I Can’t Believe It’s Not B̶u̶t̶t̶e̶r̶ Academic Spam

I get a lot of Academic Spam. I mean, like a lot. Dodgy conference invites, pay-to-publish in fields far removed from any expertise I may or may not have: you name it. But this missive is confusing, because of mixed signals.

So a) it’s a journal that I have never heard of, b) with a title that I would not associate with political science/social science content. Also, c) it is indexed in Food Science and Technology Abstracts and d) ‘highest-quality publication’ is a surefire low-quality indicator.

But e) the topic of the manuscript is not entirely removed from the realm of stuff that I could reasonably review. And f) (and it pains me to admit that this is the strongest signal of them all), it is published by Springer, and the email came from a genuine Springer address, which is literally the only thing that stopped me / my mail filters from deleting it right away. Obviously, I clicked on the ‘decline’ link instead.

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