I’ve been getting a new (for me) form of spam lately. I’m used to invitations to submit to predatory journals and to attend conferences for which I have no relevant expertise, but it’s only in the past few months that I’ve been getting invitations to serve on journal editorial boards. For example:

Dear Dr. Matthew Herron,

Greetings from Psychology & Psychological Research International Journal!

We have contacted you earlier through email. Since we have not received any response from you regarding the acceptance of Editorial board member, we are taking the liberty of resending the invitation as we are aware that you may be engaged in other activities or our message may not have successfully reached you.

I love this: the possibility that I didn’t respond because I’m not interested apparently never occurred to them. Like a desperate dude texting a girl who’s wondering where he got her phone number.

We have gone through your profile, which is impressive and so, we are interested to introduce our Psychology & Psychological Research International Journal (PPRIJ) to you.

As always my profile is impressive, but as always there are no specifics that would demonstrate that they’ve actually seen it. The fact that I’ve never published anything remotely related to psychology is apparently not a problem.

Psychology & Psychological Research International Journal is a peer reviewed medical journal, a source for the latest findings in cognitive, behavioral, developmental, health and educational psychology. The journal publishes intervention strategies that use psychological science to improve the lives of people around the world. The aim of journal is to publish the most complete and reliable source of information on discoveries and current developments in the major areas of psychology & wellbeing and explores the complexities and controversies facing psychotherapists. Evolutionary psychology, Experimental psychology, Medical psychology, Music psychology, Neuro psychology, Spiritual psychology

Spiritual psychology? What the hell is that? I’m totally unqualified to serve on the editorial board of a legitimate psychology journal, but I could probably handle the spiritual psychology desk: Nope. Nope. Uh-uh. Not that one, either. You’re kidding, right?

Predictably, the publisher, MedWin Publishers, is on the archived version of Beall’s list.