We recently received an email that came from a fiverr account. It suggests that publishers are using freelancers to promote their, possibly, predatory journals. In this article we look at the evidence and let you decide whether we should be worried about this?
The email we received
Figure 1shows the email that we received. We would draw your attention to who the email is from (highlighted in green).
It is from ‘fiverr.com’. If you are unaware of this web site, it is a respectable web site that provides freelancers the opportunity to advertise their skills and services to those that are seeking to engage them.
The worrying thing is that (we assume) a freelancer from fiverr is sending emails, asking for researchers to submit to a WSEAS journal. Why would a reputable publisher engage freelancers to email scholars to submit to their journals. Most high quality journals either attract papers via their reputation or from emails from themselves, typically through the editors.
We have to assume that WSEAS is aware of this, else what does the freelancer have to gain?
If you want to submit a paper
Where does the submission URL go to?
The link provided to submit a paper is https://wseas.com/journals-without-fees.php. If you look at this URL, it does contain the WSEAS domain, which is what you would expect.
However, if you click on this URL you are actually redirected to https://cdn.jotfor.ms/maria.managing.editor/invited-papers. (see figure 2, highlighted in red). Just for the record, we have captured this form on Wayback Machine. You can access this archive here.
Looking at the redirected URL, and just accessing the domain (that is https://cdn.jotfor.ms/), you get taken to Jotform.com, which is a reputable way to create forms for various purposes (see Figure 3).
The question we would pose is why would a reputable journal use this method as a way for authors to submit papers? Surely they have their own system for authors to submit papers, whether this is by email or some other manuscript management system?
What does the tail of the URL mean?
We looked at the last part of the URL, that part that says ‘maria.managing.editor/invited-papers’. We are particularly interested in ‘maria.managing.editor’.
Is Maria actually a managing editor of WSEAS?
We searched the WSEAS web site and did find an email address of maria.managing.editor@gmail.com, which suggests that there is somebody called Maria. It is a little concerning that this is a gmail email address, rather than a WSEAS email, which is used for some other email contacts (see Figure 4), which have been taken from WSEAS.com.
We tried to archive the WSEAS web site on Wayback Machine, but that did not work. If you try and look at the web site on Wayback Machine, you get the message “This URL has been excluded from the Wayback Machine.” This means that the site does not allow itself to be archived, which can be verified here, which is a list of websites excluded from the Wayback Machine.
Final Remarks
We find it very strange that a publisher appears to be using freelancers to email potential authors to ask them to submit to their journals.
We find it equally strange that you are directed to a Jot Form page, rather than some page, form or submission system that is managed by the publisher.
Perhaps there is some reasonable explanation for all of the above and we hope that WSEAS can contact us and explain.
We plan to look at little more closely at WSEAS in the future, as this article is really about whether fiverr are (inadvertently) promoting predatory publishing.
For now, we will note that WSEAS have previously been accused of being a predatory publisher, but have vehemently denied it as can be seen from their 44 point response, which was signed by 29 Professors. You can see that response here, but we have also downloaded it and you can access it here.
Update
In response to our tweets, which formed informed this article, we received a response from Fiverr. It said “Hi there! We completely understand your concern. Please be assured that this is a spoofed email address and this message was not sent from a Fiverr email or user account. Please feel free to reach out to us at support@fiverr.com if you have any other questions.“
We responded, by saying “Thank you – we really appreciate you responding. Similar services are advertised on fiverr though?“
Fiverr responded by saying:
“Hi there, you are welcome. If you notice anything that is not in line with our guidelines you can always use our Flag feature to report it. Once again, thank you.“
We are very grateful that Fiverr have responded in such a positive way. We may take them up ontheir suggestion to flag Fiverr’s content which seems inappropriate.
Finally, we have reported one account, which says “I am now available to write research papers in the field of finance and economics. Moreover, I will help you improve your existing papers and suggest target journals for publication.“
We will monitor if any changes are made and we may raise other flags in the future.
We have suggested that this sounds like that this person will write a paper for you, rather than just help getting it published.
