‘Tis the season to be spamming…?
Is it just me, or have the spammers been upping their ante by sending tonloads of spam emails to would-be authors and conference attendees? I mean, gosh, you would not believe the amount of crap I get in my inbox nowadays, ranging from emails from unknown organizers of some shady conference in an exotic island or cruise, to completely unrelated ones that would make you wonder…why do they even bother? Take this email I got lately, for instance:
“Dear Dr. Katherine Develos Bagarinao,
I had a glance at your profile in online and I am extremely amazed with your work. I feel you will be an ideal person who helps us for progress of our Journal.Hence, I amapproaching you through this email.
In fact, I am in deficit of one article for successful release ofVolume 15 Issue 2of our Journal. I am requesting you to support us by submitting any type of your article.
We desire to receive your valuable manuscript before 5th December.
We are confident that you will be with us in spreading the scientific research all over the world.
XXXXXX
Orthopedics and Rheumatology Open Access Journal”
Ok, for the moment suspend your disbelief and accept that I am in fact an “amazing” scientist, and that my manuscripts are “valuable.” But seriously, orthopedics and rheumatology? Goodness gracious! It’s outrageously funny, come to think of it. At the same time, though, I feel rather belittled, because is this how gullible they think scientists really are? That we could easily be fooled by some highfalutin praise about ourselves and our work?
Nothing would please me more if I could be recognized for my contributions to scientific research. But that is not the end goal for all this, you see.
I do what I do because I happen to love what I do. Simple as that.
In the meantime, I am unsure if I should make more stringent filters to prevent emails like that from polluting my inbox, or simply treat these small annoyances as a source of amusement. Who knows, maybe someday I’ll get to be invited to be an editor for the renowned journal of microbugs in the environment. 🙂