An exercise in frustration: A researcher is impersonated

The other day, Jamie Burr, an exercise physiologist in Canada, received a curious email from an overseas colleague. The researcher wanted to know if Burr, of the University of Guelph, had written a particular article.

Burr wondered:

Why are they questioning if I wrote something?

Turns out, something was real shady with the slim article.

The paper Burr’s colleague forwarded him, “To Alter or Not to Alter the Cuff Pressure Over an Intervention Period in Blood Flow Restriction Training?,” did carry his name — but he hadn’t written it. Nor had he heard of the journal, an open-access title called the Journal of Blood Disorders & Transfusion, which is owned by Longdom Publishing.

Longdom was on Jeffrey Beall’s list of predatory publishers. One Twitter user noted last month that Longdom was offering 6,000 euro (about $7,160US) “memberships” to publish a certain number of papers in its journals annually. 

Burr read the brief paper, and concluded immediately that it was “terrible:”

If I were to guess, it seems like it could be computer generated. Some phrases are familiar and might have been pulled from other papers from our group. 

Much of it is “nonsensical,” he told Retraction Watch. 

As unsettling as it may be to be the victim of false authorship, Burr’s got company. And sometimes the consequences of such cases can be severe.

Burr, who tweeted about the experience, immediately emailed the journal to notify them of the fake paper, but he has yet to receive a response. He also sent a message to the email address provided for the author — not his real address — but that didn’t produce a reply, either. 

We emailed the editor-in-chief of the journal and will update this post if we hear back.

Burr has also reached out to his institution for help: 

We’ll see where it goes.

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