If you're gonna lie, don't make it obvious

• 06.05.2021 11:45 UTC+02:00
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Another day, another request for my money offer to publish my research work. Normally, gutter science rags big-up their value with fancy wording. But only rarely do they give even vaguely meaningful numbers to back their claims. So, this message from a journal called Natural History was refreshing for its candidness, if nothing else.

Dear Author! We have reviewed your other research papers which are accessible on the internet. We are so indulged to invite you to submit any of your other new works to our journal. I would like to inform you that our esteemed journal "NATURAL HISTORY" is a leading international journal reporting developments and advances in various fields of science and technologies. It publishes original papers, research notes and reviews in English. The Journal is published on monthly basis with 10 hard copies each year. Accepted papers are published online prior to the journal hard copies.. NATURAL HISTORY also covers some special issues depending on scientific events within the year. We are happy to announce that the average impact factor for NATURAL HISTORY Journal is now 0.573 as released by Thomson Reuters (JCR2020). Journal Information ISSN: 0028-0712 Five Year Impact Factor: 0.047 Coverage: Web of Science, Science Citation Index Expanded (SCIE), Agriculture, Biology & Environmental Sciences, Essential Science Indicators, etc (ISI Thomson Reuters), Scopus DOAJ Article submission page: http://naturalhistory-mag.com/submit.html Regards Editor-in-Chief Prof. Dr. Jeffrey A. Stevens, USA Office: 36 WEST 25TH STREET, FIFTH FLOOR, NEW YORK, USA, NY

They take a wantonly liberal definition of esteemed if it applies to a five-year impact factor of only 0.047! And their website is even more forthcoming:

Source: Thomson Reuters Citation Data Impact Factor: 0.017 5-Year Impact Factor: 0.047 Average Impact Factor: 0.573 Eigen factor Score: 0.003510 Article Influence Score: 0.242

Natural History, home page

These numbers are not impressive. Who on earth would think that publicising figures like these is a good idea? The same mind that selects a domain of naturalhistory-mag.com for a journal, presumably.

Still, it amused me.