Eisen Lab Blog

Scary and funny: fake researcher Peter Uhnemann on OMICS group Editorial Board #JournalSPAM

OMG.  This is both hilarious and terrifying.

Many out there know there are journals out there that border on SPAM.  I have written about this often before (e.g., see For $&%# sake, Bentham Open Journals, leave me alone and Yet another SPAMMY Science publisher: Scientific and Academic Publishing and The Tree of Life: Really sick of Bentham Open Spam) as have many others (e.g., Open and Shut?: The Open Access Interviews: Matthew Honan and Academic spam and open access publishing – Per Ola Kristensson). UPDATE: forgot to include this link: Science SPAMMER of the month: OMICS publishing group

But this one takes the cake.  There is a journal called “Molecular Biology” from the OMICS Publishing Group (for more on this publisher see Open and Shut?: The Open Access Interviews: OMICS Publishing …).  It seems new – as I cannot find any publications – but you never know – maybe they have been around a while and just have not gotten any submissions.

But I recommend everyone check out their Editorial Board.  In addition to listing Peter Deusberg (the controversial HIV denialist) there is an amazing person on their Board – Peter Uhnemann. He is listed as being from the “Department of Oximology at Daniel-Duesentrieb Institute, Germany”.  Sounds a bit strange right?  Well check out his Bio

And check out his research interests

It is pretty wacky right?  Well it turns out, as some might have guessed – it is made up.  The reason I know this is – is that Burkhard Morgenstern from the University of Goettingen let me know (in fact he is the one who alerted me to the whole story).

He sent me something he wrote on Facebook which I am posting here:

Hi,

I’m delighted to inform you that Peter Uhnemann from the
 Daniel-Duesentrieb Institute in Germany was just appointed
 editor of the OMICS journal “Molecular Biology”:


http://www.omicsgroup.org/journals/editorialboardMBL.php
 

For those of you who don’t know Peter Uhnemann: he is a fake
 person invented by the German satirical magazine Titanic.
 They created an FB account for him to make fun of social
 networks (he soon befriended on FB with various German
 politicians).

 

For those of you who don’t know Daniel Duesentrieb: this is
 the German name of the Walt Disney comic figure Gyro Gearloose.

 

For those of you who don’t know the OMICS journals: these
 are junk journals spamming around invitations to join their
 editorial boards. 

On their web page they say that

 “election of the “right” editor for a journal is one of the
 most important decisions made by OMICS Publishing Group …
 Editors, Executive Editors & Editor-in- Chief of journals
 must be senior researchers, e.g. chaired professors.”

 As it looks, Peter Uhnemann from the Daniel-Duesentrieb
 Institute meets these criteria.

It is both hilarious and a bit terrifying.  Now – mind you – it is possible that this journal could end up with some papers worth looking at.  But clearly, the Editorial process at this journal is probably going to be a bit, well, circumspect.

UPDATE: finally – as of 2/16/12 he is no longer listed on the editorial board …

——–
This is from the “Tree of Life Blog”
of Jonathan Eisen, an evolutionary biologist and Open Access advocate
at the University of California, Davis. For short updates, follow me on Twitter.

——–

Lab meeting. Feb, 1st 2012

David Coil is presenting for the Eisenlab meeting this week.  The room 5206 in the genome center has been reserved from 1:30 to 3:30pm.

Boycotting Elsevier is not enough – time to make them invisible (UPDATED/RETRACTED)

Update: The original post here was written at midnight, with a cat on my lap.  I thought this post conveyed some tongue in cheek aspect of this idea to ignore work in Elsevier journals. (one could view it as a midnight middle finger to Elsevier over some of their policies).  But clearly, based on the responses I am seeing that did not come across.  I accept the error of my ways.  Drug Monkey is right – no work should be ignored – no matter where it is published.   I could explain in more detail what I was trying to convey – but in the end that is like explaining a bad joke.  Instead, I am therefore retracting my blog post.  That is one for Ivan Oransky I guess. Now back to your regularly scheduled programs.

There has been much written in the last few days about multiple calls to boycott journals published by Elsevier due to Elsevier’s generally problematic publishing policies and support of SOPA/ RWA, etc.  People have called for people to not only boycott publishing in Elsevier journals but to also stop reviewing for them, editing for them, and also to try to get libraries to stop subscribing to them.  Some good reading in this area includes:
I think these are good steps.  But I also think they are not enough.  I am therefore calling for people to go one step further – to stop helping promote articles published in Elsevier journals.  Don’t blog about papers in Elsevier journals.  Don’t tweet about them.  Don’t use Elsevier papers for journal clubs.  In essence, ignore them – consider them dead – make them invisible.  Not completely of course.  Any work should be considered a contribution to science or math or whatever your field is.  But there are LOTS and LOTS of things to do with your time.  And if you like to share – to communicate – to discuss – it is easy to find non Elsevier articles articles for those purposes (even better – pick open access articles ..)

This may be a minor thing in the fight for more openness in publishing, but it should help.  After all, for many scientists, the worst thing that can happen is to be ignored.
——–
This is from the “Tree of Life Blog”
of Jonathan Eisen, an evolutionary biologist and Open Access advocate
at the University of California, Davis. For short updates, follow me on Twitter.

——–

How are these @kejames re: #PLoSOne cc: @boraz @edyong209 @danielaphd

Img_1255
Img_1256 Img_1257 Img_1258 Img_1259 Img_1260 Img_1261  Img_1263  Img_1265 Img_1266

See the full gallery on Posterous
——–
This is from the “Tree of Life Blog”
of Jonathan Eisen, an evolutionary biologist and Open Access advocate
at the University of California, Davis. For short updates, follow me on Twitter.

——–

How are these @kejames re: #PLoSOne cc: @boraz @edyong209 @danielaphd

Img_1255 Img_1256 Img_1257 Img_1258 Img_1259 Img_1260 Img_1261 Img_1262 Img_1263 Img_1264 Img_1265 Img_1266

See the full gallery on Posterous

 

——–
This is from the “Tree of Life Blog”
of Jonathan Eisen, an evolutionary biologist and Open Access advocate
at the University of California, Davis. For short updates, follow me on Twitter.

——–

Having lots of fun with my @Olloclip macro lens for my iPhone

Img_1253 Img_1252

Img_1250 Img_1251 Img_1248 Img_1249 Img_1246 Img_1245 Img_1247 Img_1244 Img_1239 Img_1238 Img_1237 Img_1236 Img_1235 Img_1234 Img_1231

See the full gallery on Posterous
——–
This is from the “Tree of Life Blog”
of Jonathan Eisen, an evolutionary biologist and Open Access advocate
at the University of California, Davis. For short updates, follow me on Twitter.

——–

Having lots of fun with my @Olloclip macro lens for my iPhone

Img_1253 Img_1252 Img_1250 Img_1251 Img_1248 Img_1249 Img_1246 Img_1245 Img_1247 Img_1244 Img_1239 Img_1238 Img_1237 Img_1236 Img_1235 Img_1234 Img_1231

See the full gallery on Posterous

——–
This is from the “Tree of Life Blog”
of Jonathan Eisen, an evolutionary biologist and Open Access advocate
at the University of California, Davis. For short updates, follow me on Twitter.

——–

First "Guardians of microbial diversity" award to Rob Dunn #microbiology #GMDs

For this I am awarding him the first of what will be many “Guardians of Microbial Diversity” awards here (we can just call these the GMDs). Not only will he get an award – I am going to send him a GMD gift from the various GMD doodads I am putting together.
Congratulations Rob.  Now off to design some more diverse GMD doodads. 
——–
This is from the “Tree of Life Blog”
of Jonathan Eisen, an evolutionary biologist and Open Access advocate
at the University of California, Davis. For short updates, follow me on Twitter.

——–

Dear #AAAS, I am NOT embargoing my own talk & I plan to record it and post afterwards #embargowatch

Just got another email from AAAS regarding their big meeting in February in Vancouver where I am scheduled to talk:

—————————————-
This request for materials is from the AAAS media relations team and is separate from any you may receive from your symposium organizer or the AAAS Annual Meeting office.
—————————————-
Dear AAAS Annual Meeting Participant:


Thanks to all of you who uploaded materials to the AAAS Virtual Newsroom by Jan. 16. For those of you who have not submitted materials or want to submit additional materials, you may do so right up through the meeting. The materials will be available online to reporters, although we can no longer guarantee that we’ll be able to copy new
submissions at our expense for placement in the on-site library of speaker materials. We will try to include materials received in the next several days in our copy order, however.



You also can make printed copies (10-15 copies) yourself and ship them to Vancouver so that we can place them in the on-site papers library for reporters. Ideally, press materials should be on-site prior to your presentation. Please see below for appended mailing instructions.


Speakers and organizers can submit materials by going to:
http://www.eurekalert.org/aaasnewsroom/mcm/speakers


Your individual username and password for the site:


Please provide the following:


— A one-paragraph biographical sketch (not a C.V.)


— A short lay-language summary of your talk, beyond the abstract.


— The text of your talk, if available, or a related (ideally recent) technical paper, either as a Word file or a PDF. PowerPoint presentations are acceptable, but a full text will better serve reporters’ needs.


— Any additional supporting materials, including multimedia files such as JPEG or TIFF photos in high resolution (300 dpi) and/or digitized video clips.


IMPORTANT: Please note that all AAAS meeting presentations are strictly embargoed and your speaker materials should not be released publicly until the time of your presentation.


If you upload your materials by 16 January, we will copy them at our expense for placement in the on-site library of speaker materials, available only to newsroom registrants.


Please notify your institution’s press office of your AAAS Annual Meeting presentation as soon as possible. Your press office can help you submit speaker materials to us and can begin to generate media interest.
….

The thing is – I did not agree to “Embargo” my talk and as I wrote about before, I do not even know what that means.  I figured, in the interest of being “open” about my feelings about this, I should write to AAAS to let them know I was not going to embargo my own talk, and I plan to record my talk and post it afterwards:

To whom it may concern


I am scheduled to speak at the AAAS meeting and I am writing this in regard to the email attached below.  I do not support the notion of an Embargo for my talk and I am unwilling to participate in the embargo. I plan to post information about my talk to the web and to my blog and am writing to specifically let you know I fundamentally do not support the embargo nor did I agree to it when I agreed to give a talk at AAAS.


I also plan to record my own talk and to post the recording and the slides to various websites.  I am not sure if AAAS has a policy about that but wanted to let you know of my plans in the interest of not having any surprises.


Sincerely


Jonathan Eisen

Will report back if I get a reply … and maybe I can get Ivan Oransky to help make sense out of what a talk embargo means.

——–
This is from the “Tree of Life Blog”
of Jonathan Eisen, an evolutionary biologist and Open Access advocate
at the University of California, Davis. For short updates, follow me on Twitter.

——–

One old, one new – a few phylogeny papers worth checking out

Just a quick one here. A few days ago in my lab we were discussing some challenges with doing phylogenetic diversity (PD) measurements in very very large phylogenetic trees. PD is a measure of total branch length in a phylogenetic tree for a group of taxa … and we use it for many purposes.
For many of our applications we have been using an algorithm described by Mike Steele “Phylogenetic diversity and the Greedy Algorithm“. But alas, is is not keeping up with the massive tree sets we are dealing with. Fortunately Aaron Darling in my lab found a alternative paper with a perfect sounding title for us: Phylogenetic Diversity within Seconds from Minh, Klaere, and von Haeseler. This seems like it will do the trick. I note – Kudos to Systematic Biology for making some older papers freely available. Not sure of their general policies on this but good to see.
Anyway – back to the grind …
——–
This is from the “Tree of Life Blog”
of Jonathan Eisen, an evolutionary biologist and Open Access advocate
at the University of California, Davis. For short updates, follow me on Twitter.

——–