unimportant email

I’ve been getting quite a lot of journal spam recently. I wonder what sort of people would take the following seriously; it has an entertaining aspect (subject line: “Possible chance of publishing”).

Dear Dr. Paul Goldberg,

Greetings from International Journal of Innovative Research in Computer and Communication Engineering!

Hope this mail finds you in a jovial mood.

Assuming that you may have received our previous correspondence we are sending this as a polite reminder request to you. To know more about the journal, please visit here:

We would like to invite you to contribute a manuscript to be considered in the forthcoming issue of International Journal of Innovative Research in Computer and Communication Engineering (IJIRCCE).

(remainder not quoted)

“polite reminder”? I’m feeling more jovial by the second…

It reminds me of a fairly reliable rule about email, which is that there is an inverse relationship between the importance of a message, and the quantity of formatting (colours, fonts, links etc.) that it contains.

(added 16.5.15:) Another similar item of journal spam (subject “Publish your research”; includes request to be notified when you read the message):

Dear Dr. Paul Goldberg

Greetings from International Journal of Biomedical Data Mining!

Hope this mail finds you in a pink health!

We are enthralled to know about your scientific contribution in the area of Artificial Intelligence, Data mining and would like to invite you as a potential author.

(remainder not quoted)

(added 7.7.15:) The following comes from an address ending in katsura.letstogether.org, with a reply-to address of sas@seipub.org. Subject is *Solids and *Structures(SAS):

Dear *NAME*,

Your paper, Revenue maximization in a Bayesian double auction market, draws our attention.

Introduction

Solids and Structures(SAS) is an internationally refereed journal dedicated to publishing the latest advancements in solids and structures research.

Indexing

Google	ckan
World Cat	getCITED
Academia.edu	pub zone
Bible	Scribd.
Linker	Deepdyve
Aol.	ULRICHSWEB
Rice St	ARCHIVE
WIPO	Cloud D
AcademicKeys	…

Submission deadline

July. 26, 2015

Tips: accepted paper which is submitted before the deadline can enjoy a discount on registration fee.

That last example uses the new-ish technique of making reference to one of the recipient’s papers, presumably to gain his attention. Shame about the salutation, Dear *NAME*.