Bentham – Jonathan Eisen's Lab

Is this a new form of #OpenAccess Spam – spammy blog comments pointing to Bentham

Well, this is very very weird and not sure what to make of it. In the last week the filter that Google runs for Blogger Comments has picked up a slew of highly spammy comments coming from one account. And all of the comments include a link to Bentham Science publishers – one of the annoying Spammy new publishers. See some of them below (note I have removed the links to Bentham but trust me, this went to a Bentham site). Anyone else getting Spam comments pointing to Bentham?

Jesica Mack has left a new comment on your post “Science SPAMMER of the month: OMICS publishing gro…“:

For me it has been a surge of meeting welcomes, for the most part in China, having nothing to do with my examination: bentham science publishers.
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Jesica Mack has left a new comment on your post “I am highly skeptical of the CHORUS system propose…“:

I don’t see anything in this that seems particularly useful.Please click: bentham science publishers
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Jesica Mack has left a new comment on your post “Wow – Google Scholar “Updates” a big step forward …“:

Snap. I likewise found this advancement a couple of days prior and discovered one recommended paper of immediate pertinence.Please click:bentham science publishers

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Jesica Mack has left a new comment on your post “ADVANCE Journal Club: Developing Graduate Students…“:

This is very interesting I appreciate this effort.Please click:bentham science publishers

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Jesica Mack has left a new comment on your post “UCDavis IT and GMail think this “Open Journal of G…“:

What’s particularly annoying about all these SPAM journals is that they are training filters to ignore legitimate journal activity.Please Click:bentham science publishers

Draft post cleanup #9: Open Access spam from Bentham

Yet another post in my “draft blog post cleanup” series. Here is #9; from June 2008. It can in a way be viewed as an extension of my post from a few days ago about Bentham. Here is what I wrote in 2008:

OK, I know I am supposed to be supportive of Open Access journals, just because a journal is OA does not mean it is OK. Take “The Open Evolution Journal.” being published by Bentham.

On paper, this could be a useful contribution to the list of OA journals. They have some good people on their Editorial Board and I am glad to see such a big list of people in Evolution seemingly supporting OA publishing.

And Bentham is certainly doing the OA talk and pushing OA as a major option for their publications. In fact, they might be pushing OA a bit too much. For example, in their letter to me they say

All published open access articles will receive massive international exposure and as is usually the case for open access publications, articles will also receive high citations.

Hmm. A bit over the top no? I love OA mind you. But OA in and of itself does not guarantee citations and exposure.

But this is a minor quibble. My real issue with them is the SPAM. I keep getting frigging emails from Bentham for all sorts of journals. And some of the emails I get are for accounts that I cannot easily send email from to use their lame unsubscribe option. I assume others out there get these emails from Bentham too, as I have gotten them from like 20 of their journals so far. And many are in areas that I have no expertise in (I just got one for a Geology journal).

Just goes to show – OA sometimes means “Objectively Annoying.”

Bentham publisher – so wrong in some many ways #SPAM

I have written about Bentham – that Spam bots of science publishing before. Got an email from them today – it is wrong in so many ways. I thought I would just post it here – and let people judge for themselves but am a bit wary of calling attention to them and putting out any of their message. So I am going to put out mine

BENTHAM – LEAVE ME THE $&%#@ ALONE

And if that is not enough for you, how about reading Richard Poynder’s piece on them from four years ago. Seems they have not changed a bit.

For $&%# sake, Bentham Open Journals, leave me alone

For crying out loud, I am still getting crappy spammy mail from various “Bentham Open” journals. The most annoying part to me of Bentham Open is that they try to make it seem that anything published in an Open Access journal is better than anything published in a non Open Access journal. While I personally believe publishing in an OA manner is great, lying about the benefits of OA is not a good thing.

For example they ask and answer the following question “WHY PUBLISH IN OPEN ACCESS JOURNALS? ” Their answers include:

Your article will obtain more citations.
Your article will be peer-reviewed and published very fast.
Your article can be read by potentially millions of readers, which is incomparable to publishing in a traditional subscription journal.
All published open access articles will receive massive international exposure and as is usually the case for open access publications, articles will also receive high citations.

Yes, that is right, the crappiest, most boring, most idiotic article in an OA journal will receive “massive international exposure” and “high citations.”

I know, criticism of Bentham Open may seem biased coming from me, a PLoS insider. So, just in case you were not aware that just about everyone else out there cannot stand them, here are some reading assignments:

And so on.