Meet the publisher making the science of Brontë, Faulkner, and Whitman available for the first time

Waves have a higher energy thickness contrasted with other sustainable power sources, so it requires less space to create a similar measure of energy. The upside of these waves is that they convey measures of dynamic energy and keep them all through the excursion from the focal point of the ocean to the ocean side. The dynamic energy of the ocean waves is tackled to mechanical works like power age …

Few scholars of the work of William Faulkner know that the winner of the 1949 Nobel Prize in Literature toyed with the above passage in early drafts of his 1936 novel, Absalom, Absalom!  

He went instead with the more memorable:

‘Why do you hate the South?’ ‘I dont hate it,’ Quentin said quickly, at once, immediately; ‘I dont hate it,’ he said. I dont hate it he thought, panting in the cold air, the iron New England dark; I don’t I don’t! I don’t hate it! I don’t hate it!”

Meanwhile, the genius of Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass  – “I celebrate myself, and sing myself, And what I assume you shall assume, For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you” – echoes in his lesser known work, “Role of Human Resources, Pay Disparity and Sustainable Power Utilization on Co2 Alleviation,” whose soaring lines include:  

The Maintainable Improvement Objectives (SDGs) 

are a bunch of five earnest issues 

that should be tended to by the worldwide local area continuously

2030 individuals, planet, flourishing, harmony, and organization. 

Okay, clearly not. But the editors of the British Journal of Research would have readers believe that Faulkner and Whitman, along with other long-dead luminaries including Charlotte Brontë, of the Department of Basic Sciences at the University of Aberdeen, in the UK, and Herman Hesse, of the Department of Basic Sciences, University of Cologne, in Germany, wrote papers for a recent issue of the periodical. 

Published by Prime Scholars, the BJR claims to be “an international quarterly open access journal which aims to publish articles related to different research fields and specialities.” One of the journal’s purported editors in chief did not immediately respond to a request for comment. 

We learned about the bogus papers thanks to Dorothy Bishop, who tweeted about them Thursday. 

Well, Prime Scholars is the gift that just keeps giving.
Here is author list for vol 9 issue 9 of British Journal of Research.https://t.co/GeZo8Y70AM
Seems someone was told to make sure the authors were famous. pic.twitter.com/etpMyhjs1z

— Dorothy Bishop (@deevybee) December 29, 2022

As Bishop noted, the motive for the scheme isn’t clear:

that’s what I’m trying to understand. I think they want a plausible-sounding product which might then lure in people who’ll pay the apc, but I wonder if that is all there is to it

— Dorothy Bishop (@deevybee) December 29, 2022

Of course, readers of Retraction Watch will not find it surprising that it’s possible to get just about anything published in something that looks like a journal.

Ultimately, as Bronte wrote in Jane Eyre, motive is less important than results: 

I could bend you with my finger and my thumb…But whatever I do with this cage, I cannot get at you, and it is your soul that I want.

Or:

In any case, sewage and modern pro-fluent that is unloaded into the climate corrupt crisp drinking water, making it difficult to give clean water to occupants and environments in the encompassing region …

Update, 1345 UTC, 12/30/22: We heard back from Obumneke Amadi-Onuoha, one of the listed editors in chief of the journal, who said she has “contacted my publishing company to respond to your inquiry and will give you feedback accordingly.”

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