Disclaimer disregarded

• 29.11.2021 12:03 UTC+01:00
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Zena Zhao, at MDPI publishing house, invites me to submit an article to a special issue of their journal, Materials, to be entitled Zirconia and Innovative Biomaterials for Dental and Biomedical Applications. Curiously, I have a dental appointment this Friday, which will include filling a small fissure in one of my molars. I wonder if that's how she came into contact with me? (thinking)

It's unusual for the gutter journals to be so up-front about their publication charges, if shitting out a PDF onto the interwebz can really be considered publishing. But Ms Zhao doesn't indicate what degree of discount I might receive from their, quite frankly, outlandish article processing charge of CHF 2000 (£1600, $2150).

Anyhow, it was the disclaimer that really piqued my interest, if not ire.

MDPI recognizes the importance of data privacy and protection.

No, I don't believe they do. I did not opt in to their mailing list; so they must've scraped my address, or bought a list from a scraper.

We treat personal data in line with…what the community expects of us.

No, I don't believe they do. This member of the community, at least, does not expect my personal data to be used for the purposes of unsolicited commercial email. After all, my email address has only been made widely available under two circumstances: membership details for professional societies; and as the corresponding author on publications. In the latter instance, my contact details are made available for correspondence regarding the work in question, in keeping with publishers' requirements, not for commercial purposes.

The information contained in this message is confidential and intended solely for the use of the individual or entity to whom they are addressed.

Confidential information should not be sent to people you don't know, and especially when there's no established working relationship or confidentiality agreement in place. Such a statement may apply under a commercial contract, for example. But does it really apply to unsolicited messages sent to strangers, who might consider spam to be an invasion of privacy? And how can it be enforced, if there's no demonstrative acceptance of the conditions?…(thinking)

You may not copy this message in its entirety or in part, or disclose its contents to anyone.

(thinking)…It can't!

Ha ha! Fuck you, Zena Zhao! Here's your worthless message, below, in its boring and irrelevant entirety—other than a unique part of the unsubscribe link—disclosed to anyone who happens across this post.* But at least I've complied with one clause of the disclaimer. I've now deleted your message from my system.

We hope that you received our previous message regarding the invitation to submit a paper to be published in Materials. Could you please let us know whether you could make a contribution to the issue “Zirconia and Innovative Biomaterials for Dental and Biomedical Applications”? The submission deadline is 28 February 2022. You may send your manuscript now or at any point up until the deadline. More detailed information about the Special Issue can be found at the link: https://www.mdpi.com/si/materials/Zirconia_Biomaterials_Dental As an open access journal, our article processing charge (APC) for each accepted paper is CHF 2000. By replying to this email, you could receive a discount to publish your paper. If you are interested in this, please contact me for more details. For further details on the submission process, please refer to the instructions for authors at the journal website (http://www.mdpi.com/journal/materials/instructions). Thank you very much for your consideration. We look forward to hearing from you soon. Kind regards, Zena Zhao Assistant Editor Materials (ISSN 1996-1944; http://www.mdpi.com/journal/materials) is a journal published by MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. Materials maintains rigorous peer-review and a rapid publication process. All articles are published with a CC BY 4.0 license. For more information on the CC BY license, please see: http://creativecommons.org To submit to the journal click here: http://susy.mdpi.com/user/manuscripts/upload?journal=materials. Unsubscribe: http://www.mdpi.com/unsub/managesubscriptions/mail/. Manage your subscriptions: https://susy.mdpi.com/user/subscriptions. MDPI http://www.mdpi.com/ St. Alban-Anlage 66 4052 Basel Switzerland Tel. +41 61 683 77 34 Fax +41 61 302 89 18 Disclaimer: MDPI recognizes the importance of data privacy and protection. We treat personal data in line with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and with what the community expects of us. The information contained in this message is confidential and intended solely for the use of the individual or entity to whom they are addressed. If you have received this message in error, please notify me and delete this message from your system. You may not copy this message in its entirety or in part, or disclose its contents to anyone.

Date: Thu, 29 Dec 2022 12:06:16 +0100
Subject: Call for Paper: [Nutrients] (IF: 6.706, ISSN: 2072-6643) — Special Issue "Nutrition and Lifestyle Intervention and Weight Management during Pregnancy: For Maternal and Offspring's Health" 
From: Aubrey Lu <aubrey.lu@mdpi.com>
Reply-To: Aubrey Lu <aubrey.lu@mdpi.com>