New Open-Access Publisher Offers Financial Incentives to Authors and Editors

Throwing money around?

The publisher Spring-City Culture International Group is making some interesting appeals to authors and editors — appeals that seem to promise financial rewards.

Spring-City has offices in Singapore, Beijing, and Hong Kong. This new scholarly open-access publisher came to my attention recently thanks to several researchers who forwarded copies of Spring-City spam emails to me.

Financial Rewards for Authors

What does “appreciated” mean exactly, in this context?

The image above is a screenshot from one of the spam emails inviting article submissions. It says, “The author will receive 1,000-10,000 dollars when his/her paper is appreciated by our reviewers.” I am not sure what “appreciated” means here — this is a vague use of this term. In any event, I think promising authors the possibility of a financial award to attract article submissions is likely unethical.

Financial Rewards for Editors

Interesting business model.

One of the spam emails that was forwarded to me was a solicitation to be an editor-in-chief for one of the Spring-City journals. A document attached to the spam made some amazing promises for editors. The document is called “Rights and Responsibilities of Editor-in-Chief.”

A portion of the document is shown above. It says,

The editor-in-chief has rights to: Obtain 2,000 dollars per month as his / her allowance; Publish the articles written by himself / herself (or he/ she as the first author), and receive 1,000-10,000 dollars as remuneration for each article according to its quality.

This is a pretty amazing promise. I wonder if they need an editor for a library science journal?

Actually, I don’t believe a word of it. I’ve added Spring City to my list and recommend against serving as the EiC or on the editorial boards of Spring City journals and against submitting papers to its ten journals.

Appendix: Spring-City Culture International Group journals as of August 9, 2014

[Update: 2014-08-13: These journals have all disappeared and been replaced by different titles.]

1. Economy and Trade Theory Anailsis [sic]
2. Electronics Science Technology and Application
3. Financial Forum
4. International Journal of Social Security
5. Journal of Atmosphere and Oceanography Environment
6. Journal of Monsoon and Air-Sea
7. Journal of Satellite Oceanography and Meteorology
8. Nature•Science•Human
9. Preventive Medicine Research
10. Proceedings of Social Medicine