Friday, March 12, 2021

In another chance to use the "Nothing of Value was Lost" meme, the Archives of Applied Medicine Journal website is non-responsive. This will come as a relief to victims of relentless stalkerish spamming from "A. Siozos MD" and "P. Jimenez PhD", with wheedling invitations to contribute to a barrage of skeezy little scamferences.



Also a relief to the researchers whose names were co-opted and whose publications were plagiarised to provide those scabby events with promises of Keynote Speakers.


Not such a relief to anyone who was fooled by those blandishments and coughed up some dosh in return for their presentations or journal contributions becoming preserved for perpetuity on the Interducts; or anyone who paid to attend coming conferences. Any aggrieved readers know whom to contact. Is it really a year since we last visited Dylan Fazel of Anoka, Minnesota?

The smarmy mooching tone of "Siozos" is shared across Fazel's other sockpuppets and purloined identities emanating from Archives of Psychology, Internal Medicine Review, Medical Research Archives, and Knowledge Enterprises Inc.

Additionally, in recent years, "E. Padron, Ph.D" at Science Publishing Group was spamming in a similar register. This was not the notoriously parasitical Pakistan-based Science Publishing Group, but an attempt to spoof it, because nothing shouts "scholarly credibility" louder than trying to trade on the good name of an egregious predator.
Dear $NAME,
Thank you for your email. We are planning a special theme issue on $TOPIC and I am trying to get a sense of what major advancements have been made in the field during the last couple years that should be included in the issue. If you could offer your opinion on this that would be very helpful.
I was looking at the article you wrote with $NAME2 a while ago entitled "$TITLE" and thought that since it has been a while since it was published maybe now would be a good time to do a followup or review article that introduces any new data that is now available.
I am attaching an overview of the special issue which includes more detailed information.
Could you let me know your thoughts on this? What do you think about preparing a short article?

Sincerely,

E. Padron, Ph.D.
SPG BioMed
Auf der Mauer 8
Zurich, Switzerland 8001
+41 43 508 29 05
Not to forget the inevitable scamference spam:
Dear $NAME,
I hope your August is off to a good start. We are still searching for a couple more people to speak " at the European Annual Health Summit in December. If you could find the time to participate it would be greatly appreciated by myself and the summit committee. It is possible to get a reduced registration fee, in addition to hotel accommodation and the option to apply for travel reimbursement. If you need an invitation letter please let me know.
The preliminary program is available at https://conferences.spg.ltd/eahs/EAHS_Preliminary_Program.pdf
Please get back to me about this as soon as you can.

Sincerely,

E. Padron, Ph.D.
European Annual Health Summit
Similar tones also dominate the spam from Copernicus Publishing, where "A. Umana, MD." affected the same claim to have encountered his victims' previous seminal contributions to the literature, and whined in the same guilt-inducing, passive-aggressive lie that the recipient had snubbed earlier attempts to communicate. This is not the German scholarly publisher "Copernicus", nor even the Polish impact-factor service catering to parasitical journals, but another imposter.

So imagine my surprise to find that all these websites are housed on the same IP server. That is, they're all the work of the same feckin fraudster.

Copernicus Publishing is moribund, with Clinical Medicine Review boasting of five papers in its archives (all from 2018) while Archives of Bioscience has none at all, zilch, not a sausage. Publishing fees ranged from $2100 to $2900, whereas comparable bottom-of-the-barrel cloacas charge about 1/10 of that, so Dylan may have misjudged the market. I am obliged, by the way, to explain that "moribund" is not a style of cummerbund intended for funereal viewings. Activity has shifted more to Copernicus.ltd, which presents as a portal or search engine for accessing the archives of publishers and institutions. Just register, sign up, provide personal details and credit-card number.

All the sleazy spamming from SPG.ltd was equally unprofitable, with papers in only one of its four journals, and only three scamferences. I guess this particular fraud was insufficiently rewarding for Fazel to pursue it further, as no new issues or mockademic meetings have appeared since 2019.

Evidently, though, Fazel is sticking with his decision to identify as European, with the archives of his KEI journals migrating en masse to yet another site, Esmed.org,* while the site previously known as "journals.ke-i.org" redirects to "https://esmed.org/MRA/". This turns out to be the new epicentre of Dylan's empire as an impresario of journals and conferences [h/t to D. H. Kaye at Flakyc]. And indeed, "Esmed.org" and "europeansocietyofmedicine.org" are domiciled on the same IP server dedicated to Dylan's other grifts. Of course there are scamferences, for how could a group as prestigious as the European Society of Medicine go without an annual General Assembly? With invitations to attend "Europe's leading medical assembly" spammed out indefatigably by "M. Osman M.D." and "L. Smith, M.D.", a.k.a. Dylan Fazel's bots.
Dear $NAME,

I am hoping to talk to you about your $TOPIC work. I enjoyed reading your article "$TITLE" and I was thinking that your work would be interesting to include in the $TOPIC session of our [General Assembly / Internal Medicine conference] next next year.
I am on the organizing committee of the meeting and am working on filling a few remaining speaker slots. The meeting is both in person and online.
May we discuss this further?

Best Regards,

M. Osman, M.D.
European Society of Medicine
[ESMED General Assembly / Global Conference on Internal Medicine]
But wait, Dylan promises to reimburse travel expenses at some later date, so it's all legitimate after all.
Dear $NAME:

Thank you for your email. I spoke with our committee and they have approved a 10% discount on the registration fee.
Yes there are travel funds available to speakers. I have gone ahead and added your name to the waiting list. Please find more information about the process below.

How to obtain travel funds
Eligible travel expenses include air and ground transportation. Fees for visas are not eligible. Travel receipts may be submitted in PDF or JPG format to office@europeansocietyofmedicine.org no later than one week following the conference. There is a limit of $1,200 per person.
The Register tab of the site shows how many hotel nights are included with each package. The hotel name and address are on the Travel & hotels tab. Please let me know which registration packages best suits your needs so as we can apply the discount for you.

Best Regards,

M. Osman, M.D.
European Society of Medicine
ESMED General Assembly
[Thanks to D.H. Kaye's commentariat for passing on their experiences of Fazelspam]

* The relocated archives include a couple of submission letters, left over from a time when Fazel's role as a cosplay medical-research publisher was something to boast of rather than to conceal behind layers of deniability and prosthetic identities.
Posted by Smut Clyde at 4:10 AM

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