The website for Springer Journals Online—an agency offering paid authorship slots in research articles—went offline on Friday, four days after a published investigation detailed its operations. Researchers were approached by the group with proposals to guarantee their names on papers slated for academic periodicals put out by companies like Springer Nature, Elsevier, Taylor & Francis, Wiley, and SAGE, amongst different houses.
Did You Know? The probe into the group’s business practices was triggered back in August when University of California, Berkeley retired computer scientist Richard Fateman got a message pitching co-authorship on a paper in return for covering part of the publishing fees.
Publishers Deny Connection as Domain Outage Continues
Springer Journals Online uses an obviously similar name to Springer Nature, one of the world’s largest academic publishers. A spokesperson for Springer Nature stated that the publisher had no connection to the agency and said they were “working with the relevant authorities to address this issue.”
Public domain records show an update made to the “springerjournalsonline.net” domain on October 16. Yet, the registry details fail to specify the nature of that modification or whether it caused the site to go dark.
Unanswered Questions Regarding Agency Operations
An email inquiry sent to Springer Journals Online asking why the site went down, whether they had shut down, or if they wanted to comment on the prior report received no prompt reply. No one answered calls made via WhatsApp.
The team at Retraction Watch was unable to verify whether the business has shut down permanently or is merely running its activities through alternative platforms.
Why did the Springer Journals Online website go offline?
The website went offline on Friday, four days after Retraction Watch published its investigation into its activities. Domain records show an update occurred on October 16, but it remains unclear if that update caused the outage.
Which academic publishers were targeted by the agency?
The outfit pitched academics on packages designed to land them credits on manuscripts meant for titles produced by Wiley, Elsevier, Springer Nature, SAGE, and Taylor & Francis, among different entities. Springer Nature confirmed it has no connection to the agency.
How was the agency’s operation discovered?
The inquiry kicked off in August subsequent to Richard Fateman—a computer scientist who retired from the University of California, Berkeley—getting a solicitation inviting him to buy into an authorship slot by chipping in for publication charges.
How might academic institutions better protect researchers from unauthorized authorship solicitation emails?
Worth a look