Saturday, February 22, 2014

Bogus Editors for Bogus Journals?


I've been looking some more at the journals published by CS Canada, the inexplicably-named group that runs the "Canadian Academy of Oriental and Occidental Culture" and the "Canadian Research and Development Centre of Sciences and Cultures".

I contacted a professor listed as a "deputy editor" of

and editor of Studies in Literature and Language. She told me that she has "no editorial responsibilities for any of those journals" and remarked, "How strange!".

It's not strange at all; this is typical behavior for bogus journals. I notice that the editor-in-chief of the journals listed above are "Prof. William Kent", "Shawn Barnes", and "Alvin Linden". No legit institutional affiliation is given for any of them and I have not been able to find anything about them online. Do they even exist? I doubt it very much.

3 comments:

Unknown said...

Wow! I really need to learn more about Canadian culture. This is the first I learned they consider themselves Oriental, now with an official journal to prove it.

Kerry Liles said...

I wonder what might be the point of their existence? Perhaps it is just an elaborate email collection of 'somewhat' screened email addresses. The 'thinking' might be that anyone who responds is likely an academic of some importance and therefore a good candidate for subsequent spam?

Dubious line of reasoning, which makes it all the more likely perhaps? lol

Jeffrey Shallit said...

The point is simple: they charge to publish articles. At $50-$500 per article, it's a reasonably profitable enterprise.