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Sham Journal Accepts Totally Absurd But Completely Appropriate Paper

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The International Journal of Advanced Computer Technology, a predatory open-access journal, has accepted for publication the marvelously titled paper "Get me off Your Fucking Mailing List."

According to Scholarly Open Access, researchers David Mazières and Eddie Kohler first prepared the manuscript in 2005, to protest spam conference invitations. The paper – which can be read in its entirety here – is superbly summarized by its title, although its two figures do help reify some of its more abstract points:

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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.

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The acceptance e-mail, acceptance letter, and peer reviewer's report are all available for viewing at Scholarly Open Access.

H/T Matt Shipman