Cis-Sylvania has been marginalised in popular culture and never receives its fair share of attention

What, is it time again already for another yarn of malfeasance and academic parasitism such as will chill your heart to its cockles and your marrow to the bone? A yarn nigh-indistinguishable from the 17 droll anecdotage of scamferences and mockademic journals previously covered by Riddled? Scoff if you must, but what singles out the story this time, and increases its entertainment value by some small quantum, is the presence of the Transylvanian Review.

Just look at this crap!

The Romanian editors of that fine forum for Balkan historical-biographical exegesis have enough to deal with, what with sophomoric bloggers going all "Fnar fnar 'Transylvanian', is all Dracula and Carpathian castles amirite?". But in addition, the TR fell victim to identity theft, in early 2015. That is, the bottom-feeding douchebags and doodlehums who specialise in that con-job set up their own TR website (an insultingly generic design) -- stealing the original version's ISSN and back-catalog of cover art, and the editors' names -- and announced that it was henceforth an Inter- disciplinary, Indiscriminate journal that would publish any old crap about small pieces of green putty found in the authors' armpits. Then waited for the money to roll in from Open Access Processing fees, relying on the actual TR's good repute and recognised status. Causing some confusion to certain members of the Riddled staff, who understood "inter-disciplinary" to mean the down-time at the Velvet Vice when Madame Whiplash takes her contractual lunch-hour and coffee-breaks, but I digress.

An earlier victim of journal-jacking was "Sylwan".* There is an pattern emerging: forest-related publications are especially at risk.

Which brings us to the IOSRD, the International Organisation for Scientific Research & Development. Because their activities include an Digital Library. Rather than contents, this has aspirations. Unaccountably, those aspirations specify the cultural and historical resources of a certain Sylvan state (rather than, say, South India). I am inclined to ascribe this to the workings of the Morphogenic Field:

The IOSRD Digital Library (IDL) is a state-wide metadata repository for digital resources created by Pennsylvania libraries, museums, educational institutions, and other cultural heritage organizations. IDL provides researchers with an aggregated search interface for these digital materials. This search tool will increase exposure to Pennsylvania's digital resources and make them more available on the open Web.
IDL was created and is maintained by The International Organization of Scientific Research and Development's (IOSRD) Library System, under the auspices of the IOSRD Advisory Committee on Collaborative Digitization...

Sounds legit!

The IOSRD also boasts a stable of 44 382 394 398 asses journals (at last count), covering hotly-disputed topics, with the Journal of Battlespace, the Journal of Feminist Geography, the Global Journal of Mechatronics... but so far (alas) no Journal of Golliwology.

The International Journal of Engineering has two years of actual archives, and an Editorial Board, but it is the exception: the vast majority of the IOSRD stable are mere place-holders, quantum-fluctuation virtual particles, with only a Cover Page of stolen uncredited artwork to delay their return to the zero-energy vacuum.**

But I must respectfully disagree with Jeffrey Beall (world's toughest milkman librarian) when he characterises IOSRD as a predatory publisher. The organisation occupies a different niche in the ecosystem of academic grifting, somewhere between Scamference Organiser and Predatory Journal Portal.***

Behold the use of Algerian on IOSRD's conference invitations, in accordance with the prophecy (or perhaps in imitation of the scammers at IORD, who are better-established despite lacking the "Scientific" in their title). The logo at the bottom -- of the grandiloquently-titled publisher money-hole American-Eurasian Network for Scientific Information -- is in recognition of a mutually-profitable collaboration. AENSI extrudes a geographically-diverse range of journals such as the Australian Journal of Basic and Applied Sciences and American-Eurasian Journal of Sustainable Agriculture, which is not bad for some mook in Jordan with a day-job in agronomy.

So attendees at the Fifth International Conference on Recent Trends in Engineering, Science and Management could pony up $150 (R5000) or $210 (R7000) (on top of the $120 Registration Fee) for their presentation to appear in the List-2 or List-3 journal of their choice. The lists are short, and the journals parade before us displaying their charms in the manner of the talent at a high-class bordello.

I hasten to add that they are not all from AENSI. The World Applied Science Journal, for instance, oozes out of IDOSI, a rival member of the junk-journal industry more closely associated with IORD, it is grifting all the way down. The common theme is that when grifters manage to slip their scamsites onto a whitelist of approved publications, accredited for purposes of promotion and tenure -- in this case, the Annexure-II whitelist from Anna University -- then it is time to make out like bandits.

For more desperate scamference attendees, there is also List-4, providing the option of their work appearing in an IOSRD journal chosen from the 256 available [List 4 is a few weeks out-of-date] for a mere US$45 (R1500); or in a new bespoke journal, with new and suitably-acquiescent peer-reviewers, if none of the off-the-shelf versions are appropriately specialised.

But I see you're getting bored. Here, meet some of the International Members of the IOSRD Editorial Board:

Kimberly Villarreal, Eula Bridges, Sariyah Miles, Florence Carson, Prof. Missy Castro,
Assistant Professor Brittney Guy,
Vienna Crawford, Chelsea Flowers, Jewell Noble, Nya Ferrell, Lorrie Mcconnell

These fragrant ladies, with their names from bad porn movies and their Drupaler-org e-addresses, appear to be spambots or sex-site chatbots.

Here are some awesome names, strangely echoic in format and punctuated with sound-effects as if heard over a bad phone connection:

Sherryduh Sherryduh SherryduhNF, Japan
Jeffreysinc Jeffreysinc JeffreysincMU, Uruguay
TaylorNeap TaylorNeap TaylorNeapOE, Madagascar
Prof. VL Conniedror, Assitant Professor, New Zealand
WillieOr WillieOr WillieOrLG, Latvia
Kennethhaw Kennethhaw KennethhawYY, Switzerland
Williamsax Williamsax WilliamsaxIG, Somalia
Fuectuctjag Fuectuctjag FuectuctjagLO, Equatorial Guinea
WeleEi WeleEi WeleEiHG, Hong Kong
Stevenma Stevenma StevenmaHI, Afghanistan
Miltonhuri Miltonhuri MiltonhuriQV, Czech Republic
Prof. EE CharlesKict, Switzerland
KengoDifs KengoDifs Neil, Latvia
KulyFusa KulyFusa Kyle, Kyrgyzstan
Prof. CulaItah Audrey, Grenada
PolkCick PolkCick Jessica, Anguilla
Prof. Valygese Chase, Assistant Professor, Nigeria,
Prof. Ykuldiep Carlos, Assistant Professor, Ukraine
AmorBuig AmorBuig Juan, Armenia
Klopgota Klopgota Julian, UK
Prof. Birenmync Arianna, Canada
Matthewmr Matthewmr MatthewmrUC, Japan
Hermansego Hermansego HermansegoVZ, France
Prof. O.M. Andrewcaw, Djibouti
Prof. SG DeshawnMn, Assistant Professor, Samoa
Prof. OpusTeft Alexander, Hungary
Prof. V.H. Alfrhoony, Australia
Richardbep Richardbep RichardbepTZ, Tokelau

What brings this multinational crew together is that their e-addresses or home websites take one to on-line pill-mills for v1@gra and c1al1s. I hate to seem bigotted against pill-pimp scamshops and chatbots but perhaps they aren't the people I want editing and reviewing my scholarly opuscule.

Not to forget

Reciban Saludos y Agradezco invitacion Marin Rafael Martinez Venegas, FT - Martinez, Peru 

who has a truly impressive title, unless it means "Thank you for the invitation".

But wait, there is still List-1 from ICRTESM! It is longer, comprising 45 even more diverse journals, accompanied by higher publication fees (US$700 / R46000) befitting their greater prestige.
Some might cavil, and ask how the IOSRD committee can guarantee publication in (say) the Australian journal of structural engineering [which does not in fact charge a publication fee]. But wait -- there is no such guarantee -- for in contrast to the other lists, it is the IOSRD committee who pick the List-1 journal most applicable to a paper, not the author. Their choice might be made easier by the presence of the hijacked Transylvanian Review in the middle of the otherwise-alphabetic list, at #28, slipped in as if to be less noticeable. Is it irresponsible to expect the next Special Issue of the TR to contain the Proceedings of ICRTESM-2016?

The TR identity theft has not yet come to the notice of Anna University, but scamference conmen are certainly aware of it, almost as if they consult Beall's predatory-publisher blogging when they're choosing which journal-shaped trash-bins to bundle into the package when pimping out their meetings.

The Journal Manager at IOSRD evidently reads Beall's blog.

Thx Jeffrey and commenters; 

disgruntled customer 'Sachin'

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In other junk-journal news, the chemtrails have been in the news lately. Here at Riddled Research Laboratory and Tardigrade Obedience School, we incline towards the theory that those meshworks in the sky are the work of Invisible Sky Spiders.

Foteaux credit: J. Marvin Herndon

Here are some drag-and-drop spiders to make up for their invisibility:

There has been surprisingly little research into using the aberrant features of any particular sky-web to deduce which drugs the spider has been taking. We are working to fill this gap and intend to present our findings at the next International Conference on Researches in Science, Management and Engineering.

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* No, Autocorrect, I do not mean 'Sybian'.

** The Journal of Black Holes image turns out to hail from the University of Warwick (who credit Mark Garlick for the artwork). Perhaps the IOSRD seek to emulate the Journal of Cosmology, specialists in that Christian Psychedelic-Rock Album-Cover style of graphic design.

*** There is also an element of pyramid scheme / multilevel marketing, for enthusiastic would-be editors who are keen to do IOSRD's work for them can establish their own journals under IOSRD's auspices, paying only $160 / year for use of the freeware Open Journal Systems platform. With additional but unspecified charges if the eager wannabee wants to provide the new journal with “Doi, Cross Reference, CC Atribution 4, Language editing, Plagiarism testing”.