MESSAGE FROM MODERATOR – YOUR OPINION REQUESTED
Dear OMTers,
Now that I have wished well to all in a non-denominational way, it is time to move on with a little request for your opinion. We are all people "naturally interested in matters of consequence" (The Little Prince, A. de Saint Exupery), and there is one that is affecting OMT-L and the community.
BACKGROUND: OMT-L was created around 1994, when most people did not know how to turn a computer on, to link those who did much more rapidly than meeting once a year at the Academy, and much cheaper than the phone. Just like the internet, it was a brilliant idea led by a group of visionary OMTers, including its true father, Dwight Lemke.
OMT inherited and embraced the anarchic mentality of the time: open to everybody, no ID verification, no University affiliation required, no censorship, and, early on no commercial activities or postings because the internet was for ideas, not gold. Those cyberpunks thought that Knowledge and Wisdom trump money, or at least they thought they should.
As OMT became bigger we tweaked these parameters a little, mostly to accommodate posting from our friendly Oligopolistic editorial houses who publish our journals and books, but also to other commercial ventures that were related to OMT´s mission, which is quite broad actually. So, for example, no one batted an eye when the first posting for a computer simulation was posted, and rightly so in my opinion. Then became many more, and rivers flew for a while, climate got hotter, and internet more popular.
Which brought all kinds of nasty characters whom I got to meet online. I have spoken about these before, and I have mentioned in the past how we catch them, but suffice to say that without the artificial intelligence of the software which complements the bounded one from the moderator, you will be seeing a lot more brides for sale, CDS (credit default swaps) opportunities that will indeed make someone rich quick but now you, and how to prevent cellular deterioration with an ancestral herbal remedy found on the slopes of Machu Picchu, which were regularly used by people who had a life expectancy of 30 years old give or take, less so if you were a woman.
In fact, with time I became quite acquainted with these characters, and I began to follow them in other areas of the internet that are not as visible and educated myself about their ways. Thus, I got to write one of the first cases on the Silk Road (an illegal online platform for, mostly, illicit stuff going from contraband tobacco to Vicodin, and also explosive materials and precursors, and guns and ordnance.), which used to function undetected encrypted data transmission through the Onion protocol, a Tor browser, and bitcoins to pay) and I even made some money trading bitcoins. But I digress so please read on.
A while ago, however, I began to deal with a more complex situation and more germane to OMT-L. Around 2013 we began to receive, and in 2015 it has become a deluge, postings that look academic and compliant on the surface, but are what a reasonable person would consider a scam. A few examples :
- Vanity press. Print your own books, no review, no spellcheck, no one will buy one but you, but you get an ISBN and a printing house from Pompous International Press.
- Vanity websites. We will interview you, publish your interview, and then use our army of netbots to spam the universe so your idea will become popular for a few moments through baitclick.
- Social media manipulation. Wanna buy 100000 followers on twitter or facebook? Pay up and that´s it!
- Tourism conferences. Anyone who has gone to SMS, or EGOS, or even AOM (a gathering where the main criteria for the selection of the venue is that it has to be in the US or Canada, has to be pharaonic in size, and, apparently, must regularly have life-size rodents dressed up to the nines so you can take your picture with them) knows that the location is important. But some announcements are simply tourism adverts with some academic legitimacy so you can put something on your CV and, presumably, get some funds from your school.
- Predatory journals. As you may or may not know, the scientific community is organizing against "predatory journals", many of them open-access. There are about 500 of them and growing fast, and Jeffrey Beall publishes and updates a list that you will find here
http://scholarlyoa.com/2015/01/02/bealls-list-of-predatory-publishers-2015/
I know what to do with the known scams because I have been doing it for a while either satisfactorily or so discreetly that no one noticed, but also because they are a no-brainer. But do not know what to do with that grey zone. They are providing a service for which they charge a fee, they are not completely deceitful (or not more deceitful than, say, Air France which claims in its ads that "the best place on earth is in the sky" wondering whether they have flown anywhere recently) and caveat emptor, but a part of me does not want to open this platform to people whose only job is to profit from other´s ignorance or vulnerability. I guess I am a bleeding heart after all.
So, Ladies and Gents from OMT, your friendly moderator asks you for ideas. In the interest of not annoying everybody, feel free to contact me directly and I will compile the ideas, but if you feel that your thoughts deserve their 15 picoseconds of glory, send it to OMT-L.
And continuing what I said yesterday: the beauty of living in a globalized world is that there is always a new year a few weeks from today. We may not agree on what year it is or when it starts, but we all love a good, extravagant new year´s party. I heard that in some locations even hotels are burned during the celebrations.
Seriously : thank you for your patience, and your thoughts.
Virtually yours,
Pablo MARTIN de HOLAN