Des magazines sollicitent des experts avec des courriels adaptés et bien écrits.. sans dire qu’il faudra payer au moins 3000 $

Vous recevez régulièrement des spam de revues prédatrices, et souvent il est facile de voir que c'est une arnaque. Moins souvent, ces emails viennent de magazines scientifiques. Mais certaines officines deviennent de plus en plus professionnelles. Voici un exemple d'un courriel anonymisé et reproduit intégralement ci-dessous, et j'ai eu du mal à me faire une idée :

• Cette demande est documentée, bien écrite, adaptée à l'auteur ciblé…  il ne s'agit pas de spam qui vous demandent d'écrire sur les maladies des lions en Afrique, ou un sujet que vous ne connaissez pas… bon style de la sollicitation ; avec référence à l'ancien directeur de l'Inserm par exemple ;
• Cette demande est honorifique, comme d'habitude, et évoque un magazine qui impressionne par la présentation et que l'on peut télécharger gratuitement ; mais toute la production semble être uniquement 2014 (pas clair) ; les magazines semblent bien faits, et on peut les lire en ligne ; les articles semblent bons : j'ai regardé rapidement ;
• La maison d'édition n'est pas en Inde, mais à Bristol, UK, et le site internet est bien fait avec des logos WHO, Inserm, etc.. (probablement que certains sont piratés ?) ; aucune information sur les ressources de cette maison d'édition qui fait des magazines gratuits : surprenant ; des noms de managers sur l'ours des magazines ;
• La demande est totatelement évasive sur les conditions économiques du deal, ce qui est suspect ; mais la demande évoque les licences CC-BY Creative Commons : bravo, bien fait ;
• C'est Jeffrey Beall qui a étudié cette maison mieux que moi : les adresses courriel ont été volées au groupe PLOS (et d'autres probablement), donc le ciblage des auteurs est mieux fait que d'ahbitude ; ils utilisent les commentairs laissés sur PLOS Medicine et adaptent le courriel en fonction du sujet ; les demandes n'évoquent pas la somme de 3000 $ que doivent ensuite payer les auteurs pour être publiés ; quand l'auteur a travaillé, écrit, revu les épreuves, il est plus facile de lui demander de payer.. et certains payent.

Voici l'email evoyé :

From: Brett Langenberg [mailto: brett@researchmedia.eu]
To: ………@…. aphp.fr
Subject: International Innovation – xxxxx international trial

Dear Dr. ……..,

I was hoping to talk with you at some point this week or next. I recently came across your clinical study - xxxxx international trial and I wanted to speak with you about the possibility of highlighting the broader scope of the work in our health research report, International Innovation.

The proposed article would not disclose any personal data, datasets or compromise running trials, patient enrolment, performance or re-analysis but would be a piece disseminating the wider implications and impact of your work, implications for current clinical practice, promotion of the trial and your work to other potential network partners and recruits, promotion to funders, stakeholders, public, policy and the research community. Disseminating work from clinical trials to clinicians and laboratories is critical to bring new guidelines and therapies into practice. We would like to create a feature on your work within our next edition of our report. This will carry a focus on research within existing or recently completed clinical trials and emerging programs in the field, impact and relevance of health research for stakeholders.

I have attached some examples of other health research and trial leaders to show how this article that we would produce on your work could be structured and formatted, showcasing your research and impact.

Research Media are a research dissemination provider, we specialise in transforming and simplifying research content and helping researchers communicate their academic work and papers to an audience of stakeholders outside of their specific scientific community but which could be impacted by their research and which are not typically researched by academic journals.

As part of this work we produce a research publication titled International Innovation, which is an free to access publication designed to communicate health and biology research and development being conducted worldwide to all stakeholders within this field. The publication is distributed to over 30'000 stakeholder readers at all levels in the government, policy, funding, research, clinicians, and related health stakeholder sectors and communicates the impact and relevance of both fundamental and applied research in the field.

The primary element of our work is to have a team of editors, science journalists and designers translate the often complex science contained in trial results, papers, presentations, grant proposals and posters in to a most easily understandable piece that clearly demonstrates impact and relevance of the research to the wider community of stakeholders. All content published in International Innovation is published under a CC-BY Creative Commons licence, compliant with the emerging open access mandates from many research funding agencies.

I have attached some PDF examples of three page articles that we have created for researchers taken from past editions – covering both fundamental and applied research, please bear in mind these may not be specifically relevant to your specific area of research but they will demonstrate the format of the reports and the style of the article we would be aiming to produce in collaboration with you and your colleagues/co-authors on your work.
The areas covered in your trial could be very relevant to our upcoming publication and I would like to discuss the possibility of producing a similar piece on your paper and work to feature in our next edition.
It is important to note that the researchers that we work with always retain the copyright and reproduction rights on the material we produce and develop for them.

If you are not familiar with the publication I would be happy to send you a hard copy printed sample in the post, though you can view recent digital editions of our publications on-line via the following link: http://edition.pagesuite-professional.co.uk//launch.aspx?eid=2f16cca2-3b86-4827-a897-ea4d31787161

We have featured some excellent science, policy and funding content within this report with the following figures being among those having contributed:

– Charles Mgone, Executive Director, European & Developing Countries Clinical Trials Partnership
– Professor Andre Syrota, Chairman and CEO of INSERM
– Otis W Brawley, Chief Medical and Scientific Office and VP American Cancer Society
– Jacqueline Lecourtier, ANR Director General
– Robert Terry, World Health Organisation Strategy on Research
– Dr Sohail Luka, European Commission Policy Officer
– Mr Markku Mattila, President of the Academy of Finland
– Dr Ramesh Mashelkar, President, Global Research Alliance

We have also featured trials and health researchers from all major universities, research institutes and centres around the world and I would be happy to talk to you about this.

I am keen to showcase a small number of clinical trials, research initiatives and cover some recently published work within this report so I would like to discuss the possibility of disseminating some of the findings, conclusions and future opportunities presented by your work within this report. I would like to run through this information with you soon and to discuss the process for article development, deadlines, time frame, gold access model and article processing charges and to understand a bit more about the your work as there are specific aspects I think may be very relevant for this report.

Could you please drop me a mail and advise when would be a good time to speak on the phone and discuss this further?

Regards,

Brett Langenberg | Project Manager

t: +44 117 911 3477
e: brett@researchmedia.eu
w: www.internationalinnovation.com

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