This is a slightly different post as it’s not really about predatory publishing but rather about ….. let’s call it ethical publishing.
Since starting this blog, we have begun to realize that there are many more issues than just, what we refer to as predatory publishing. It is in the context of this that we decided to publish this article.
Previous Fiverr article
In a previous article, we reported an email that we had seen from Fiverr, asking the person that received the email to submit to a WSEAS journal.
Fiverr were good enough to respond to this article, saying that the email had been spoofed and it had not originated from one of their accounts.
We are grateful to Fiverr for this and we are confident that they do not want their platform to be abused just as much as we do. We appreciate them responding to us.
The rest of this article looks at another aspect of Fiverr, but we are not accusing Fiverr of acting unethically but we hope that our observation helps them in any investigation.
Is Fiverr promoting unethical gigs?
We were recently looking at Fiverr, just to see what type of services that they offer. We came across this entry. It is typical and is just the one we decided to focus our attention on.
The person’s tag line is “I will write qualitative research proposal, articles and methodology” (see Figure 1).
Later on they say (see Figure 2) what you will actually get.
However, this article is not about the gig being offered by this person, we can study that later. What we want to look at is how the person represents themselves, rather than two different images which might be assumed to be them.
Misrepreseantation?
Figure 3 shows images a number of images when you look at the profile for writing_axpert on Fiverr. There are two different images, which seems strange as we would assume that somebody who was advertising their services would use a picture of themselves.
Digging a little deeper (essentially using backwards image search on Google Images), we managed to find the following.
The image on the left we found at job talent web site (see Figure 4). We did see it at a few other places but the job talent web page was the most prominent.
The two images on the right, we found in a number of places. For example, we found the image being used on the https://www.anytechtrial.com/blogs/ blogging platform (see Figure 5) and also at https://www.badasswebgoddess.com/ (see Figure 6).
As we searched for the image, we actually found many references to Canva. We suspect that the images are available there and, as a consequence, has been widely used by many people and companies.
Does it matter?
Does it matter that this person (almost certainly) is using images which are not her (or him)? After all, many other people/companies seem to be using the same image so, if we are concerned about writing_axpert, surely we should have the same concerns whenever this image is used?
I think the issue we have is the entire package. Although we have not commented on the ethics of the service they appear to be offering, we do have some concerns about the gig being offered and the fact that the person does not give their real name and does not use a picture of themselves, you cannot be sure who you are dealing with.
Would you be happy about entering into a business relationship with such a person? How sure can you be that they can deliver? How sure can you be that what they deliver has not been copied (and changed to avoid plagiarism detection)? What about the ethics of what they are offering?
We’d be interested in what you think? Let us know on out Twitter account.