How to spot a “spamnal”

I receive a constant stream of emails announcing dodgy journals or “spamnals” from bogus individuals riding the open access publication wave. Once in possession of your email address, these parasites exhibit the same characteristics as ground elder in your garden—pesky, difficult to eradicate, and recurrent. Thank heavens for my email spam filter.

Last week I dealt with a weeping doctoral student from Poland who had been conned out of $200 for the publication of an article in a spamnal, a citation that I advised would …