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The International Journal of Advanced Computer Technology has accepted for publication a manuscript that was first written in 2005 to protest spam conference invitations. The paper contains the F-word throughout the manuscript.

Img Source: skeptical-science.com

The original paper (selection above) was written by David Mazières and Eddie Kohler and is entitled “Get me off your f—–g mailing list.” It is available here.

After receiving a spam email from the International Journal of Advanced Computer Technology, Dr. Peter Vamplew of Federation University Australia’s School of Engineering and Information Technology sent the anti-spam article as a reply to the spam email without any other message, expecting that they might open it and read it, but not that it would be considered for publication.

To his surprise, the journal accepted the paper and sent him an acceptance email that had two PDF attachments. One was a formal statement of acceptance and the second was the reviewer report according to paidsurveys.net.

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The screenshot above is from the acceptance letter. The following screenshot is from the review form, in which an anonymous reviewer indicated that the paper’s appropriateness for the journal is “excellent.”

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It’s clear from examining the reviewer report that the same filled-out form is used for most or all submissions. Certainly, no peer review was completed despite the journal’s claim to be a peer reviewed journal.

The acceptance indicates that the next step for Associate Professor Vamplew is to wire USD $150 to the bank account of Tej Pal Singh, and the paper will be published, but I don’t think he’ll be doing that.

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