---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Sat, 5 Apr 2008 11:23:18 +0100
From: Richard Poynder <richard.poynder -AT- btinternet dot com>
To: AMERICAN-SCIENTIST-OPEN-ACCESS-FORUM -- LISTSERVER.SIGMAXI.ORG
Subject: Bentham Science Publishers

Dear All,

I would be grateful if anyone could help me. I am interested in an Open
Access publisher called Bentham Science Publishers
(http://www.bentham.org/). I have been contacted by a number of researchers
who say that the company is bombarding them with invitations to contribute
papers to its journals. Apparently requests by the recipients to remove them
from Bentham's mailing list have little or no effect.

I have tried to make contact with a number of people in the company
including Richard Scott, who is most often the person whose name appears at
the bottom of the invitation letters, and was until recently listed as the
editorial director of the company on its web site
(http://www.bentham.org/Contact.php). I also copied into my emails Bentham's
US contact Richard Morrissey, and Matthew Honan, who earlier this year was
also described as the company's editorial director
(http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2008/01/bentham-oa-publishing-program.html). Likewise I copied in Professor Thomas Salt, since he too has signed
some of the offending emails in his capacity as Editor-in-Chief of a Bentham
journal called Current Neuropharmacology. Tom Salt appears to be based in
the Department of Visual Science at the Institute of Ophthalmology in
London.

Despite all my attempts to make email contact with the company and its
representatives, however, the only response I have received has come from
someone called Mahmood Alam who seems to be based in Pakistan. He informed
me that Richard Scott was too busy to speak with me, but invited me to email
my questions to him. After I sent some questions through to Mahmood Alam,
however, he failed to answer them.

I have also tried calling the telephone numbers listed on the Bentham web
site, but have only been able to get through to voice mail messages. The
number listed for Richard Morrissey simply invites callers to email him (the
address given is the one that I have failed to get any response from).

I would be most grateful if anyone who has any knowledge of Bentham, or any
experience of publishing with the company, or editing any of its journals,
or anyone who regularly reads any of the Bentham journals, could contact me
on: richardpoynder1 -- o2.co.uk.

Thank you.

Richard Poynder
www.richardpoynder.co.uk