Re: Fwd: Bentham Science Publishers (fwd)

From: Stevan Harnad <harnad_at_ecs.soton.ac.uk>
Date: Sat, 5 Apr 2008 15:56:12 +0100

Date: Sat, 5 Apr 2008 09:31:07 -0500
From: [deleted]
Subject: Re: Fwd: Bentham Science Publishers

I don't know if this is relevant but it sounds like it might be. This email
is
several weeks old:

> >From Scope Knowledge today:
>
> Wiley-Blackwell, the STM and scholarly publishing business of John Wiley
> & Sons, Inc., US, and STM publisher Elsevier, Netherlands, have alerted
> authors against an e-mail spam through their respective websites.
>
> An e-mail message, circulated last week, sought manuscript submissions
> for peer-reviewed journals and claimed to come from Blackwell
> Publishing. It called for articles 'in all fields of human endeavor,'
> and said that the editors would decide on which journal it should appear
> in. The message, which came from a gmail.com address, requested
> manuscripts be sent to someone at live.com.
>
> A similar message was circulated a few months ago asking for manuscripts
> for Elsevier journals. People who responded to the message were asked to
> send money for a handling fee. An investigation conducted by Elsevier
> traced the e-mail to an Internet cafe in Nigeria. In response to the
> Elsevier scam, the International Association of Science, Technical and
> Medical Publishers also placed a warning on its website.
>
> Wendy
>
> Dr. Wendy A. Warr
> Wendy Warr & Associates
> 6 Berwick Court, Holmes Chapel
> Cheshire, CW4 7HZ, England
> Tel./fax +44 (0)1477 533837
wendy -- warr.com http://www.warr.com

> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> Date: Sat, 5 Apr 2008 11:23:18 +0100
> From: Richard Poynder <richard.poynder -AT- btinternet dot com>
> To: AMERICAN-SCIENTIST-OPEN-ACCESS-FORUM -- LISTSERVER.SIGMAXI.ORG
> Subject: Bentham Science Publishers
>
> Dear All,
>
> I would be grateful if anyone could help me. I am interested in an Open
> Access publisher called Bentham Science Publishers
> (http://www.bentham.org/). I have been contacted by a number of
> researchers
> who say that the company is bombarding them with invitations to contribute
> papers to its journals. Apparently requests by the recipients to remove
> them
> from Bentham's mailing list have little or no effect.
>
> I have tried to make contact with a number of people in the company
> including Richard Scott, who is most often the person whose name appears
> at
> the bottom of the invitation letters, and was until recently listed as the
> editorial director of the company on its web site
> (http://www.bentham.org/Contact.php). I also copied into my emails
> Bentham's
> US contact Richard Morrissey, and Matthew Honan, who earlier this year was
> also described as the company's editorial director
> (http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2008/01/bentham-oa-publishing-program.
> html).
> Likewise I copied in Professor Thomas Salt, since he too has signed
> some of the offending emails in his capacity as Editor-in-Chief of a
> Bentham
> journal called Current Neuropharmacology. Tom Salt appears to be based in
> the Department of Visual Science at the Institute of Ophthalmology in
> London.
>
> Despite all my attempts to make email contact with the company and its
> representatives, however, the only response I have received has come from
> someone called Mahmood Alam who seems to be based in Pakistan. He informed
> me that Richard Scott was too busy to speak with me, but invited me to
> email
> my questions to him. After I sent some questions through to Mahmood Alam,
> however, he failed to answer them.
>
> I have also tried calling the telephone numbers listed on the Bentham web
> site, but have only been able to get through to voice mail messages. The
> number listed for Richard Morrissey simply invites callers to email him
> (the
> address given is the one that I have failed to get any response from).
>
> I would be most grateful if anyone who has any knowledge of Bentham, or
> any
> experience of publishing with the company, or editing any of its journals,
> or anyone who regularly reads any of the Bentham journals, could contact
> me
> on: richardpoynder1 -- o2.co.uk.
>
> Thank you.
>
> Richard Poynder
> www.richardpoynder.co.uk
Received on Sat Apr 05 2008 - 16:13:11 BST

This archive was generated by hypermail 2.3.0 : Fri Dec 10 2010 - 19:49:16 GMT