
Emailer: exptdermatology@jacobspublishers.biz

Dear Dr. Doctor
Warm greetings from Jacobs Publishers!
We introduce ourselves as Jacobs Publishers initiated with a motto to serve scientific community. It’s an Open access publishing group publishes peer-reviewed articles related to different aspects of Medical, Life Sciences, Pharma, Chemistry and Engineering. We have initiated a Journal called Jacobs Journal of Dermatology and Clinical Research Science.All the manuscripts/Articles submitted are run through a detailed review by our eminent panel of Editorial Board who contribute their valuable time to review those articles. It’s our honour to invite eminent scientists/personalities, like you, to publish quality research work in the form of manuscripts/Articles to support global scientific community.
Being Jacobs publishers is in to Open Access; authors are requested to pay 499 USD after the completion of Peer Review process and accepted by our esteemed editorial board members.

Article Types: Original Submissions, Review Articles, Case Reports and Short Reports etc.

Manuscript format details are available on http://www.jacobspublishers.com/index.php/author-guidelines-in-foremostlinks
Regards
Neil Jacobson
Jacobs Journal of Experimental Dermatology and Clinical Research
Jacobs Publishers
900 Great Hills
Trail # 150 w
Austin, Texas 78759(Travis County)

  • "Doctor doctor"? Is there a joke coming?
  • Grammatical errors, strange phrasing and capitalisation
  • The website blurb is so bad it's good! Amusing nonsenical turns of phrase throughout.
  • It costs $499 to publish your article here. 
  • Looking up the registered owner of the website, it is listed as
    14747 N Northsight Blvd Suite 111, PMB 309, Scottsdale, Arizona 85260. This address comes up a lot associated with scam websites of all sorts. It is a mailbox at a UPS store.
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Monday 1 December 2014

IJCRAR - International Journal of Current Research and Academic Review

Journal name: International Journal of Current Research and Academic Review
Publisher: Excellent Publishers
Emailer: mprakashmicro@yahoo.co.in

An easy one to start with! Let's break this email down.

 International Journal of Current Research and Academic Review
  (ISSN:2347 - 3215) IMPACT FACTOR 0.425 

 An International, Monthly, Online, Peer Reviewed, Indexed, fast track, Scientific Research Journal Published by www.ijcrar.com

 Dear Academicians/Research Scholars,
International Journal of Current Research and Academic Review (ISSN 2347 - 3215) is inviting you to submit research paper for publishing in Volume-2, Issue-12. December- 2014.
Published paper will be abstracted and indexed in numerous search engines in worldwide....
Please click on the following link for IJCMAS Abstracting and Indexing……….
http://www.ijcrar.com/indexing.php
Please click on the following link for IJCRAR instructions to authors.
http://www.ijcrar.com/guideline.php
Please click on the following link for IJCRAR Experts in Editorial Board.
http://www.ijcrar.com/editorboard.php
Please click on the following link for IJCRAR current issue.
http://www.ijcrar.com/currentissue.php
with profound regards

 Dr.M.Prakash
Editorinchief

 International Journal of Current Research and Academic Review
(ISSN 2347 - 3215)
website: www.ijcrar.com
Email: editorijcret@gmail.com
Paper Submission E-mail: editorijcret@gmail.com
www.excellentpublishers.com
email:excellentpublishers2013@gmail.com
  • Meaningless title, which doesn't come up in impact factor search results despite their claims. 
  • Strange and inconsistent phrasing. 
  • The website is poor quality stuff, though it lists an extensive editorial advisory team. 
  • "Peer review" is by the chief editor and one chosen board member. 
  • The range of topics covered is vast, covering everything from biological sciences to hospitality management, petroleum technology to finance. 
  • All emails are gmail or yahoo accounts. 
  • The cost of publication is $100. 

My friend Tom Hanrahan created a text generator, and we put together a random article mashing up some H P Lovecraft. I've submitted it to IJCRAR, let's see what they say. The initial response reads:  
"Thankyou for Submit your Article.Also we Assign Manuscript number within 24 hours for your manuscript. If not received manuscript number >24 Hours kindly contact immediately to this email editorijcret@gmail.com. And resubmit your manuscript to this email id: editorijcret@gmail.com."

You can see the article here. I'm actually quite pleased at how readable it turned out to be!

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