validated by rigorous peer review with the author’s benefit

The other day my co-authors and I received an email addressed to Dear Prof. Hugo Mariva (sic), offering to publish our importance Markov chain paper in the Journal of Pure and Applied Mathematics which is very much likely a predatory journal, given the approximate English of the email, the journal acceptance window, its editorial board, and its publisher, which is associated with a myriad of journals in all fields and with amphed citation factors. (Plus the ultimate faux-pas of writing statistics with no upper case!) What I find fascinatingly scary or scarily fascinating is that we are in the final throes of submitting the paper to a respectable journal..!

We are glad to have established ourselves as a ruling Journal of Pure and Applied Mathematics. Aside from conceptual and theoretical, the journal encourages the use of mathematics in various other scientific fields, such as Algebra, Analysis, approximation theory, Geometry, statistics, Mathematical Biology, Topology, Number Theory, etc.

We reviewed your research profile and enjoyed your article entitled ” The Importance Markov Chain ” and their research by providing rapid publications within 30-40 days, validated by rigorous peer review with the author’s benefit.

a message from the Editor of Statistics & Computing

[This is a message from Ajay Jasra, new Editor in Chief of Statistics & Computing, regarding submissions (and another stone in Springer’s garden).]

Subject: New Submissions at Statistics and Computing

Dear Prospective Authors,

As you may be aware Springer has introduced a new system for the management of article submissions. Despite my best efforts, there are several missing functionalities which make efficient management of article submissions virtually impossible. We do expect the system to be fixed by the new year, but that does not help us in the short-term.

I would please request all new submissions, until further notice, to be made on the old editorial manager:

https://www.editorialmanager.com/stco/default1.aspx

so that we can properly handle your manuscript.

Kind Regards,

Ajay Jasra
EIC Statistics & Computing

unexpected thanks

I received the following email from an author the other day, after rejecting their paper right after submission:

Dear Prof. Christian Robert,

Thank you very much for your assessment of the paper, your candid feedback and also your encouragement to submit the paper to another journal. We value very much this quick and constructive feedback and the time you need to invest to guarantee such a feedback policy.

Thank you for taking the time to consider our submission and best regards,

Which does not happen that often.

Email address not unique?!

When trying to submit a paper yesterday, I got the following message

The email address [xian@mylab.myuni.mycountry] is NOT unique. 
Try entering  your login name or first/last names or contact 
the editorial staff for  further assistance

which is rather puzzling since an email address is obviously unique…!