Every year, academics get thousands of spam emails inviting them to submit manuscripts or attend conferences — but don’t bother asking to “unsubscribe” for Christmas.
Spoiler alert, for those of you planning to read the rest of this post: It doesn’t make much of a difference.
That’s according to the conclusions of a study published in one of our favorite issues of the BMJ — the Christmas issue. After a group of five self-described “intrepid academics” tried to unsubscribe from the 300+ spam invitations they received on average each month, the volume decreased by only 19% after one year.
Not surprisingly, many emails — approximately 1 in 6 — were duplicates (aka “reheated spam”), and the vast majority (83%) had little relevance to the researchers’ interests.
Study author Andrew Grey at the University of Auckland told us that since it’s the BMJ Christmas issue, they wanted to have a bit of fun. But it’s not an all-together light topic, he noted: Continue reading Spam me once, shame on you. (Academic) spam me 3000 times…?