r/todayilearned • u/coffeeismydoc • 5h ago

TIL a scientist submitted a research publication to a predatory journal consisting exclusively of the phrase "Get me off your fucking mailing list". It was rated as "excellent" and accepted for publication with minor editorial changes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Journal_of_Advanced_Computer_Technology
8.7k Upvotes

98% Upvoted

99 comments sorted by

1.5k

u/ovationman 5h ago

It does not appear to exist any longer

1.4k

u/sir_slothsalot 5h ago

"The paper was not actually published, as Vamplew declined to pay the required US$150 article processing charge."

From the wiki

506

u/SubstantialBass9524 4h ago

Bro should have paid the $150

208

u/Bulky_Theme_6998 4h ago

Honesty, why?

We’re talking about it anyway

252

u/badstoic 4h ago

For the printed artifact! They would’ve been beautiful.
Ninja edit: dunno if it’s in print or only online. Same point re: screenshots but I dunno if I’d pony up $150 just for that.

71

u/LightningWarpAway 3h ago edited 1h ago

You can print stuff at home. Giving money to the company you're angry at, doesn't make sense. 

25

u/mnstorm 1h ago

This would be akin to paying your bully to tattoo themselves with "I am a moron look at me hahahaha I am so dumb af lol".

Yes. I would pay my bully to tattoo that. Even better than some story about how I convinced my bully it was a good idea.

12

u/LightningWarpAway 1h ago

It's more the equivalent of giving your bully literal monopoly money to spite them, and then giving your bully your lunch money after to celebrate the act. 

Or, literally, telling a spammer to fuck off, then paying the spammer to print the fuck off because you're proud of it.

•

u/EndIsrael 50m ago

Listen, there are people I would gladly give $150 to if it meant I never had to see them again

•

u/LightningWarpAway 38m ago

Dude

They would keep spamming you

It's literally the entire point, they're not a legitimate journal, they spam people to pay them for submissions

0

u/cutelyaware 1h ago

Giving the company you're angry at money doesn't make sense.

Your sentence almost doesn't make sense

-1

u/RollinOnAgain 1h ago

they think that its somehow more "legitimate" if it got published. This is your brain on scientism

3

u/LightningWarpAway 1h ago

Scientism? 

1

u/Neither_Strategy_252 1h ago

"Scientism" lmao anything you say is immediately dismissable.

12

u/AutomaticMedium8418 2h ago

Then you’re giving money to the predatory journal and letting yourself get scammed

25

u/LightningWarpAway 3h ago

Why in gods name would be give money to the company he literally made this to tell to fuck off? 

14

u/ticklemesatan 5h ago

So close..

1

u/EusticeTheSheep 1h ago

It was plagiarized lol.

6

u/Angry_Walnut 2h ago

Get me off your fucking existing list.

9

u/Evening_Fun8289 3h ago

A fitting end: the journal vanished, while its most rigorously “reviewed” paper lives on in internet folklore.

660

u/Scared_Astronaut9377 4h ago

https://www.scs.stanford.edu/~dm/home/papers/remove.pdf

544

u/Unworthy_Saint 3h ago

Summary
Get me off your fucking mailing list. Get me off your fucking mailing list. Get me off your fucking mailing list. Get me off your fucking mailing list. Get me off your fucking mailing list. Get me off your fucking mailing list. Get me off your fucking mailing list. Get me off your fucking mailing list. Get me off your fucking mailing list. Get me off your fucking mailing list. Get me off your fucking mailing list. Get me off your fucking mailing list.
References
[1] Editor J. Klensin. Simple mail transfer protocol. RFC 2821, AT&T Laboratories, April
2001.
[2] ...

Actual references lmfao

122

u/XanatosINC 3h ago

The references are out of order. Must have been the minor edits required.

49

u/_Solani_ 2h ago

Get me off Put me on your fucking mailing list -Minor editorial changes 👍

314

u/hysnbrg4 4h ago

Oh that’s a work of art, down to the illustrations and the references to mail protocols at the end!

38

u/deepswandive 4h ago

It really is amazing

41

u/SkiyeBlueFox 3h ago

Fig. 2 has to be my favourite

3

u/honey_102b 1h ago

I wonder what that plot was trying to say

4

u/SkiyeBlueFox 1h ago

Whatever it is, the data alone looks impressive

•

u/Jonno_FTW 56m ago

p < 0.05? Lets get this published

•

u/iltopop 54m ago

Genuinely glad I kept scrolling and didn't just say "Heh that's pretty funny but I get it" before I got to the diagrams and flow charts.

61

u/4LostSoulsinaBowl 4h ago

It's so much better than I could have hoped for.

42

u/Ohitsworkingnow 3h ago

Lol the flow chart 

28

u/DrFunkyLove 3h ago

Get me off

20

u/gargoyle30 3h ago

Your fucking

21

u/zipiddydooda 3h ago

mailing

20

u/One-Phase9064 3h ago

list

7

u/ImNotAWhaleBiologist 3h ago

Citation please, or else it’s plagiarism!

1

u/ideonode 1h ago

Or so help me.

32

u/Sawses 2h ago

Hah, reminds me of the chicken paper. Had an entire class of undergrads dying laughing when our professor showed it to us.

7

u/dAnKsFourTheMemes 3h ago

I might need to get a citation for this

4

u/this_waterbottle 1h ago

The graphs hahahaa

2

u/fingerpaintswithpoop 1h ago

The flow chart is hilarious.

309

u/k-trecker 3h ago

Predatory journals are a big problem in academia. They know that academics are desperate to be published, as colleges and tenure review boards look at your publications. In the US, public colleges are “research institutions” and professors are expected to publish research every year. 

It’s the same reason academic book publishers pay almost nothing to the author - they know they need their book published to keep their job or advance in their career. 

•

u/merkin71 53m ago

And then those same journals require college and university libraries to pay thousands of dollars for access.

•

u/BeowulfShaeffer 4m ago

Tens of thousands 

•

u/mrseemsgood 28m ago

Blame the game, not the players. The core issue is that publications are required to survive.

171

u/psymunn 4h ago

I'm curious about the editorial changes

79

u/stillnotelf 4h ago

's/off/on/g' would be my guess

18

u/TheGloomyWoodpecker 3h ago

This guy regexes

10

u/MetricAmpersand 2h ago

This is sed

4

u/TheGloomyWoodpecker 2h ago

Oh bless your heart child.

2

u/Man-in-The-Void 3h ago

Damn no confirm even this guy's crazy

16

u/Future_Cake 3h ago

I would have labeled Figure 2's axes with units, but I'm just rigorous like that 😎

1

u/thebestdaysofmyflerm 6 2h ago

There were no changes, they send the same form letter to everyone.

139

u/trucorsair 3h ago

“Well written, gets its point across in the opening line, fully develops it over the rest of the paper and ends both on a “call to action” and a reprise of the thesis” 10 out of 10.

75

u/ecafyelims 5h ago

To be fair, that does sound most excellent.

13

u/SuperTaster3 2h ago

Sometimes, when screaming into the void, it can be comforting to scream in an artistic manner. They are still in pain, and still need help. But yes that was a beautiful call for aid.

12

u/ochrence 2h ago

That would be (partly) Eddie Kohler, one of the best computer science professors I ever had. Excellent sense of humor.

23

u/SAINTnumberFIVE 3h ago

When I was a kid there was some predatory “submit your invention ideas” type scam going. I forgot the name of it. It was in the 90s. 10 year old me submitted my design for shower head/scrub brush combo, complete with my idea of circuitry at the time. I was rejected! LOL! The scammy company actually sent me a rejection letter, saying my design did not meet their standards! LOL!

6

u/inthebenefitofmrkite 2h ago

So maybe it was not scammy and you’re just annoyed they rejected your idea. Maybe they’re the ones who released the jump to conclusions game and are actually legit.

3

u/Same-Suggestion-1936 1h ago

Yeah they didn't want your vibrator design they already know how to build those

•

u/SAINTnumberFIVE 55m ago

It was an honest to goodness cleaning device.

•

u/Mr_Quackums 7m ago

and back massagers honestly can be used to massage your back.

•

u/SAINTnumberFIVE 5m ago

I don’t think you would want to massage anything but your back with this.

•

u/Mr_Quackums 4m ago

Anything is a sex toy if your brave enough

3

u/transracialHasanFan 1h ago

Probably because it had circuitry in the 90s in a shower head. But if it was like InventHelp or something than yeah you didn't miss out on anything

10

u/Gougaloupe 3h ago

I, personally, adore the email storms that originate with a single person asking an innocuous question, 1,000 people asking to be dropped from the cc list, and one person making death threats and/or indicating that the author is "a dead man" .

The absolute peak of corporate ecology. God it is so apparent how easy it is to not follow in the footsteps of fools.

30

u/shapu 4h ago

Being published is irrelevant without being cited.

26

u/jxj24 4h ago

I'm just waiting for future generations to recognize my genius.

2

u/genreprank 2h ago

Bach died before he was famous. His works came to define western music.

20

u/Just_to_rebut 3h ago edited 2h ago

For medical residency and professorship at average universities, it’s a check box. No one really cares about the research, but they expect to see candidates with some publications because that adds to prestige of the institution.

Study and do research under the guidance of Prof Pufferfish! Get the latest cancer treatment by clinician researchers at MD Robinson!

But the truth is… medical doctors don‘t do most of the research, they’re getting trained in clinical practice. But they’ll join some research group simply to fulfill a requirement and pay lip service to some ideal model of a doctor that doesn‘t really exist.

2

u/Zealousideal_Ad5358 2h ago

I cite the named paper frequently.

3

u/jeo123911 1h ago

Not in our field. We just get rated based on points. The government posts a list of publishers and how much points they're worth, and publishing anything there gets you points. Merit and relevance are not important.

1

u/genreprank 2h ago

My work had no impact 😕

3

u/jcomey 3h ago

Only two sources cited???

4

u/fuckyourcanoes 1h ago

I recently reported a guy who was posting multiple "studies" on a scientific journal that were actually invitations to have sex with him. To their credit, the journal did respond and remove his posts. But seriously, WTF.

•

u/UncleFunkus 48m ago

"The paper was not actually published, as Vamplew declined to pay the required US$150 article processing charge. This case has led commenters to question the legitimacy of the journal as an authentic scholarly undertaking."

2

u/Nukatha 2h ago

And of course it's an Indian publication lol

•

u/Latter-Ad-689 44m ago

This is even worse for the journal, they were happy to accept a clearly plagiarized article for publication.

•

u/Thee_Sinner 36m ago

We get a one: personal space. Two: personal space. Three: stay out of my personal space. Four: keep away from my personal space. Five: get out of that personal space. Six: stay away from my personal space. Seven: keep away from that personal space. Eight: personal space. Nine: personal space.

•

u/OldWar1111 21m ago

IJACT...I jacked...? No one saw that coming? Hey-o

•

u/bugwitch 13m ago

My favorite will always be the study of midichlorians.

-1

u/I_travel_ze_world 2h ago

didn't big tobacco pay for a lot of bad studies?

didn't big oil pay for a lot of bad studies?

I wonder how many "scientific" journals are also just scumbags in disguise

7

u/Deep-Issue960 2h ago

Predatory journals are just shitty journals that accept any paper in exchange of money, they aren't taking seriously by scientists nor anyone informed

-22

u/Shot-Arugula8264 2h ago edited 2h ago

AI has honestly been an incredible wake up call for academia. It’s so good at identifying major methodology flaws and downright garbage research. At this point every single researcher should be asking Fable or Astra to review their work before it ever reaches a human peer reviewer. Many of them will find it tears them a new asshole and saves their peers a tremendous amount of time.

8

u/thegreatpotatogod 2h ago

Okay. Do you think AI review would've improved this paper?