The Philosophers' Cocoon

A safe and supportive forum for philosophers.

Owned & Moderated by Marcus Arvan (University of Tampa)

Contact: marvan@ut.edu

Blog mission & moderation policy

IMPORTANT NOTE on how to ensure anonymity in commenting
Job-Market Reporting Thread (2025-26)
Job-Market Discussion Thread (2025-26)

recent posts

about

Papers lost in academic cyberspace

The other day, I received the email attached below from The Open Journal of Philosophy. 

What do you make of it? Is this a scam?

Here is why I tend to be suspicious of new open access journals. I published my first paper with Philosophical Frontiers. At the time, I was a graduate student eager to get his name in print and the journal was supposed to be open access. It turned out to be a mistake, since the journal has disappeard from cyberspace since then.

Here is the email from The Open Journal of Philosophy:

Dear Dr. Moti Mizrahi ,

I am writing to cordially invite you to submit or recommend papers to
Open Journal of Philosophy
 (OJPP, ISSN: 2163-9442),
a fast track peer-reviewed and open access academic journal published by
Scientific Research Publishing (SCIRP),
which is one of the largest open access journal publishers
with more than 200 journals. To date SCIRP journals have been indexed
by many important databases.

As an Open Access Journal, OJPP devotes itself to promoting scholarship in
philosophy
and to speeding up the publication cycle thereof.
Researchers worldwide will have full access to all the articles
published online and be able to download them with zero subscription
fee.
Moreover, the influence of your research will rapidly expand once
you become an OA author, because an OA article enjoys more chances to
be used and cited
than does one that plods through the subscription barriers of
traditional publishing model.

"Open" makes this Journal unique. "Open" goes global,
historical, cultural; actual, theoretical, detailed; artistic,
scientific,
sociopolitical. "Open" goes outer space and nuclear minute,
and heartfelt subtle.

The only desideratum is to go basic, and go sensitively coherent.
Be clear, even in the wrong, not vague, even in the right.
Never beat around the bush; burn the bush itself!

This is "philosophy"! It means that any theme in any methodology, written as above, is welcome.

We shall eagerly look forward to your vigorous submissions of exciting essay within our aims and scope which is shown at

www.scirp.org/journal/ojpp. And papers are expected to be submitted at
"Submission" section in the above website.

Best regards,
Prof. Kuang-Ming Wu
Editor in Chief

OJPP Editorial Office
Scientific Research Publishing

Contact Us

E-mail:ojpp@scirp.org
Skype: scrip_service
Tel: 001(209)730-6998

Facebook: Scirp HealthLife
Twitter: @SCIRP
LinkedIn: Louis figo
Posted in ,

12 responses to “Papers lost in academic cyberspace”

  1. Kyle Whyte

    I’ve gotten that one too. I also got one, perhaps the same general, that started off saying something to the effect of, “Based on your excellent paper at APA central, we’d like to invite you…” My other colleagues who presented at that conference got the same email. Some of these are illegitimate; some of these are really trying to do something new, using technology. If the latter, I’ve always just looked at them as something that’s not for me as my goal right now is to get tenure. This sort of turns on this issue about the difference between venue and impact of publications. I’m pretty sure that all of us hope that whatever we come up with may benefit someone else in some respect. Perhaps the best way for our work to achieve this aim is to publish more rapidly and in venues that give access to everyone (but that don’t make us pay two grand to do so). But these venues get no respect in our field, regardless of how rigorous their review process is. Interestingly, though, I’ve found that some people who have tenure, instead of turning to open access, “volume 1” type venues, instead upped the anti and started submitting to more top 10 journals since they don’t have the pressure of getting stuff published before the deadline of a tenure review.

    Reply
  2. Clement

    Scientific Research Publishing is on the index of predatory journals:
    http://scholarlyoa.com/publishers/

    Reply
  3. Moti Mizrahi

    Thanks for the comments. I suppose my first clue that something is fishy about this journal should have been the LinkedIn user name “Louis Figo” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lu%C3%ADs_Figo 🙂

    Reply
  4. Andreas Wolkenstein

    I also got this invitation to submit-email. However, what is still more funny is that I was also invited to submit to the journal of “Green and Sustainable Chemistry”. It is funny because the last time I did some chemistry is 12 ago….:-)

    Reply
  5. Nicholas Joll

    I too have received invitations from the ‘Open Journal of Philosophy’ – multiple times. (I’d thought it was because I’ve worked for the Open University.) A glance at the stuff it has published suggests that that stuff is very poor. Moreover, the journal ignored my querying e-mails. Inference: if it isn’t an outright scam, it is close enough to one.

    Reply
  6. Dr. Mark W. Flory

    If I may offer an update: I contacted them and submitted a paper. They accepted it within a few short days, directing me to a site where I could format it. Once there, I found that publication would only cost me $600.00! That is not a mis-print…$600.00. Needless to say, I am not going to pursue it.

    Reply
  7. Robert W. Mitchell

    I also submitted an article to a special issue on the self, although I was initially skeptical of the journal. It was a paper with a student, and the paper was difficult to publish in other journals for reasons that, in my view, had nothing to do with the quality of the paper. The special issue was edited by a well-known and recognized scientist who has published in neuroscience. The paper was accepted after a positive but thoughtful review, and I was asked to pay $599 to publish it. I told them I could not afford that much, and ended up paying $100 to publish the paper. For $100, I now have an open access article that anyone can download. For other journals, open access costs $1,000. The $599 requested was actually less than what other journals ask for open access publications. The journal is one of many journals accessible by my library’s online services. I have since read that the company that supports the journal recently published a poor quality work (see http://scholarlyoa.com/?s=Scientific+Research+Publishing). However, I am waiting to see what the special issue on the self looks like: if the other articles are poor quality, I may have made a mistake, but I’m hoping otherwise.

    Reply
  8. Martine

    Yup, me top. Multiple invitations to write for them. How about “neh”… 🤣

    Reply
  9. Thomas J Papadimos

    The open journal of philosophy has now been around for 10 years. It may have moved beyond being labeled as predatory. It has published some reasonable manuscripts over the years.

    Reply
  10. lisa

    There is nothing wrong with open access, why are so many people questioning. Strict processing procedures can also guarantee the quality of articles; isn’t open access convenient for readers? So I think we still look at this issue appreciably

    Reply
  11. Sean

    I also have received many emails from the ‘Open Journal of Philosophy’ ). It seems that it is an open access journal.Auctually, many journal has an open access choice. Sometimes, if you need a quick time to publish your paper,open journal is a good choice.

    Reply
  12. tracy

    I also received their emails before, and later checked the journal and their publisher’s official website on the web page. The volume of this publishing house is relatively large, and the publication speed is quite fast. Fees are reasonable for open source journals. It’s just that there is no index that I need. It is recommended that authors who do not have high index requirements can try it.

    Reply

Leave a Reply to SeanCancel reply

Discover more from The Philosophers' Cocoon

Subscribe now to keep reading and get access to the full archive.

Continue reading