… where “they” are the hordes of bogus pay-to-publish journals that seem to be spamming every .edu email address (especially those connected to corresponding authors in real journals) with invitations to submit. Submission spam from the International Journal of Advanced Computer Technology apparently pushed computer scientists David Mazières and Eddie Kohler to the breaking point, because they submitted a “manuscript” with text, title, abstract, section headers, and two figures consisting entirely of the words “Get me off your fucking mailing list.”
Mazières and Kohler (in press), Figure 1.
And the journal accepted the manuscript.
Mazières and Kohler received a typeset copy of their submission, with a an alleged peer reviewer’s report [PDF] rating it “Accepted.” (The form includes a “Strongly Accepted” option, so you know this wasn’t a complete cakewalk.) All the coauthors had to do for publication to proceed was to wire in payment for the publication charges.
Scholarly Open Access has the full story, including links to the typeset manuscript and acceptance message. This is far from the first time someone has shamed a pay-to-publish journal or conference by submitting a nonsensical paper, but it’s got to be the most ridiculous example of the genre.
